UR-Realist
The price of 1 CD is $12.99;
there may be a discount if you buy more than one
For sales information, write to
Dima Kaledin
(kaledin@mccme.ru),
phone # (7095) 110 35 78.
The birth of Russian independent music was inspired by two seminal punk collectives, founded in mid-1980-ies: the messianic Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Egor Letov) and Instruktsiya po Vyzhivaniyu (a shifting group of extremely talented and independent Tyumen's musicians, fronted by Roman Neumoev). After a several month's incarceration by KGB in 1985, Egor Letov made quite a few records of Grazhdanskaya Oborona, alone and constantly harrassed by the authorities. Unfortunately, most of the output of Instruktsiya was recorded well in 1990-ies. Not many live recordings of Letov survive, either.
"Instrukciya po Oborone" (1987), the joint live recording of Letov and "Instruktciya po Vyzhivaniyu", fills this gap. The songs (all 27 of them) are mostly bootleg-quality, with characteristic for the Russian punk aura of raw power and below-the-underground spirit (they were recorded clandestinely in workers' dormitory). Some of the songs are performed by Kirill Ryb'yakov, the leader of "Kooperativ Nishtyak", some by Letov, some by Roman Neumoev (frontman of "Instruktsiya po Vyzhivaniyu") and some by Artur Strukov (Kul'turnaya Revolyutsiya). There are no drums (due to the secrecy of the underground performance), the bass is so quiet it's impossible to distinguish it from low guitar noise -- still "Instruktsiya po Oborone" leaves an impression of a fully-fledged punk band.
11 (of 27) songs of Instruktsiya po Oborone were released on tape by Hobgoblin Records ("Karma Il'icha"); the rest is unreleased and virtually unknown.