I still remember clearly the first time I encountered Vyacheslav Mescherin's orchestra. I was really into early electronic music, and while investigating the oeuvre of the great Jean-Jacques Perrey, I stumbled across the Wikipedia page for Kingsley's famous composition "Popcorn". It had a section "Cover versions" with an extremely long list of artists, many of them known figures like Jean Michel Jarre or Muse, and all the way at the bottom it said "Vyacheslav Mescherin's Orchestra". There had to be an interesting story attached! The moment I heard his cover of Popcorn, I was utterly hooked. There was something so completely and thoroughly unique about this sound that I just couldn't let go of it. It felt alien, otherworldly - and completely unlike anything coming out of the Moog and its friends.

Vyacheslav Mescherin's arrangement of Popcorn, as performed by his orchestra of electromusical instruments. This revision of a Wikipedia article led me right to it!

What began as an obsession with Mescherin became one for the strange world of Soviet electronic music in general. Whether it was research into the Soviet synthesizers like the Ekvodin, experimental projects like Teisutis Makačinas' brilliant Disko Muzika, or simply admiring the boldness of late 80s Soviet mainstream pop acts like New Collection (Новая Коллекция), it became a huge part of my life. But I could never let go of Mescherin's orchestra. I scoured every recording I could possibly find, getting every piece of wax he published on Melodiya, along with various bootlegs collected by folks across the Russian-speaking Internet that intrigued me with the vast breadth of Mescherin's work.

For years, I thought I had found everything that would ever end up available to someone like me. But a few months back, while listening again to one of my favorite Soviet electronic mixes of all time, there was a curious link to a channel called "Retro-Archive Audio", which appeared to have a vast archive of tapes from the Soviet state radio archives. Out of curiosity, I opened their website, put "Мещерин" in the search bar, and...

...hours and hours of music appeared. 188 songs, to be exact, ranging from the early 60s to 1990 (!). Every now and then, I'd catch a song already on one of the easyUSSR compilations, or perhaps from one of the bootlegs. But the vast majority of this was completely new, never heard anywhere else, and definitely never issued on anything from Melodiya. A treasure trove of recordings from the man who began my obsession with Soviet electronic music? I couldn't help but dig in. And now, after months of plowing through the archive, I am ready to bring you what is now the fourth volume in the easyUSSR series, as inspired by the incredible Oleg Nesterov that first dove into the state radio archive in the far-off year of 2001 to find these beautiful pieces of music that had been long-forgotten after the fall of the Union quickly prompted everyone to become hooked on Western sounds that had so long been difficult to acquire. Those who are familiar with Nestorov's work may wonder what I mean, since there are only two volumes of easyUSSR. Well, I can't confirm authorship, but my favorite music blogger of all time has a Volume Three on his website, and while he does not claim to have compiled it himself from other various unpublished materials, the graphic design of the cover compared to those of his other excellent mixtapes strongly suggests that he definitely made it himself. I stand on the shoulders of giants, merely trying to bring you amazing cuts from the vaults so as to inspire you to take a dive yourself, or at least become as hooked on these tracks as I have been.

In constructing this compilation, I tried to emphasize parts of Mescherin's career that were underserved by the previous three easyUSSR compilations. Mescherin continued directing all the way up through the fall of the Union and beyond, with the latest tracks I've been able to find concrete evidence of claiming to be recorded in 1995, shortly before his death. The existing collections rightfully focus on his pioneering work in the late 50s, predating the Moog by at least 6 years, and the 70s-early 80s sound. But they neglect the music that his orchestra was playing in the late 80s, incorporating a mix of Soviet and Japanese equipment, a strange hybrid that once again sounds like nothing else. They also neglect the Orchestra's occasional use of electric guitar, and focus on his calmer and even sillier tracks. This compilation strives to fill in all of these gaps, while delivering the kind of weightlessness that cosmonaut Alexei Leonov said only Mescherin's music could match. I hope that, by the end, you feel as though you're an engineer in the Soyuz project drifting off during a long design meeting, dreaming of floating on the moon.

This post assumes familiarity with the great Vyacheslav Mescherin, but if the above effusive show of delight has gotten you curious, I strongly suggest you check out Tim Key's excellent radio documentary on easyUSSR, where he similarly becomes obsessed with the otherworldly sound of Mescherin's orchestra. It seems to be a bit of a trend - many times when someone learns of this music, it becomes an obsession. I only wish that Mescherin had lived to see how much so many people around the world loved the music that he put so much joy into with his arrangements. He was part of the fabric of Soviet life, with his music going into everything from cartoons, to television (which is where we get almost all of the tracks in this compilation - they come from the archive of Norilsk television!), factories, stadiums, you name it. The interesting difference between this and the Western muzak, however, is that this does not appear to have been intentionally designed with psychological profiles in mind, instead being the extensive work of a prolific arranger who had a natural joy in the music he played. If you were born in the Union, and any of these songs spark memories you have long forgotten, please feel free to tell me, I'd love to hear more!

Liner Notes

Since I'm publishing this album myself, I get to write my own liner notes! Wahoo!

Cover Art: Eclipse
Original Concept: Oleg Nestorov
Sound source: Norilsk Television Studios (all tracks except На рассвете), and Kuybyshev (now Samara) Oblast Radio and Television Committee (На рассвете)
Digitization and mastering: Retro-Archive Project
Special Thanks: Snork Cosmodix, Tim Key, ОБОРОТЕНЬ, the dedicated Soviet music enthusiasts on rutracker, and Wikipedia editor Morefun for inserting Mescherin into the article for Popcorn on February 2, 2012.

All composers are provided in the ID3 data.
On track Подводное плавание, Mescherin is only listed as "artistic director", with conductor duties credited to Sergey Kopchenkov.
Vladimir Tupikin plays clarinet on Мелодия. No other individual performers are identified in the tape covers for any other track.
On track Я шагаю по Москве, N. Zavarzina is explicitly credited as the arranger, with Mescherin as "artistic director" and conductor.
Track Я шагаю по Москве is an arrangement of the famous song from the Soviet movie of the same name.
Despite the title, track Енисейский меридиан does not appear to be related to the documentary film of the same name.

This album is dedicated to all space researchers and workers worldwide.

Track List and Rip

When translations are not available, they are not provided.

Енисейский меридиан (The Yenisei Meridian) - composed by Aleksandr Shemryakov
Дзинтари - composed by Vladimir Petrenko
Аквалангисты (Scuba divers) - composed by Kim Kromskiy
Ночной проспект (Avenue at Night) - composed by Sergey Streletskiy
Осенняя дорога (Autumn Road) - composed by Tatyana Ostrovskaya
Пульсар (Pulsar) - composed by Vladimir Petrenko
Подводное плавание (Underwater Swimming) - composed by Sergey Kopchenkov
Знакомство (Acquaintance) - composed by Vladimir Petrenko
Мерцающие огни (Flickering Flame) - composed by Oskar Feltsman
На рассвете (At Dawn) - composed by Aleksandr Abramov
Радуга над озером (Rainbow Above a Lake) - composed by Konstantin Akimov
За окном дождь (Rain through a Window) - composed by Evgeniy Vorobyov
Мелодия (Melody) - composed by Sergey Berezin
Я шагаю по Москве (I Walk Through Moscow) - comoosed by Andrey Petrov

Get the rip HERE!