Years ago I did a radio show on the local college station. I came to really appreciate Russian experimental/industrial/post-modern/surrealism music and would buy dozens and dozens of CDs from the Russian music distributer Zhelezobeton. I liked to think sometimes my radio show was the only one playing this music in the entire United States.
However I was always a bit concerned that perhaps the music I loved was promoting ideas that I would not want to promote. After all, I do not speak Russian and often had no idea what the bands lyrics were actually saying. Often the sounds were harsh. But still beautiful to me.
This spring I had an opportunity to unretire and do a fundraising show for the station and would have loved to have brought out that music for folks to hear again. But I declined because I just was not sure. Art seems so very unimportant next to the horror of war.
Today I received a catalog e-mail from that Russian distributor after what has been a very long while. I am happy to report they openly criticize their government for the Russian actions in Ukraine. I removed several links.
Text:
Dear friends,
Looking at the atrocities which our country is making in Ukraine, at the same time slipping into the triumph of narrow-mindedness and self-profanity, it was difficult for us to continue the activity, so this year’s second newsletter comes out with some delay. Many services, which we have been using for decades (PayPal, Discogs, Mailchimp, etc.), have stopped working with Russian accounts and it took us some time to fix all this, thanks to the help of our friends. At some point we managed to gather our spirit and find the strength to continue working in the musical field.
During this time our distro also managed to replenish with a considerable number of new releases from Russian labels.
Despite the significant reduction in postal exchange, we still received packages from our international partners & friends abroad.
During these uneasy times Russian Post still remains fully operational and sends packages almost worldwide, except for Austraila, Latin America and a few countries in Europe, which decided to cease postal communication with Russia (Denmark, Finland, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine). All packages are sent registered so they won’t get lost. Reservations are possible for a reasonable period.
As a bonus, we can suggest you checking out the recording of a tape set, played by DJ Kryptogen during the cassette market in St. Petersburg on February 23rd – just a few hours before the start of the infamous and inglorious Russian “special operation”:
Peace to everyone,
M.M.
The music catalog here is an enormous collection of weirdness and I imagine this label is unimportant to Putin and his thug scum. Still, I think it takes courage to speak out in today’s Russia, and I am happy to report at least one artist doing so.