#Ninety One

[patdbuttons]

i like diz layout.

[weanwinwhester]

for those of you with extensive brain rot such as myself i have a recommendation! rereading Ninety -One Whiskey 100 times just not scratching the itch enough? well do i have just the thing. Band of Brothers. now i’m no ra ra red blooded american but having watched this, is one of the only reasons i could follow whiskey so well. and it includes some familiar faces like Richard Speight Jr!

[ninetyonekz]

NINETY ONE'S INSTAGRAM

[thestarsmakemedream-art]

PORTRAIT WEEK

After this experiment with the drawing challenges in May on Instagram (which was honestly very instructive and showing me that I should really just do what I actually like 😂) I finished this WWII medic scene. I had this idea for a couple of weeks now (maybe it has something to do with the amount of 91w I read, I know there wasn't really a setting like this but anyway medics are heroes and I wanted to draw heroes). I enjoyed painting this very much.

[rdostuff]

ACE trollsona (ninety one - ah!yah!mah! clip on YouTube)

Trollsona design by: @ninkkkkk

[kafkaesquegf]

“To talk about Alash is to conceptualize a modern, democratic Kazakhstan separate from Nazarbayev: to find an alternative to Nazarbayevean realism. This is probably why the protesters of 2019 drew from Dulatuli’s Oyan, Qazaq! to name their movement. And in putting Alash together with the bust of Kul Tigin and the runes and the eagles and the tazy, Ninety One is claiming modern democratic thought as a homegrown Kazakh, and Kazakhstani, tradition, and claiming space for themselves—performers, performing largely for teenagers, singing and dancing and wearing eyeliner—in said tradition. [...] I have been talking about power this whole time, trying to poke beneath the top fluffy layer of idol-pop music, at heart uncomfortable with the idea that something so conspicuously consuming, so invested in appearances, so eyelinered, so silly, so juvenile could have power. Surely we had to talk around idol pop, to poke at what its performers or fans might be doing when they’re not performing or listening, to decode and classify, because it seemed embarrassing to suggest that the act of performing idol pop could be worthwhile, full stop. Maybe I’ve been wrong all this time. Maybe Ninety One has known better all this time.

Jessica Doyle, "The Ninety One Series, Part 10: Ninety One as Nazarbayevean Realists."

[almatycitybestcity]

you guys should listen to ninety one they're pretty cool

one of the first q-pop groups that I remember popping off early on, especially on gakku

find them on spotify or youtube wherever you want

eaglezz🐎🦅🦅🦅

[swan2swan]

[placegrenette]

hi y'all. have been preoccupied by various domestic responsibilities (my oven is clean now!) but can at least poke my head up long enough to get you some news.

No, we do not have any indication of when Ninety One will make new music together again. We do have a recent OT4 performance, where they... opened for Chen? From what I could see the set list was a quick greatest-hits compilation: "Aiyptama," "Mooz," "Men Emes," "E.Yeah." There was also this Nauryz show, if you want to see what haircut Bala has now. But that's it, as far as the group is concerned.

Let me recap the solo activities first. Alem released a single called "Kuiim" and... it was a hit! As in: 4.6 million YouTube views in four months! (By contrast, "Biz" still hasn't hit 2 million views, nearly two years after its release.) He has since released a follow-up, "Elestet," which sounds a great deal like "Kuiim," but why knock a winning formula. Also the video for "Elestet" has actual good English subtitles. In between the two releases, Alem and Veronika went on the Zamandas podcast together. That does not have good English subtitles, but it was conducted entirely in Russian, so you might have luck with auto-transcribe and translate. (Or I might, if I can get out from under said domestic responsibilities. No guarantees. Will go ahead and spoiler you that they bring out baby Tai towards the end of the interview, and Alem play-nibbling on his son is indeed one of the cutest things you will ever be privileged to witness in your lifetime.)

Alem also did an interview with 98 Magazine. Here's a quick machine translation version of the relevant-to-Ninety-One content:

Ninety One has its own direction. Each of the five people added their own flavor, and a new eclectic direction emerged. This is a great experience. Through it, I began to discover new facets of myself. But, honestly, I am realizing my musical desires that I have had since childhood more in my solo work. When you are alone, you have to give yourself completely to the work. I can’t just do my own thing, delegate everything to the children, and run away, like in a group. (Laughs) It seems that my potential is opening up more in my solo work. Because I am putting myself completely into the song. Sometimes I ask people for help with things that I can’t do myself. Especially in writing lyrics, I turn to others.

To translate the translation: not any time soon, folks. He does say, when asked where he sees himself in five years' time, "onstage, with Ninety One," but it seems like solo work is suiting him just fine. And, honestly, frustrating as the Gap era must have been, thank goodness for some buzz.

The song credits for "Elestet," meanwhile, are Alem, ZaQ, Ne1tron, Fellow Cute Dad De Lacure, and Ayrys, with whom I am not familiar at all. And now it seems that ZaQ, De Lacure, and Ne1tron are doing a separate project called HighOne, and Alem will be a guest vocalist. So the current situation is not so much "Ninety One has split up" as "Alem and ZaQ are busy being cute dads and helping each other out with their respective solo projects, Ace is meanwhile doing his thing, and Bala is doing something that does not require the supervision of QpopNews or social media, and hopefully enjoying it, whatever it is."

Ace is meanwhile doing his thing. His solo album was actually mostly written by Serzhan Bakhytzhan, whom you might remember as the driving force behind the Aiyptama EP. As best I can tell, this EP—if you guessed that the title is Baqytty Bol, go ahead and pat yourself on the back—was not nearly as successful as "Kuiim." I'm not really surprised; "Kuiim" has a bass-driven energy, whereas stuff like "Qushaq" sounds more like a bid for space on your lo-fi study playlist than something you would go out of your way to listen to. But Ace also got a solo interview:

How difficult was it to promote an album as a solo artist? It was very difficult. Last year, there were a lot of problems in Kazakhstan. I was forced to draw attention to myself with light videos with humor. If you notice, the media played a lot of songs with a minor, sad atmosphere. Because that was the vibe of the people. On the contrary, I mostly released songs with a major, upbeat tone. My main goal was to write positive songs.

...like I said, I'm not surprised he didn't tear up the market. But he did just get featured by Il'han on a ballad. I think Alem's been doing collabs as well? And voice acting? Working dad's been busy!

Finally: Ace and Alem both are going to do a couple concerts with Dastan Orazbekov (of Orda, right? I feel like my Pop-Almaty-social-dot-connecting skills have atrophied). And on May 3rd, they're both scheduled to appear at a concert with Madi Rymbaev and Yenlik, hosted by Kyle Ruh. YES! The hardest working man in Kazakh show business is still at it! And reportedly a reunited Moonlight will be there! Oh, and Kyle Ruh was on the Kazakhstani version of The Masked Singer, where Ace is a judge. Forgot to mention that.

I will come back again when there is more news, or when I finally have time to start reviewing songs again. And in the meantime we can all rest easy knowing that, no matter what the time or the situation or the bleakness of the news, Kyle Ruh is out there getting shit done.

[white--tea]

on repeat

[qforqazaq]

Just wanted to thank you for your wonderful posts on this blog ^^ Spotify recommended me 91's Bari Biled just a few days ago, and I really quite enjoyed it and got curious. I do listen to kpop, which it had a bit of a vibe of, but i very quickly went "wait, what language is this???" so I had to look up more stuff about them and q-pop. Even tho as a Norwegian it's funny that I listen to basically every language /but/ Norwegian when i listen to music, as the tendency seems to be.

Hey,

Thanks for the comment.

Good to know you're discovering new music that you can enjoy!

Not sure, if this is at all relevant at this point, but hope your discovery didn't end there, and you found more good stuff in the Kazakh music space :D

[redmulyacuties]

[ninetyonekz]

danialmrkh

[balascheekies]

suffering from severe 91 and madmen brain rot brought me here...with some interesting developments/news(???)

hi hello welcome to my qpop blog! as the bigger text says....yeah suffering from missing both 91 and madmen brought me here

all of this happened like a week or two ago but one random day i was like....yo lemme check out 91's music again since it's been a hot minute

and then i was like YO I MISS MADMEN SO MUCH??? LET ME GO WATCH ULALA AND INTERNALLY CRY

then i searched up madmen on tiktok and i was so surprised that the account was still up since i thought it was taken down (it wasn't😭) and of course as a moora and khay bias does....i started to think about the whole drug 'scandal' and how everything turned out :(((

then i was on their profile page on kpoprofiles(don't ask) and i was like hmmm are madmen's ig accounts still up??

i clicked on the link to khay's ig and it was still up??? and active???

y'all, please tell me why this man has been posting since OCTOBER OF LAST YEAR AND I DIDN'T KNOW UNTIL NOW!!

AND HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND/WIFE?? OMG¿?

and then i checked moora's ig account and it was still up as well😭😭 i quite literally stalked his page just waiting for the day he posts and then one day i realized he changed his profile pic, so rightfully i am freaking out

also i think he has a girlfriend as well?? someone said who his supposed girlfriend is in the comment section of his most recent post(yeah ppl are still commenting on his page) but i don't want to speculate anything until moora actually posts something(if he does that is)

yeah so suffering from qpop withdrawals brought me here😭 i just miss madmen so much in retrospective i wish everything that happened just....didn't happen honestly. i just hope all the former members are doing well after everything that went down in the past 2-3 years

also i guess i'm assuming the both of them got out in the same time frame?? they were supposed to be in prison with longer sentences(moora's sentence was a whole 15 years) but, that's all speculation for now ig

ANYWAYS

yeah cute little qpop blog i'll be posting about 91 of course, madmen, and bikesh(formerly known as juzim) along with other qpop artists i've enjoyed over the years :)

[rdostuff]

NINETY ONE members as trolls

Designs by: @ninkkkkk

(support artists from my country)

[ninetyonekz]

cr. kamila.raw