In 1989, the Ukrainian band Vopli Vidopliassova, darlings of the Soviet punk scene, released a semi-official cassette tape called Tantsi (""Dances""). The album contained songs in both Ukrainian and Russian and was recorded in one night, at an adrenaline-fueled DIY session in Kyiv. It was intended by the band members to be nothing more than a demo tape. But soon fans started dubbing the cassette, and for connoisseurs of Soviet punk, the recording quickly gained cult status for it's nervy and often hilarious songs poking fun at life in the last years of the USSR. In 2019, the original session tape was re-discovered, and in 2023, Tantsi finally gets it's first official release. Featuring the original album fully re-mastered plus some rare bonus tracks, Tantsi is a time capsule from late Soviet Kyiv, where Ukrainian punks were rebelling against the repressive rule from the Kremlin, and imagining new horizons of possibility. Tantsi will be released on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day 2023, limited to 2,000 copies worldwide. A book for the 33 1/3 series will be publshed about the album in May 2023.
