Stauropygial Records

Unique package made from Russian noodle soup box, extremely tender release (now also extremely rare), easy to break and hard to mail. Has been available for Russia only because of possible customs problems. A plastic fork, oil and flavours enclosed. As far as I remember, some copies might include the noodles themselves. Guitar/bass humming through the Lel reverb and occasionally something like a microphone feedback. Very raw stuff, the background tape noise is awful and the recording ends unexpectedly (possibly the tape had ended). At the same time the sound is very fat and rich, although recorded at home with a boombox. As far as I know, some owners of this release haven't even bothered to unpack it due to design fetishism, thus having no chance not only to taste the contents described above, but even see it. In 2017, however, some people finally created a video demonstrating the welcomed use of this release:

Dark ambient noise/electronics from Jason Campbell (Canada) with remixes by R.A.Pavlov and some of the latter's original stuff. Released with Monopolka. The tape was done without listening and approval from Monopolka's part, so later it was labelled as "Monopolka's worst release" in their catalogue. I can make a copy of this release with original cover.

The tape includes recording sessions made by R.A.Pavlov and Philipp Wolokitin by phone using unique phone line recording tool. 356-0-356 was Monopolka's headmaster's phone number, by the way. Except of noise and teeth scratching there are some spoken word parts with Anna Zaytseva and Karl Khlamkin, and the one I especially enjoy where R.A.Pavlov is refusing to sing the song about cunt. Released with Monopolka.

An art object made from a DVD. Just 1 copy, the lucky owner of it is Lapitch (ask him maybe he will sell it!)

Media: before this release, it was a DVD
Length: 120 mm

A re-release of the Uhogorlonoise Records cassette from 1999. This version, intended for international distribution, offers some English translations and lyrics in Old Church Slavonic on the cover. Stereo guitar ambient, lo-fi soundtracks and home sessions recorded with 2 guitars, bass and lots of effect pedals, yielding the ambient sound. The material on the first side is the same as included in the other album of 1999, Korovij Shum, but mixed differently (independent stereo channels). The other side includes outtakes from other home and dormitory sessions, featuring also Zayats (future bass player of Evil Pop) and Ben (bass player of Ankylym).

This electric album by ANKYLYM (the first experience of a digital studio recording and the first album with 2 guitars) was recorded in the fall of 2003 at AnTrop studio. 34 minutes, 16 songs. (A free promo version was available on eCard CD's, one song on each.) Mostly experimental punk with trumpet, vargan, dudka and crimped hose, 1 acoustic track with bayan. Mastering was performed by myself in Samplitude using the technique called all knobs to the right in Russian. 200 copies edition, all sold out. It's still distributed with original covers (which had been printed in quantity of 1000), but it's not the original print run. Modern copies have a sticker instead of pad printing.

The last garage band in the Galaxy and acoustic folk slaughter on one tape. 100 copies edition. Length: 40 min.

Vybro Elvis Band are the future King Kongs, once a famous St. Petersburg stadium band (played before Grazhdanskaya Oborona in 2005), the same people standing behind a zillion of lo-fi and hometaping projects. However, The King Kongs did not possess that unique mad sound represented on this tape.

Ankylym's side includes 10 acoustic live pieces, intercepted by television samples mainly on folk music themes, added by me using a double deck tape recorder. All the advantages of this technology compared to digital are definitely seen in this record: the transitions between samples and songs are smooth and unpredictable at the same time, making it impossible to separate them and resulting in some kind of a conceptual suite.

The split made a fantastic success, more than 100 copies having been sold out quite fast. It must be noted that only the blank tape itself with pad printing had been produced at the factory, while I recorded all the copies myself, for the reason that the master record was on tape itself, and it was assumed that the factory required a CD. The edition was accompanied by a lottery. As far as it is possible to recollect now (with the help of my own newsletter's archives), little pieces of paper with numbers were enclosed in the 100 tapes of the official print run. The prizes were tapes, compact discs and my private belongings. In 2 years the drawing took place, 13 happy numbers were announced, the prizes were dispatched, at least partially, to the few happy winners who had shewn up. Naturally, there were lots of fraud accusations against me. The truth is that the numbers had been most probably defined by the visitors of the Stauropygial Records site: a CGI script has been found, shewing a button to the visitor, who could generate a random number, recorded to a file, by pressing it.

Definitely one of the best releases on our label.

Side A (Vybro Elvis Band):

Side B (Ankylym):

Slavonic-style spontaneous noise improvisation with male/female vocals and members of STOP ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS and NOODLE SOUP MADE EASY. The most successful release in the whole history of our label so far: more than 120 copies have been distributed, all of them copied manually on a Panasonic boombox. One should take into account that the tape, unlike, for example, The Free Tape, was not free, and unlike Vybro Elvix Band/Ankylym split tape, did not include famous rock bands. Definitely I do have managed to distribute even larger print runs since that, but never so fast and of such obscure artists.

The inner cover data is printed in Old Church Slavonic and in the Glagolitic alphabet, which was called traditional Russian style cover artwork and might have been partially responsible for the success.

Live in Klizma squat (St.Petersburg, 28 Jan. 2004) with ANKYLYM, TEA MAN WITH TEA GUM and PEOPLE WHO CAN'T PLAY. The Finnish lineup of WHEEL OF DHARMA played at the same gig with ingenious kitchen drumset (the squat's backline was not supposed to include a real one, fortunately: an outstanding scene could spring from here. That's why before the song Perkele the bayan player is begging the Finns' pardon for allegedly using obscene words in the lyrics (what is not true). According to the chronology, this is the first ANKYLYM's concert with bayan. Looks like this lineup was not seriously even considered ANKYLYM at the time: it may be heard in the recording, that the band is introducing themselves as IKRA IZ ANKYLYMA (Caviar of Ankylym). PEOPLE WHO CAN'T PLAY is my attempt of a project corresponding to this name, that is, I should emphasize it, these people should take an instrument in their hands for the first time in their life and not just play bad as musicians usually mean by this expression. Nevertheless, the desired kind of noise had not been achieved: one can hear the participants to have instantly caught some melodies and rhythms and start mellowing them hard.

Another free release, this time with the sample tracks from the artists who have been released or distributed by Stauropygial Records. With ZLOJ POP, ANKYLYM, STOP ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS, HAKELSTORM, SPUNDT, TEA MAN WITH TEA GUM, R!D!V!, KHLEB I VOLYA, NOODLE SOUP MADE EASY, VYBRO ELVIS. This release is no longer distributed but in fact I can make you a copy or use it as a bonus with some other order. Trade is possible for other free releases or blank tapes.

This tape is free as in beer. (Needless to say though, as in freedom too, however it may be applied to all the other releases as well.) A pun exists here in Russian, where the word free means costless only in some specific occasions (not with tapes), while costless sounds generally rather humiliating or condescending, unlike English free (probably because in the Russian-speaking world the word costless is associated mainly with a stupid proverb about costless cheese existing only in a mousetrap).

More than 100 copies have been sent out for free (postage costs being also included, although not many had made use of it). Instead of a cover, stickers were attached directly to the cassette box. Some variants exist: so, my copy has Virpelis printed instead of Viršelis.

SpunDt (a project by Ankylym's singer) has not been released as promised, as well as the demo of Hakelstorm (this one I still plan to publish in the Rarities/Unreleased/B-Sides series). Bread And Freedom is a side project of Evil Pop members, changing instruments. Two improvisational albums had been recorded, but the track included here is definitely the best one. The compilation of songs about frogs has been also abandoned (now I have suddenly thought of a possibility to publish it electronically — the contacts with most of the participants are already lost, some of them, I think, do not write songs about frogs anymore, and releasing on a physical media and sending authors' copies has no much sense). At the same time, R!D!V! (another project of Ankylym's singer) has been released as a split with Alisa-Yhtye. Noodle Soup Made Easy is mostly guitar and sampler noise performed by me and Beloff, a couple of recordings having been released later, still many remain in the archives, including the demo presented here. The Noodles is the same band, but in a more noisecore version (my first experience with drums), for which I wanted to shorten the name and did it unsuccessfully, for there are countless bands with that name, so I haven't used it ever since. As for the Russian liberal song, the irony on the Russian liberalism (not such an invective at that time) has appeared to be prophetic.

The second Free Tape was planned and work on it started, but it hasn't been ever finished.