Mohnomishe by Zoviet France (1983)

Robin Rimbaud – Scanner

Discovering music in the past was a very different adventure indeed. Hours could easily be lost browsing the racks in a record shop, chatting with the staff over the counter, listening to their recommendations. Frequent visits to familiar stores meant that staff could develop an idea of your tastes, and next time advise on items just in that might appeal.

This is exactly how Mohnomishe (1983) by Zoviet France entered my life. On a day off from university, my regular weekly haunt was the Rough Trade shop in Talbot Road, just off Portobello Road. On this occasion Nigel House, one of the owners, handed me over a copy of this extraordinary record. And when I say extraordinary, I absolutely mean that in every possible way.

This double LP was contained within two sheets of thick, heavy hardboard, with abstract shapes silkscreened onto the cover in mystical pyramid shapes, and bound together with a red cord. There were no credits, no distinct band name, just a text running down the side in a most enigmatic way. Was this the album title? The artist?

 

 

I hurried home and put it onto my record deck. And what a revelation. The music certainly didn’t disappoint. Darkly industrial in nature, largely instrumental, it offered up a world of sonic collage produced by intangible means. What was the source of these sounds? It felt as I’d somehow tuned into shortwave radio, between two bands, and this luminous and unsettling broadcast was just waiting there, ripe for discovery, ready for interception.

Sounds swished and pinged from speaker to speaker, as dusty tribal rhythms beat their way into the foreground, voices howled through electronic delays, as damaged and scratched ambience moved into focus. Sometimes the textures were muted as if heard through the wall of a building, creating this spooky, almost nightmarish aura.

 

 

These dense atmospheres were completely unfamiliar to my ears. They were hypnotic, repetitive, misty and strange, as if standing on a dock and hearing music playing from the deck of a sailing boat in the distant mist. Two sides of the vinyl ended in locked grooves, and given the nature of the music, it was almost impossible to discern when the stylus was caught in this eternal loop.

Subsequent releases followed the pattern established here with Mohnomishe. With Eostre (1984), the 2LP set was encased in sheets of printed tissue paper, whilst Gris (1985) arrived in a sleeve constructed from a painted section of asphalt roofing material, with an aroma to match. Most ambitiously, their Popular Soviet Songs and Youth Music (1985) emerged on cassette packaged inside a white ceramic pot, with a sticker, a flag and feathers collected from the shores of the Irish Sea, apparently the most radioactive area of seawater on Earth at the time.

 

 

Zoviet France continue to this day, still conjuring up truly arresting music out of the strangest means and I’ve remained faithful to them since this first discovery. Still faceless and refusing to play the game with the ‘music industry,’ they remain fiercely independent and inspirational.

 

Robin Rimbaud – Scanner is an artist and composer working in London. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings. His work has been presented throughout the United States, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Photographs above by Robin. https://scannerdot.com