100 Tape Albums of Soviet Rock // Chapter 3: The Great Combinator (Pt. 4)

Part 4 of our translation of Chapter 3 from Alexandr Kushnir’s book 100 Tapes of Soviet Rock (100 Магнитоальбомов Советского Рока). Archives can be found here.

Thanks to everyone supportive of this venture.

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Far more succesfull (both financially and artistically) was the release of concert album “Little Prince”. Upon hearing the new programme that featured Shakespeare’s poems, fragments of Saint-Exupéry prose and quotes by Chinese philosophers Tropillo figured out that this should be recorded right away. At that point a bright thought came upon his shaggy-haired head, one about associates working at the audio archive of Pushkin House whose technical arsenal back then included multiple Nagra magnetophones.

“The left channel placed all the voices, right one – instruments” – recalls Andrei. “Further editing on my part involved mixing those channels and compensating phase distortion in order to get the stereophonic picture”.

The costs of technical realization of the recording came down to about 50 rubles. Income from Mashina Vremeni concert – about 2000. Following the unwritten laws of the market economics of times those funds were immediately put into production. Andrei purchased a set of microphones from Israel bound sound engineer along with eventually famous self-made console.

The console was definitely unique. Packed into wooden frame it was made of parts created at the defensive plants of the nation and resembled a hybrid of vacuum cleaner and ground-to-air missile.

“The “meat” inside the console was top-notch” – recalls Tropillo. “This was not your Elektronika!””The sound running through it was really nice and opaque.”

tbc