[Delayed] Гражданская Оборона "Так закалялась сталь" LP

DUE TO THE WAR IN UKRAINE IT IS UNCLEAR IF/WHEN THESE LPs WILL ARRIVE. THEY'VE BEEN PROCESSED THROUGH A MOSCOW FACILITY AS OF FEB. 28th...

A new cycle of three albums (“Everything goes according to plan”, “So the steel was tempered” and “Combat stimulus”) was born after my forced six-month wandering around the country due to the newly begun political repressions from the authorities. This happened after our joint scandalous performance with the Lishchenko brothers (Adolf Hitler group) at the Novosibirsk Rock Festival in the spring of 1987. Almost all the songs in this cycle were written during trips along the highway in the company of the Yankees. On the eve of the new year, 1988, I secretly returned to Omsk for a short time (for a couple of weeks). As a result, the material was played and recorded by me single-handedly in extremely short, fabulously extraordinary terms - literally in three separate days from January 12 to January 22 (drums were recorded during one day, bass and rhythm guitar were recorded on the other, plus a separate day and a half - voice and solo at the same time).

This rush somewhat explains the overall poor sound quality. Moreover, I was sorely lacking a free tape and funds to buy it. Literally everything superfluous was immediately erased and rewritten again. But the record received certain advantages from the side of "liveness" and "spontaneity".

The work used a home-made reproducing unit ("reader"), slightly raising the bottoms, recording the Olymp-003 tape recorder, Soviet narrowly focused microphones (long ones), the Orpheus bass and the Eterna electric guitar. The drums are the same ones that were used before.

“In every house” is the only song composed by me together with Yanka. Initially, she was supposed to sing in the chorus with me, but due to the scandal that erupted the day before, this project went into oblivion.

The tracks "Summer Has Passed" and "Amnesia" are experimental takes of previously recorded songs using a track with accelerated drums.

Egor Letov, April 10, 2007