the Cavestompers! by the Cavestompers

“The Place”
It was June 2008 when recording sessions for “Introducing The Cavestompers!” album finally started at “Faust Rercords”. Based in Moscow’s workers suburb Mitishi (19km from city centre on railway) the studio’s quarters occupy an old almost abandoned soviet building (late constructivism architecture), erected to satisfy cultural needs of local factory-workers in 1929.
The main idea behind the record was rather simple – to try reproduce and capture the wild and primitive energy, atmosphere and sound of the band’s live performances on magnetic tape. That kind of attitude was widespread in sixties and perfectly matched The Cavestompers!, who coincidently turned into a live band with rare studio experience. Surprisingly this strange spot turned out to be the right one. It’s plain and simple warm acoustics of a country house with wooden floors and ceilings credited to the depth of sound and even a big anonymous oil painting of Lenin and his comrades greeting armed sailors, alongside other weird details of interior inspired and helped in a way.

“The Gear and The Sound”
The instrumentals were finished in 1,5 days, then in following weeks the vocals, double-tracks, backs and some percussions, screams, shouts, weird pieces of speech, stereo-snorting sound were overdubbed. Hey, even the sound of breaking glass was recorded live in a few takes by destroying plenty of bottles and light-bulbs. Finally analog hand mixing and mastering took almost a month or so.
On all stages of recording no digital devices or signals were used at all instead a plenty of vintage analogue equipment was brought in as a substitute to create a specific 60’s sound. A lot of that gear was produced 40 years ago in Warsaw Pact countries: East Germany, USSR and Czechoslovakia, so the noise that suddenly appeared was like what an answer to sixties authentic garage music coming directly from Iron Curtain could be. Ironically, that never took place in music history, so it happens to be a retro-futurist experimental reconstruction of some kind. For example Vermona Formation organ, manufactured in DDR in sixties can be described as an analogue to Farfisa, which sound became a blueprint for garage bands. Other highlights are Vermona-Regent 30 and 60 tube amplifiers also from that time, which were used on the record for guitars, keys and compression alongside old Czechoslovakian Tesla compressor. USSR was represented by famous Oktava mics and a park of strangely sounding and weirdly shaped soviet guitars (plus some custom made spices), the ones that are responsible for noisy feedback on the record. The back plate on one of these says it was made at “Moscow Experimental Plant Of Music Instruments” and it’s called “Elgava”. Guitar effects of all kinds were used poorly (excluding, of course, fuzzboxes) and with such great tube amp gear at our disposal favor was given too direct and natural feedback, noise and amplification, which is a significant part of band’s firm sound and can be described as rather clean from modern standards. The rest of equipment was made in bourgeois-democratic countries, but didn’t break the general sound shape of the record: classic Marshall 1960b stack introduced in 1962 and later used by The Who and Small Faces, vintage Pearl drum-kit, with Ludwig snare drum from 1971, replicas of famous original 60s Remo drum-heads and Paiste 2002 and Giant Beat cymbals, old and new ones, which again were commonly used through mid-sixties to early seventies. All this celebration of fetishes was recorded on 1 inch BASF STUDIO MASTER 911(made by EMTC) tape using 24 track TASCAM multi track tape-recorder then mixed (to sound as good as in mono as in stereo) and finally mastered on 8 track TASCAM using the best tape we could find around. The ½ inch QUANTENGY GRAND MASTER 456 reel-to-reel was after all sent directly to record plant in Spain, making “Introducing..” a totally do it yourself true analog sound recording, which was an important part of idea from the very beginning in sense of bringing back the good old sound of vinyl cut from analogue sources instead of making it digital just for sake and worship of LP format. Anyway all of this would make no sense if the recorded material would be not worth to be put on matrix.

“The Songs”
The material recorded represents bands average set-list for a gig and the songs are set up on LP in the same order as if it was a concert performance, usually with two of the bands lead vocalists changing one another after each number. Moreover all of the songs were played in almost the same sequence on various gigs in preceding months – so the band crossed the door to the studio in a very good shape. The record starts with vicious misogynist anthem “Girl In Black”. It is an old song written by Ilya Sterzhanov back in the 90’s alongside “Shabby Clothes Shabby Moods” and “Limousine”, while he was playing in an important local garage act “The Crushers”. These short songs charged with teenage anger can be described as semi-covers, although rather radically rearranged by The Cavestompers! The only full-part covers on “Introducing…” are “Bil Odin Paren (C’era Un Ragazzo)” and “Do You Understand Me”. The first one being a classic anti-Vietnam war beat song. Credited to Mario Lucini it became most famous after Gianni Morandi version, later covered by many others like the Brazilian beat group “Os Incriveis” or “We-Five” from Greece. In USSR a band called Singing Guitars made their own version in 1968. It is believed that it was shown once on local TV and then rapidly banned from air. The song tells a story of American boy who came to (Italy, Brazil, Greece or USSR, depending on where it was recorded) and as well as narrator digged Beatles and Rolling Stones, singed their songs and then was immediately called back to USA to be KIA in Vietnam. It’s the only song in Russian on the record and is also a homage to various Vocal Instrumental Ensembles (VIA’s) who were the pioneers of beat music in USSR in sixties, which was not that easy. “Do You Understand Me” is a song by a great Michigan teenage garage punk band The JuJus first released in 1966 and later became famous by appearing on Back From The Grave vol.1 and other compilations. From the first time we tried to play it we fell in love with this tune and it became probably the best one out of big variety of covers we did in these two years. The Cavestompers! version gave the song some sort of second birth in Russia. It became popular among garage fans here and recently we discovered that our mates garage-punk youngsters called The Powlers are also doing Do You Understand Me taking our version for a base. Our own original material on the record can be roughly divided on 3 minute straight dance-floor garage fillers like groove-tight shake your hips Rock’n’Roll, raw proto-punk reminder Run Outside, by contrast Go Go Go On is more like a nod towards rhythm’n’blues, last but not least thematic and wild garage punk number “You’re My Girl” and three more lengthy and serious songs. “Amphetamine Girl” at first was planned to be a short beat song, but during never ending half hour jams shaped into meditative and minimalist almost psych opus based on personal experiences but at concerts sometimes dedicated to Nico. The cyclic Night and Day is totally different if features a whole variety of moods, patterns, states and speeds. In the middle of it you can hear a short interview of our guitarist which was meant to be on Russian TV, but suffered from censorship. He speaks honestly of garage attitude and our barest problems as a band always walking on thin ice. Right after comes “Promise Me” an optimistic song about love frustration with constant self-praising in the end. A little bit out of the step with the whole concept is “Louie”, even mixed in quite a different way it goes on and on with desperate declarations of love to someone called Louie accompanied by perverted dirty old man type of backing voice, which makes the whole situation very strange and obscure until finally, when the tension is too high, everything breaks into powerful coda with catchy riff, tremolo warbles and a happy ending. The curtain falls and the show is ended with “Can’t Stop The Stomp”, again pretty self-glorifying anthem made to make you believe it’s not the end – it’s the beginning. Flip the record one more time.

“The Band”
The Cavestompers! got together around September 2006. The founding fathers were Ivan “Kosmos” – a garage music geek collector, who only took his first steps in electric guitar playing and Gregory ”Greengoo” Eniosov a rather experienced drummer who was eager to play sixties garage punk. Soon they recruited Ilya Sterzhanov – a bassist, vocalist and a songwriter from a legendary local act “The Crushers”. For a brief period the band was called “Pu-Psychos” (a play on words – sounding like “baby-dolls” in russian) but then fortunately changing their name to “The Cavestompers!”, which somehow is connected with allegory of the cave from Plato’s “Republic” and NY’s famous garage label, festival and club Cavestomp!, but most of all suites really good the wild and primitive nature of our music and personalities behind it. During fall 2006 the band have seen some rapid change of other members and recorded the first demo-tape using a voice-recorder. In spite of very poor Lo-Fi quality of that session it still circulates around the web and had received some positive feedback and attention. It contained mostly dirty covers of The Sonics, The Brigands, Them, The Who and The Crickets) with only a few original songs featured. Also at that time a spontaneous stage-debut took place in now defunct cult small club Blow-Up located in old paper-factory building in Moscow industrial zone. It was a few steps from band’s rehearsal place, so one evening when there was slightly more booze thrown in, The Cavestompers! got brave, stepped into clubs doors giving themselves out for one of the bands on the list. It turned out to be some sort of heavy-metall/alternative gig and band played five songs including a infinite version of Sister Ray. Instead of throwing Cavestompers away for this barefaced act of imposture – the small crowd present liked what they heard and soon the band made their first residency at that spot, frequently doing garage-parties in Blow Up. By early 2007 brothers Pavel “Pomor” Ozhigin and Dmitriy “Evil” Iser from the band “The Zebra” (originally from Archangelsk, a city on far north of Russia) joined the band after playing at the same concert. These two turned out to be real nuggets seriously taking themselves as some kind of Northern-Mods and being first last and all the time in love with sixties music. Pavel and Dmitriy contributed much to The Cavestompers! sound and repertoire, making it less flat with unique guitar work and songwriting plus wildly tuned organ sound, lead and back vocals, sharing a lots of ideas and energy. Now becoming a steady quintet the band started storming various Moscow clubs, venues and really weird places, taking each opportunity to play, rapidly creating a solid fan-base around. In March 2007 to give impression on current states of affairs a six songs demo-tape was published on the web. Again made using voice-recorder it sounded much more interesting and contained five originals (“You’re My Girl”, “Girl In Black”, “Run Outside”, “Baby What You Need”, “Shabby Clothes, Shabby Moods” and one cover (Ju Jus “Do You Understand Me”). “You’re My Girl” taken from this recording was presented on Cavestomps! Spotlight On Teen Talent feature on their myspace profile and other songs received some warm words from “The Cynics”, “Electric Prunes”, “Gonn!”, “The Thanes”, Robert Gordon and a whole bunch of other outsiders. Next month The Cavestompers! hosted “Garage Gathering” – a big event for local garage scene. It was a first ever garage festival-concert with four bands (three from Moscow and one from Novgorod) with a real psychedelic light-show which continued in the night with a garage dance party. “Garage Gathering” was followed by series of smaller parties entitled “The Proof Of Fuzz” with guest garage bands from all over the country, various and numerous garage allnighters all organized by the same team, consisting of The Cavestompers! hardcore. The aftermath of those diy activities was important for local movement making most of garage parties and gigs a visible part of Moscow club and musical life instead of being some sort of secret meetings for narrow circle of dedicated as it was before. In may 2007 the band made its first out of town gig – playing in the “cultural capital” of Russia – St.Petersburg alongside with local surf-garage heroes and long time friends The King Kongs and youngsters from Yukon. The band came back to this area pretty soon and played two more shows in July 2007 – one at a big punk-hardcore festival held in abandoned navy fortifications facilities on sea shore near the city of Kronshtadt and another on the next day in St.Pete supporting Spanish neo-crust act ICTUS. Also that summer the material for EP was recorded. Some 28 tracks, most of which were crap and later thrown off with only six making it to the public. This was a first semi-studio experience for the band. “Do You Understand Me”, “Girl In Black”, “Isolation”(Joy Division cover), “Promise Me”, “Shabby Clothes”, “Amphetamine Girl” were later mixed at Gr.Ob records in Siberian city Omsk by garage pioneer and a legendary Russian musician Egor Letov [1964-2008 R.I.P.] and his wife and bassist for their band “Grazhdanskaya Oborona” Natalia Chumakova. Some mixed and not-mixed songs from that session were circulating around the web for some time, but it was officially made available by the band in full color around March 2008 alongside with three thematic bonus-tracks from different times and simply entitled “demo-tape + bonus”. This recording still is to be published on CD with tracks from later sessions. In September 2007 the band was first mentioned in local music press in an article about garage-rock published in “Musician” mag. This was followed by some articles in “Play” and “Time-Out” magazines plus some other printed and web mass-media and three appearances on Russian TV. Not so long ago the band gave a big interview to Italian garage fanzine Misty Lane that will be available in the upcoming issue together with an exclusive track by The Cavestompers! on the supplied CD compilation. Recently legendary UK mag Shindig! gave a decent review of The Cavestompers! Around December 2007 some songs by The Cavestompers! got airplay on radio CHRW in What Wave show in Canada and on Whole Lotta’ Shakin’ show on WITR radio-station (Rochester,NY). The last one constantly features various Cavestompers! tracks and includes them in their charts. The music of the band could also be heard on Luv Radio (Beverly Hills, California) and Russian radio Culture. In December 2007 the first attempt to record an album was made in a clandestine studio full of vintage weird equipment in a bombshell of a factory building in Moscow suburbs. Some more or less good takes of six songs were made, but by the time the vocals should be overdubbed the studio suddenly closed down because the building itself had to be wrecked. These instrumentals remain on ¼ inch tape and soon are to be completed in another place and together with six tracks from Gr.Ob records demo-tape will compose a compilation of unreleased recordings. By January 2008 Dmitriy “Evil” Iser had left The Cavestompers! after a series of argues and exhausting touring and gigging. He was replaced by a talented keyboardist Ivan “Papa Jacques” Pisarev who immediately got in the van and by the end of the month The Cavestompers! made a successful, wild and adventurous one week tour to a rather far region of Russia – Ural, spreading garage disease in the cities of Perm, Ekaterinburg and Ufa. In March 2008 the band also played a gig in ancient Russian city of Smolensk. After playing more than 40 shows The Cavestompers! finally settled affairs with a studio and recorded their debut LP and now are getting ready for a European tour in support of it, meanwhile playing some gigs in Moscow, doing new songs and experimenting with sound. Unfortunately in November 2008 Ilya “Crusher” left the band for a whole variety of complex reasons which were getting heavier for last one and a half year. This event was a heavy hit for the band, although not a surprise at all and now the band is ready to go in new direction with an injection of young blood from new members.

Garage band from Moscow (Russia) started in 2006. The Cavestompers@ released 3 records on Groovie Records, Get Hip & Chickpea Records. The band had two European tours (summer 2009, December 2011) and played a lot around Russia. They've been also a backing band for Peter Zaremba (Fleshtones) twice. First demo-tape was produced by Egor Letov.

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