condition (record/cover): EX+ / EX-

East Germany's official inventory of its own church bells, recorded with state-broadcast seriousness in a state that officially had no use for churches: Erfurt, Magdeburg, Dresden, Naumburg ringing out over a socialist republic, catalogued by Eterna, the classical arm of the state label. The tension is the point. These are some of the oldest bells in Europe, medieval bronze, and the DDR treated them as heritage objects while treating the institutions that rang them as suspect.

The recording is excellent, close enough to hear the clapper and far enough to hear the town. Eterna pressing, East German.