Stirrup and People

The band's most famous album, recorded in 1985 with Bogaev-Rautkin-Lyskovsky-Guberman at Andrei Tropillo's studio. Boris Grebenshchikov lent his Squier guitar for the session; musicians from Strannye Igry contributed a signature bass and keyboards. The saxophone part was played by legendary Mikhail Chernov, "Uncle Misha," of DDT. When Evgeny Guberman was away, Bogaev himself sat behind the drums and played the most complex parts so skillfully that a professional drummer would have been left speechless. After the album already seemed finished, Oleg Rautkin unexpectedly turned up in the studio, fresh from a Siberian construction brigade, and delivered vocals with zero preparation, straight off the street. Alexander Gradsky featured the track "Kostya Perestukin" from this album on his All-Union Radio show "45 Minutes in the Sunday Studio," calling Oblachny Kray the only Russian rock band he knew of playing genuine improvisational hard rock that could, without embarrassment, stand alongside the best of world rock music. The album was included in the cult collection "100 Magnetic Albums of Soviet Rock."