Stauropygial Records

At that time international noise contacts were easy to establish en masse in the following way: soon after someone had published a zine, all the artists represented therein with interviews or reviews (although reviews has already started to fall into decay as a genre) started to write each other and communicate via both modem internet and snail mail. So when Armantas Gečiauskas, now a famous noise traveller Arma Agharta, having toured all over the world from Mexico and Greenland to Philippines (see www.arma.lt), аnd back then a grindcore scene member and the publisher of the Infected by Dementia zine, had published an interview with me in that zine and released a split tape of Stop Asking Stupid Questions/Invader From Mars (a project by Kei Yokota of Outermost etc. from Japan), all the other characters from the zine made acquaintance of me very soon, among them Toni Kandelin from Oulu, Finland, of the Hammasratas label (which means Teeth Wheel, although I don't remember whether it had influenced my choice of the material for the split). His band The Nihilistik Kitchen Unit (which I translated literally into Finnish as Nihilistinen Keittiöyksikkö) played the harshest (mainly because of the loudness though), killer noise, while I put on my side some of my teeth scratching recorded about 5 years before (almost the whole collection of teeth scratching recorded by me having been released later as a separate tape). The piece's name means Stereoteeth. The artwork was weird and one of the most impractical ones in our history. The tape was tightly glued in the cover consisting of two pieces of cardboard joined by a strip of bookbinder's leather, which should have represented a book. The stock of the leather was exhausted soon, the tape has to dry too long, but, true to the idea of not limiting print runs, I could not satisfy the demand very soon, for I was already tired of making copies of it all and it was in fact hardly already possible. So in 2009 I have reissued it in a simplified form.

A review in Russian on the site of the late Dan Noiser of Karelian noise act Galaxy The Incubator.

The club Moloko (Milk) was renowned for being the last one in the tradition of the 1990-s' St. Petersburg venues. It was not very friendly though to experimental sound, being mostly oriented on ska/reggae/ska-punk: however, Ankylym had been accepted after submitting a demo and performed there several times in various lineups. This tape features dictaphone recordings of 2 of those gigs — while it's hard to call them really oustanding (except for the fact that a rare song is performed on each of them), and I used to a cassette recorder to all the gigs I was visiting back then, and there were much better recordings both in quality and energy, nevertheless it was released rather as a conceptual object, as an example of literal understanding of the expression Ankylym in milk: for the tape was sealed in a used (washed though) milk package, with a heap of paper pieces of different colours with lyrics enclosed. See the photo for its glaring, variegated look. And also as a summing up (in a handy way) the band's transition from electric hypostasis to acoustic with balalaika (which first appeared 4 months before this gig) — as well as the existence of the Moloko club itself, closed in 2005 by the authorities. As with many other complicately designed releases, the print run was slender (by the number of possible colours of papers I guess that hardly more than 10 copies) and not noticeably in demand by the listener accustomed rather to digipacks (which is in fact expected when even at the well-played electric gig this listener comments in the vein of This is not music, this is shit!).

A demo of St. Petersburg punk band with Шараповым as singer and lyrics' writer, wherein I played guitar and composed music between 2003 and 2007. As I have got to know later, the recording had a semi-official name The Dead Don't Bite, which is no way reflected on the cover. Performed by the most professional lineup (if applicable to this kind of art) with Anna Zaytseva on bass guitar and Vasya Xkrusayderx (8Hz, Potom Budet Pozdno) on drums. I could, as usually, add that I can't remember the circumstances of making this recording completely (the site of SVINOKOP states, that it has been recorded on vintage analogue equipment), but this has already become a refrain to almost all of the releases of those times with my participation, besides I completely don't remember either how we had composed and rehearsed this program at all, the one uncommon enough: almost all the songs are in foreign languages (Esperanto, English, Deutsch and Vegan), including a Piĉismo cover, most of them having been performed live very rarely (or my memory just holds mostly endless repetitions of the same program in the course of all those years with different band members). The last song Sun is played first as in instrumental, and then again with lyrics, growing into an 8 minute noise jam, taking up the whole side B of the tape for those who have a double-sided tape (as it was dubbed manually on different kinds of tapes). A really worthy stuff, and the sound quality also makes me feel respect for myself.

The second issue of UNIXNOISE followed almost immediately the first one. The console command shows to the understanding eyes an example of extreme audacity — even more not back then, but now, in an age of total security paranoia (and I even didn't think about it when publishing it). It's terrifying to even think of reconstructing the sources, like with the first issue, all the more when it's not even possible as many of them are already destroyed. The release, like the previous one, is equipped with a hand-written cover with the console command, on a millimeter paper, which cannot be unrolled and sticks out of the box like a pigtail.

Harsh noise created with standard commands of Linux operating system (and in theory reproducible on other UNIX systems), an amusement, familiar to many console users: any file (or even the contents of RAM) may be copied to the sound input/output device/dev/dsp yielding a horrendous, indescribable noise. The truth is that the aforementioned device accepts interprets input data as a stream in 8 bit mono format, hence the distinctive sound, making some recall ZX Spectrum.

I anticipate being blamed for the name of the project chosen incorrectly: in essence, this kind of sound extraction is not specific to UNIX (and Linux is not UNIX at all, they'll say), but to the OpenSoundSystem architecture, supported at least in older Linuces (cannot tell for sure about modern ones) and in FreeBSD until now. So it would be juster to call it something like OSSNoise. But for the sake of a charismatic and comprehensible name the opinion of purists deserves neglecting, all the more so since right about the time of recording this album I was editing the Russian translation of the book «Advanced Programming in the UNIX environment» by Stephens and Rago, who describe Linux and FreeBSD among typical UNIX systems, so my usage is justified at least by their authority. The site unixpunx.org and the subculture of unixpunks itself also flourished (if we ever may speak of subculture and flourishing in this regard) those days and also used the word UNIX in an ad-hoc meaning of counterculture operating systems and not in the strict sense of a trademark, owned by copyright holders. (The same excuse applies to the song Unixcore by Svinokop, composed by me with even less reason.) One can think of it as of squatting UNIX.

On the tape there are 3 songs, representing sound incarnations of Emacs 21.3 (text editor), gs (PostScript interpreter) and archive of source codes of Apache 2.0.54 (web server). The choice is determined by the predefined length of the tape. In contrast to the digital content (generally unrepresentative for me), the covers were purposely drawn by hand with felt-tip pens. For everything had been recorded directly from the sound card, there were no master audio files as such. Now, after 15 years, I have found those binary files (I hope, the same ones) and attach the reconstruction of the original sound stream to the tape rips.

A review (somewhat naïve) in Russian.

A special Russian edition of a French experimental punk band mixing the standards of French punk a là Bérurier Noir (so that the drums, albeit live, aim at sounding like a drum machine - as a reproach to our contemporaries striving to demonstrate their mastery on any occasion, while the accordion is responsible for the distinctive spirit of country chanson) with elephant saxophone and aesthetics of constructivism and Soviet romanticism (although mainly in the lyrics and silkscreen cover artwork implemented by the saxophonist Gérald Auclin, nowadays a famous comix artist and publisher). The lyrics are translated into Russian. The cover folding is so special and complicated that the original design has probably never been reproduced accurately. The tape has pad printing, but was duplicated manually. There were 100 tapes prepared initially, but the distributed amount is less: because of the strange, unexplainable unpopularity of this release some of them have been utilized for other stuff (for the lack of 66-minute tapes): yet collectors may search for copies of the year's 2008 RDV/Alisa Yhtye split in these shells. Reissued in 2019 (see release XCV) folded in a different way and in an almost standard plastic case.

Despite a benevolent review, the release may be considered to be frankly obscure (although seeming good enough from today's perspective). NOODLE SOUP MADE EASY is arguably the best on this tape: raw sound, furious guitar noise wall, violent cries in an unintelligible language. GRUUTHAAGY (Croatia) and SASQ are represented with rather secondary stuff. The music of KxOxLxPxA is mostly acoustic hardcore with kitchen drums, a guitar and other instruments imitated by whispering voice. I have selected mostly noisier pieces for this tape though.

A non-standard and fragile design again hampered proper duplication and scared away customers (the cassette was wrapped in an A4 paper sheet and sticked up with scotch tape).

One of the projects of Eric Boros (HERMIT, NNY, Manufracture and many more activities) - this time avantgarde jazzcore with just guitar, drums and m/f vocals. One of the few quite musical releases on our label and, perhaps, the most melodic one. However, the tape is fully prepared by Vova Tarasov (DJ Vovan, label Ej Tu Dirst, Volosovo, Russia, now Japan) and Eric himself. I had just joined in the last moment and added a flyer with the label info, not sure is it was even included in all the copies that belonged to other participants. The name of the band comes from a provincial train station in mid-russia that had especially delighted Eric and Marylise during their russian tour as Hermit (described in the Sean Penn zine). Professional print run. I still have original covers and can record it for you.

This tape features a live gig of these punk/hc bands in Deep Sound club on the 1st May 2005. One of the few punk/hc releases on our label. LÄMANT (crust or, how they introduced themselves, extremal punk) from Minsk, a band of the well-known artist Green, later Tropinkin; SVINOKOP from St. Petersburg, with Szarapow (owner of SzSS) on voice, myself on guitar, Mel Cookie of Australia on bass and Vasya xKrusayderx on drums. Great live shew feel, many people's remarks, sometimes longer than the songs themselves. Also there was a reunion and easter gig of EVIL POP (including 1 new song!). Released with SzSS (St.Petersburg), No Manipulation (Belarus) and Xerotika (Belarus). 32-page cut-n-paste booklet.

As promised I have re-released SASQ #6 this time it's done on a business card CD for more comfort. Because dubbing these 3 minutes of kitchen sounds, bass and guitar on C90 tapes is kinda luxury.