Of all the odd school packaging of cassettes that appeared in the magic era that was the 80s, this double cassette by Zoviet France is one of my favourites. Not only do the cassettes contain some amazing music, the packaging is way beyond belief. And, in those days of DIY-yore, the sky for packaging was the limit - as long as you and your friends had enough free time (read: if you were unemployed) to create and assemble the often stunning product packaging concepts. And Zoviet France was a big player in that field. In 1980 Ben Ponton and Mark Warren had joined forces to create unconventional music as well as unconventional product packaging using material such as aluminium foil, hessian fabric, tar and other intriguing substances to pack up their releases. None however, turned out more spectacular or labour-intense than their 1985 double cassette Popular Soviet Songs And Youth Music. Rumour has it that only 200 copies were assembled, which makes sense – just imagine the amount of work involved in packing a hand-painted stick, a piece of rope, a parody on the American flag (featuring hammer and sickle instead of stars and stripes) silk screened on muslin, several hand-printed paper art inserts plus a radio-active feather collected from the beach at Seascale – near the Sellafield nuclear reactor – into a specially sculpted ceramic box and sealing the whole thing off with wax. Even multi-lingual user instructions were included, urging buyers to ‘discard burned cassettes and retain box’. The cassettes themselves feature over two and a half hours of non-compromising music. Less user- and listener-friendly than many of Zoviet France’s ambient releases, Popular Soviet Songs And Youth Music is an alienated grittier, and admittedly at times patchy affair. Zoviet France clearly refused to make any compromises, with as much exuberance in the music as in the packaging. Popular Songs and Soviet Music is a confrontational but fascinating statement – this is us and this is what we feel to be important to us it almost screams. And I agree; of all the Zoviet France releases that I used to have, this one is the only one left in my collection. Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music is an important artistic statement that somehow has transcended time and place. As such, it almost seems inevitable that copies with all content complete and correct are near-impossible to locate.

Never had a good experiance with zoviet france expectation wise.I had a bad feeling about this release,and the price..as I've read...I was right to avoid it. How do acts like this thrive?

I agree

You were not right to avoid it. You made a mistake.

I used to have an official A4 press release/announcement/flyer that was issued by Red Rhino before "Popular Soviet Songs And Youth Music" was released. The flyer stated that the album was to be released in an edition of 200 copies. I've never seen any mention of just how limited this release was anywhere else except this flyer.Sadly, I don't have the flyer any more, otherwise I'd scan and upload it. Maybe someone else still has a copy?