Zoviet France
In their 17 years of musical output, :zoviet*france: have become one of the most influential bands of the (post)-Industrial movement. Despite this, though, they have remained largely anonymous, playing very few live dates and generally avoiding over-exposure. Their music has been described as "a series of infernal soundworlds that wanders between organic, non-linear, lo-fi explorations and fake ethnicity, creating a world where nothing is locatable and everything is suggestion, awaiting responsive imaginations" (Phil England, The Wire).
In their 17 years of musical output, :zoviet*france: have become one of the most influential bands of the (post)-Industrial movement. Despite this, though, they have remained largely anonymous, playing very few live dates and generally avoiding over-exposure. Their music has been described as "a series of infernal soundworlds that wanders between organic, non-linear, lo-fi explorations and fake ethnicity, creating a world where nothing is locatable and everything is suggestion, awaiting responsive imaginations" (Phil England, The Wire).
Vienna 1990
**300 copies**One long, slowly-unfolding live track, Vienna 1990, originally released as a CD-R, is a single disc-length improvisation which explores the outer limits of ominous minimalism. These recordings are taken from two performances at Szene Wien, Austria, 9 and 10 November 1990 as part of the 'Ohrenschrauben' festival
What Is Not True
**300 copies** For a band which had performed only a handful of live shows during its first decade, the bulk of Zoviet France’s ’90s releases are performance documents. What Is Not True assembles three long tracks from shows in Sheffield and Nottingham into a work of album-like cohesion. The 54-minute closer “Cyclonic Sub Alien” is a masterpiece of shifting drones that develop slowly into an ungodly cavern of noise before ending with the ghostly floating voices of a distant broadcast. Magnificen…
Further Collusion
**300 copies** Constructed from an array of samples and environmental recordings plus plenty of feedback, Zoviet France's Collusion exudes a rare beauty for an album of such varied sounds (each track was originally released on a different compilation). A wide range of stylistic choices are on display, from the chilling account of the brutal murder/suicides from Jonestown on Ram to the surprisingly sedated and subtly beautiful Something This Beautiful, the album is a pretty great find for those l…
A Flock of Rotations
**300 copies** 'A Flock of Rotations' is an aptly named album for this collection of shorter Zoviet France tracks which only has a running time of 36 minutes. It has a theme running throughout, of sorts. It may be tenuous, but for the first 20 minutes it sounds like something is trying to break out from the inside of a short-wave radio.bA shouting garbled vocal from what sounds like the top of an Iranian Minaret introduces listeners to yet another highly peculiar and strangely alluring recording…
Assault and Mirage
**300 copies** Assault and Mirage is an entirely instru(mental) and excellent Zoviet France recording from their year of glory in obscurity and a decent place for beginners who are unfamiliar with this collection of oddballs. It kicks off with 'Seige' -a tune which will remind you of that bit in the film "Close Encounters" where multitudes of far east people chant the famous five alien notes - only here it's done through what sounds like three foot wide pipes played by the God Zeus, with unearth…
Loh Land
**300 copies** Originally released as a cassette back in 1987 as a tape on Staalplaat, Loh Land is one of the few albums from Zoviet France’s early days that encapsulates many of their ideas for a fictional music rich with amorphously spiritual connotations. The aforementioned drones, dubs, and drums alongside distanced vocal chants with have been thoroughly abstracted through a series of delay effects boxes, tape loop machines, and multi-track studio tricks, to create the album’s murky atmosphe…
Gesture Signal Threat
**300 copies** Morphed, twanging strings of unknown origin strum as subdued fake ethnic chants open 'Gesture, Signal Threat'. Odd little whistling instruments are layered throughout 'Gllisten'. It's a repetitive swirling track that makes you feel you're listening to music whilst in a coma. Literally every sound is played in reverse in 'Host' - which is pretty much par for the course as far as Zoviet France go. In many ways, listening to their albums is similar to lying in a hospital bed where th…
Misfits, Loony Tunes and Squalid Criminals
**300 copies** This 1986 album was the beginning of Zoviet France’s Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophecy tetralogy and continued the collective's shift away from harsher textures and lo-fi production towards a cleaner and more restrained aesthetic. Misfits occupies something of a lull in the Zoviet France discography, as it is not nearly as strong as earlier releases like Eostre, Gris, or Norsch nor does it give much hint of how much potential such a change in direction actually held. Despite tha…
Popular soviet songs and youth music
**300 copies** Premiere, expanded vinyl edition of the 4th LP by inimitable ambient / post-industrial pioneers Zoviet France, dished up as part of a necessary reissue scheme by the ferric archivists at Vinyl-On-Demand. First released on 2 x C90 & C80 tape in 1985, Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music ran to just shy of 3 hours in length and was then the Newcastle-based band’s most substantial release to date. 34 years and following a number of 3CD reissues, this new vinyl edition is particularly…
Gris
**300 copies** From myth to reality, the long-rumoured 40 minute version of Gris manifests as part of Vinyl-On-Demand’s resoundingly appreciated Zoviet France reissue programme, recutting the original 10” tracks on one side with 20 minutes of bonus, previously unheard material on the flip. First issued on a series of three 10”s by Germany’s No Man’s Land label, the original Gris revolves four cuts ranging from mesmerising proto-echoes of Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas of Axel Willner’s The Field, thru to …
Eostre
**300 copies** 1985’s shamanic beauty Eostre is the equally acclaimed, cultish follow-up to Zoviet France’s classic Mohnomische album, and sees the inimitable Geordie unit drift in and out of entrancing texturhythms, etheric tape loops and bucolic dream sequence keys in deliciously mind-bending style. Another vital instalment to one of 2019’s most prized boxsets and reissue programmes, Eostre finds the group slightly reshuffled, with Paolo Di Paolo replacing Peter Jensen alongside the band’s sol…
Mohnomishe
**300 copies** The quintessential Zoviet France album takes pride of place in Vinyl-On-Demand’s reissue scheme, making the death trance proto-techno charge of Mohnomische available on vinyl for the first time in 35 years. Practically establishing a genre or sonic dimension unto itself, Mohnomische enacts a sort of metempsychosis between industrial and ambient spheres which arguably birthed an Ur, inimitable form of proto-techno in the process. Coveted on the 2nd hand market, the 1983/1984, 2LP p…
$oviet France / Norsch
**300 copies** The second in the Zoviet France reissue series compiles a pair of their early 12”s. Less murky and more stripped-down, rhythm driven than their debut, Garista (1982), the tracks on both $oviet France (1982) and Norsch (1983) are more easily identifiable as products of the post-punk / post-industrial era, yet they still sound as though from a parallel musical universe or overlapping timeline. We’d attribute this perceived difference to the rest of UK tape culture and post-industria…
Garista
**300 copies** Vinyl-On-Demand kick off a keenly anticipated Zoviet France reissue scheme with Garista, the sui generis Geordie unit’s 1982 debut slab of cranky, atavistic expression. Industrial-not-industrial, ambient-not-ambient, and so on, Garista gave the first glimpse of Zoviet France’s sprawling, organically freeform soundworld on a self-released tape in 1982. Like cracking open Hellraiser’s puzzlebox, all the variegated, phantasmagoric hallmarks of their sound began to emerge from their d…
Zoviet France LP bundle 1
**Limited Edition Pressings of eleven separate Zoviet France Albums circa 1982-1987 now available as standalone, in bundle. Beautiful remastered editions, 300 copies only ** :Zoviet*France: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagog…
'Châsse’ Recordings 1982-87
**Edition of 400 copies** :Zoviet*France: is an idiosyncratic group of anonymous music makers, gatherers of sound, and fabricators of unknown music. For nearly 40 years, they have explored and reported back from the liminal areas of music and composition, walking the margins where little is easily located and consensus reality melds with the hypnagogic and half-heard. Having wilfully obscured themselves in Newcastle upon Tyne since their inception in 1980, :zoviet*france: has developed a radica…
Flexible Pooling
**Strictly Limited White 7" flexi disc with bonus 18 minute track download redeemable from the label - 30 minutes total** Northumberland's Alt.vinyl serve a spectral flexidisc spin-off from :zoviet*france: and Fossil Aerosol Mining Project's 'Patina Pooling' (2014) album. Presented on the perfect, malleable format for their rusted ambient ruminations, 'Flexible Pooling' embraces the flexi disc's infidelities, using its proneness to erosion to convey an ever-changing meaning to the music …
Patina Pooling
**2x180g vinyl wrapped in weathered and laser-etched reclaimed steel sleeve. Packaged with artefacts salvaged from a burnt-out American warehouse in the '80s. Weighs a ton and looks incredible - but be warned the rust does spread. Edition of 350 copies** 'Patina Pooling' is a haunting "call and response of residue and hybrid" between Newcastle's industrial pioneers, :zoviet*france: and like-minded, Illinois, USA-based sound scavengers, Fossil Aerosol Mining Project. It marks F.A.M.P.'s fi…
7.10.12
a minimalist repress of this classic release from 2012 which sold out globally in ONE day! Review: Six months after the release of the limited edition '7.10.12' vinyl boxed set, alt.vinyl and :zoviet*france: are making the music from the album more widely available in a more conventional form. Retaining the original 7-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch vinyl formats, the three discs are pressed in standard black vinyl and packaged together in plain black sleeves.
Vota
More than a decade after :Zoviet*france: members Robin Storey (Rapoon), Mark Spybey (Dead Voices on Air) and Andrew Eardley (Delayer) left the band, the three have teamed up for a new group: Reformed Faction is a 21st century version of this important group with a unique sound that combines the old :zoviet*france: style with modern technology and a fresh wind blowing from the North of England.