2 August 1998. Three people who until that day had not known each other end up in the same room for the first time - to shoot the video for the song "Ne dado" in St. Petersburg. Mitja Fomin (b. 17 January 1974, Novosibirsk), Timofej Pron'kin (b. 21 December 1974, Moscow) and the photo model Oksana Oleshko become the group Hi-Fi. Six months later - on 17 February 1999 - "Soyuz" releases their debut album "Pervyj Kontakt", which contains the track "Pioner" with the chorus "Vsegda gotov" ("Always Ready"). iTunes confirms the release date and tracklist: "Ne dado", "Besprizornik", "Pioner", "Call Me Misha", "Prosti menja", "Giordgia", "Nit'".
Hi-Fi is a producer project in its pure form, and "Vsegda gotov" (also known as "Pioner") is a convenient point through which to see how such a machine worked. The music is written by Pavel Esenin, the lyrics by Erik Chanturija, the group's name is coined by the image-maker Alisher. On stage the song is performed by Fomin, but in the studio version the voice you hear is Esenin's: the producer did not like Fomin's voice and sang his parts on the group's records. This detail is not rumour but a confirmed fact from the group's biography.
Who stands behind Hi-Fi: Chanturija and Esenin
Erik Chanturija is a producer and lyricist. Pavel Esenin (b. 1971, Novosibirsk) is a composer, arranger, singer, founder and producer of the projects "Orbita", "Shura", "Hi-Fi", "FM Project" and "AjKI". Before Hi-Fi, Chanturija and Esenin worked together on the project Orbita, where the vocalist was Esenin himself and the Novosibirsk-born Mitja Fomin appeared as a dancer. Hi-Fi's first album is, in essence, re-purposed songs recorded in Germany and Novosibirsk for Orbita.
Esenin was going to front Hi-Fi himself, but decided that touring life would leave no time to write music, and gave the role to Fomin. When it turned out that Fomin's voice did not suit him, Esenin simply sang the parts for him - and that settled the question. Neither Fomin, nor Pron'kin, nor Oleshko deliver their own voice on the group's early recordings. This is the producer model of "project for a song", where face and voice are split, and "Vsegda gotov" is not an exception but the rule.
Detail: the first version of "Ne dado" was in English, titled "Get to stand after falling", and was recorded back in 1997 for Orbita. Out of that same English draft came "Ne dado", "Sed'moj lepestok" and the song "Otshumeli letnie dozhdi" performed by Shura. Hi-Fi is not a fresh 1998 project but a recycling of 1997 material.
14 November 1998: stage debut and "Soyuz-23"
Hi-Fi's first stage appearance took place on 14 November 1998 at the presentation concert for the compilation "Soyuz-23". That December "Ne dado" hits rotation on seven radio stations, and its video - the charts "Russkaja Desjatka" and "20 samyh-samyh" on MTV Russia. On 26 February 1999 the video for "Besprizornik" debuts at number three in MTV Russia's "20 samyh-samyh"; in April the song is in rotation on 33 radio stations, in May it is the most-played.
On 17 February 1999 (per iTunes - 18 February) "Soyuz" releases the debut album "Pervyj Kontakt" on CD and audio cassette. Distribution is handled by Real Records. The album contains 11 tracks recorded in different genres - from europop to trance. "Pioner" ("Vsegda gotov") sits in the trance column, next to "Giordgia". This is an important genre context: "Vsegda gotov" is not dance pop in the spirit of "Ne dado" but a trance track with a four-on-the-floor kick and a developed intro.
"Pioner" as a trance track: what is in the arrangement
"Vsegda gotov" in the 1999 version is a trance composition with a Pioneer slogan in the chorus. The genre choice is non-trivial: Pioneer imagery in Russian stage music is usually delivered through a march or a Pioneer song, but here it comes through electronic dance. The arrangement is built on familiar instruments of the late 1990s:
- Rhythm - a four-on-the-floor kick on every beat, tempo around 132-136 BPM, off-beat hi-hats - a classic trance pattern;
- Bass - a sequenced line with the arpeggiation typical of trance, it does not walk but holds the tonic and pumps;
- Pads - polyphonic strings on a digital workstation (Roland JV series or Korg Trinity), long attack, dense reverb;
- Lead melody - a synthesised hook in the bridge, with a light LFO vibrato, characteristic of 1998-1999 trance;
- Vocal - the voice of Pavel Esenin, not Fomin; dense, with artificial double-tracking and a reverb;
- Chorus choir - a children's-choir backing with the slogan "Vsegda gotov!", a counterpoint to the solo vocal.
Structurally "Vsegda gotov" is intro (8 bars) → verse → chorus → verse → chorus → bridge → chorus → outro. Radio-edit length is around 3:50, the club version with a developed intro is longer. The name "Pioner" in the tracklist and "Vsegda gotov" in the chorus are not two different songs but one track, fixed in the Disco Magic catalogue under the compound slug vsegda-gotov-hi-fi-pioner.
Zolotoj Grammofon: four prizes in six years
Hi-Fi is a project that in the first decade of the 2000s receives the "Zolotoj Grammofon" four times: in 1999 for "Chjornyj voron", in 2000 for "Za mnoj", in 2002 for "SSh No 7 (A my ljubili)", in 2004 for "Sed'moj lepestok". "Vsegda gotov" does not make that list - not because the track is weaker, but because the trance format sits worse in a radio chart than the europop of "Ne dado" or "Chjornyj voron".
In 2005 Hi-Fi receives a "Muz-TV" prize - different sources list different nominations ("Best Dance Act" or "Most Stylish Group" by World Fashion TV). Without diving into the discrepancy, the main point: by 2005 Hi-Fi is a recognised dance project, and "Vsegda gotov" stays in the repertoire as a concert number, not a chart single.
Line-up: who left and who came
Hi-Fi's line-up changed more often than the public would have liked. It helps to keep the chronology at hand, because the line-up is the main source of confusion about the group:
- 1998-2003 - the golden line-up: Fomin, Pron'kin, Oleshko;
- 2003-2005 - Oleshko leaves in early 2003, replaced by the professional model Tat'jana Tjorjoshina;
- 2005-2006 - Tjorjoshina leaves the group in May 2005;
- 2006 - the new vocalist is Ekaterina Li, a student of the jazz department of the St. Petersburg University of Culture and Arts;
- 2009 - Mitja Fomin leaves for a solo career (Pron'kin becomes the de facto frontman); Kirill Kolgushkin replaces Fomin;
- 2010 - Ekaterina Li leaves, becomes the vocalist of "Fabrika" in place of Sati Kazanova; in March 2010 Olesja Lipchanskaja joins;
- 2012 - Kolgushkin leaves in April 2011, in February 2012 the new vocalist is Vjacheslav Samarin (he leaves the group in October of the same year);
- 2016-present - the duo of Timofej Pron'kin and Marina Drozhdena (from December 2016);
- 2018-2020 - return of the golden line-up (Fomin, Pron'kin, Oleshko) to the stage of "Olimpijsky" in April 2018, at the invitation of Sergei Zhukov as part of the "Ruki Vverh!" concert.
The replacement of Oleshko by Tjorjoshina in 2003 is a turn that the first vocalist of "VIA Gra", Aljona Vinnitskaja, rejected: the producers lobbied her for a long time, but the singer flatly refused. This gives an idea of how Hi-Fi were positioned inside the market: a project people join, but not always.
"Vsegda gotov" in the context of the late-1990s Russian dancefloor
"Vsegda gotov" from 1999 is a point where two lines of Russian dance pop converge: the eurodance heritage of 1992 (four-on-the-floor kick, sequenced bass, female vocals in the chorus) and the later synth-pop built on a hook. We unpacked this duality in the article on eurodance with female vocals and male rap: Hi-Fi are heirs to the formula, but without the male rap, replacing it with melodeclamation. The closest context on sound is the article on Russian synth-pop: by 1999 eurodance has exhausted itself, and Hi-Fi land in the first wave of projects that build dance pop on a trance rhythm.
The history of how the eurodance formula itself came together by 1992 we broke down in the piece on the year Eurodance came together: without that context "Vsegda gotov" looks like an isolated hit, when in fact it is a logical stage.
Who sang "Vsegda gotov"
This is the most frequent question about Hi-Fi, and the answer is the main fact of this article. In the studio version of "Pioner" the voice belongs to Pavel Esenin - the group's composer and arranger, not Fomin and not Pron'kin. From 1998 to 2009 Fomin handled vocal imitation and dancing; Pron'kin - dancing, backing-vocal imitation and guitar. Only after 2009, when Fomin left, did Pron'kin start to sing in his own voice. In concert "Vsegda gotov" is performed to a plus-phonogram - that is, to Esenin's voice recorded in 1998-1999.
This is not a unique case for Russian dance pop of the late 1990s - we looked at a similar practice in the article on Soviet italo-disco clones, where Mirage's touring line-ups sang to Sukhankina's voice. But in Hi-Fi's case the split is even harder: the producer not only writes the songs but sings them, leaving the frontman the visual role.
The Disco Magic catalogue and the track's second life
The Disco Magic catalogue contains a remix of "Vsegda gotov" - a version in which the trance delivery of the original is moved into a denser dance arrangement. The choir backing with the Pioneer slogan is preserved: without it the track loses recognition and turns into any other 1999 eurodance number. The remix's task is not to rewrite the song but to update the rhythm section and give "Vsegda gotov" a second chance in modern DJ rotation.
What is confirmed and what is not
Firmly confirmed: Hi-Fi's founding date (2 August 1998), the line-up (Fomin, Pron'kin, Oleshko) and their dates of birth, the producer pair (Chanturija, Esenin), the authorship of music and lyrics (Esenin / Chanturija), the date of the debut performance (14 November 1998, "Soyuz-23"), the release date of "Pervyj Kontakt" (17 February 1999 per Wikipedia, 18 February 1999 per iTunes), the album's tracklist, the fact that Esenin sang on the studio recordings, the four "Zolotoj Grammofon" prizes (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004), the "Muz-TV" prize in 2005, the replacement of Oleshko by Tjorjoshina (2003), Fomin's departure (2009), the return of the golden line-up (2018).
Not confirmed: the exact recording budget for "Pervyj Kontakt", the album's print run in copies, the director of the "Ne dado" video, the exact nomination of the 2005 "Muz-TV" prize (sources disagree). Anything outside this list is retelling, and we do not use it in the article.
"Vsegda gotov" from 1999 is a hit with a verified story: a producer pair from Novosibirsk writes a song for a project in which the faces do not sing, and the melody lives in a trance arrangement with a Pioneer choir. Twenty years on iTunes confirms the tracklist of the same album - and Fomin, Pron'kin and Oleshko walk onto the same stage again. That is enough.
