Balalaika virtuosos, excellent instruments and professional sound engineering work.
Melodia
Glenn Gould – six partitas, 1963 LP mono
The 1976 reissue, made by Russian Melodia, is surprisingly decent. The original tracks are not recorded evenly, the sound of fourth and sixth partitas in my opinion do not reach the good rate but in the first numbers there was enough beautiful moments. Gould plays divinely, the unattainable ideal of a classical pianist. The first and third partitas are the best in quality.
Frida Boccara, 1967 LP Rip
There are two records D-18475-7′ and D-20579-10′ combined together. Both recorded in 1966 in a good studio, Frida sings accompanied by the instrumental ensemble of V. Rubashevskiy. The variation in the quality of the recordings is striking, as if someone was experimenting with the equipment. Judging by the sound of the vocals on the D-20579, Frida sang in front of some cheap Soviet dynamic microphone, the voice is quite clamped. On the ff where Frida sings at some distance, the sound is clamped even more. The apotheosis of such a record is “Nejnost” where Frida sings with feeling and the orchestra sounds great! “A Man and a Woman” was good played, but the quality, as if on purpose, is the worst of all.
Colette Renard – Raymond Legrand, 1967 LP Rip
Recordings by Colette Renard and the Raymond Legrand pop Orchestra from a tour in the USSR. It seems like these tours were in 1961, for these old years, the record sounds somewhat cold. Although when compared to Frida Baccara (1966), everything falls into place, Renard sounds clearer.
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Cartoon Songs, 1970s LP Rip
Leonov is a great talent, brilliantly sang Winnie-the-Pooh. The children’s choir is made up of two tracks — the first and second verses are recorded worse than the third, in the third verse the children are very expressive. Chunga-Changa is good without question, Aida is beautiful.
17 Moments of Spring – LP mono Rip
Flexible record. It's recorded a bit muffled, but musically well. The execution is charismatic, there are no words.
Caucasian Prisoner (Kavkazskaya plennitsa), 1969 LP Rip
The 7' D-19738 record. And again there is an interesting effect – in the voice of Aida Vedishcheva you can hear live, human intonations, which in the common recording was not audible.
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Diamond Hand (Brilyantovaia ruka), 1969 LP Rip
A flexible record of the late 1960s, the voices of the artists are recorded very expressively. Nikulin, it turns out, in each line of “A nam vse ravno” improvises and changes the pronunciation of phrases, then exaggerates, then jokes, then deliberately accentuates the fragment, this is most clearly heard when listening directly from the record and is not heard at all in the common digitization. Mironov sings much simpler, the loss of clarity on his vocals does not affect so much, but listening to him in Lo-Fi is still more interesting.
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Samotsveti, 1973 LP Rip
Energophone-II Full Range take
Remastered from flexible records, Russian pop-rock of early 1970s, classical audiophile sound of germanium transistors equipment. Record shows competent work of musicians and sound engineers — dense bass, correct compression, full-fledged voices, a bit dirty, but clear highs. Today, such level of pop music sound is completely unattainable.
The records are bent in some places so that incorrigible creases remain on the surface. When playing in these places, loud bass “plops” and floats are heard.
The expressiveness of the Energophone-II sound is most clearly visible on the female vocals of “Добрые приметы”.