Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music is the sixth album by the British

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

music group :zoviet*france:, who, when it was recorded, identified themselves as :zoviet-france:. Recorded in 1984 and 1985, it was first released in 1985 by the band's label Singing Ringing in collaboration with

Red Rhino Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondary ...

in double

cassette Cassette may refer to: Technology * Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback ** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in th ...

format. The packaging was elaborate and very labour-intensive to create; the cassettes sat inside a sculpted, clear-glazed ceramic box with a short length of twine with a hand-painted stick on the end sticking out of the bottom. A seabird feather gathered from the beach at

Seascale Seascale is a village and civil parish on the Irish Sea coast of Cumbria, England, historically within Cumberland. The parish had a population of 1,747 in 2001, barely increasing by 0.4 % in 2011. History The place-name indicates that it was i ...

(one mile from the

Sellafield Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nucle ...

nuclear waste processing facility) was stuck through a hole in each side of the box, held in place with sealing wax, which held the cassettes in. The inserts included a parody of the American flag (with mini-

hammer and sickle The hammer and sickle (Unicode: "☭") zh, s=锤子和镰刀, p=Chuízi hé liándāo or zh, s=镰刀锤子, p=Liándāo chuízi, labels=no is a symbol meant to represent proletarian solidarity, a union between agricultural and industri ...

s in place of the stars) silk-screened on

muslin Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was first manufactured. Muslin of uncommonly delicate handsp ...

, a piece of paper with art silk-screened on it, and a professionally printed sheet of paper with the track list and various sets of instructions for use of the package in English, Spanish and French, with most of them obviously being jokes ("Remove feather by melting wax seal. Discard burnt cassettes. Retain box.").

Staalplaat Staalplaat is an independent record label that is located in Amsterdam with a separate store in Berlin. Founded in 1982, the company's mission was to create a sound forum for sound artists, who write and perform new and experimental music. Staalpl ...

re-released it in triple CD format in

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

, with other editions in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

and

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

. These were packaged between two round felt pieces cut from black market

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

caps, and held together with a Soviet military pin. The design on the front cover piece is by E. Van Weelden. The first edition was problematic; the intent was to sandwich the music CDs between CDs with tones on the play side and felt glued on the label side, but many copies wound up with the music CDs having the felt glued on them. The second and third editions don't have the tone CDs or the glued-on felt. Another version of the song "Ram" was released, with an unadorned preacher's voice (discussing his experiences speaking with

Jim Jones James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American preacher, political activist and mass murderer. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. In what he called "revolutionary suicide", ...

' attorney) taped off the radio beginning the track, which

segue A segue (; ) is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next. The term is derived from Italian ''segue'', which literally means "follows". In music In music, ''segue'' is a direction to the performer. It means ''continue (the next ...

s into the original song. This version was originally on the now out-of-print

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

''Ritual: Land's End'' compilation cassette on

Touch In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is ...

, and is now available on the :zoviet*france: CD ''Collusion''.

Track listing

Below is the CD track list. The original cassettes were laid out like this:
Side 1: CD 1
Side 2: CD 2-1 to CD 2-11
Side 3: CD 2-12 to CD 3-2
Side 4: CD 3-3 to CD 3-9
Other differences in the cassette version:
Stains and Filth in the Convent AOUEI was entitled Stains and Filth in the Convent.
"Charm Aliso" was entitled "Chirm Aliso."

CD 1

# Tier of Veils (4:55) # Ram (2:49) # Stains and Filth in the Convent AOUEI ''(tracks 3 to 7)'' - Duir (1:52) # Zonë (2:41) # Straif (La Mère Du Bois) Z Estrif (3:59) # White Track (Fire Frost) (4:57) # Veil (8:12) # Pesach (1:49) # Decoy (6:36) # Yezidi (5:03)

CD 2

# добрый день ''("good day" or "good afternoon")'' (4:39) # Yezidi Circle Trap ''(tracks 2 to 7)'' - Signal (0:14) # Sidi (3:36) # Birch Brake (2:21) # Sein (3:46) # Spin (Hellisein) (3:20) # Tan-Tal (9:37) # Ma-Ja (6:20) # Whip (2:33) # Veil (1:12) # Fearn (5:45) # Burning Bush (9:03) # Beak and Snout ''(tracks 13 to CD 3 track 2)'' - Sidhe (Riuben) (3:36) # Marsh (2:44) # Swine (1:09) # Marsh (1:32) # Signal (Circe) (1:23) # Migration (6:44)

CD 3

# Burning Bush (4:39) # Sheol (9:25) # Veil (Sloe Semen) (6:02) # Signal (1:39) # Charm ''(tracks 5 to 8)'' - Chirm Ela (8:05) # Chirm Geis (7:07) # Charm Aliso (4:52) # Shewel (5:52) # Yezidi (Say) (5:55)

External links

''discogs.com'', a community-built database of music information''Jim's Music Pages: :zoviet*france'', a fan site with discography and cover art''pretentious.net'', a fan site with discography and information
{{Authority control 1985 albums Zoviet France albums