Great Harmony

Oblachnyy Krai "The Great Harmony" November 1982

The third album by the band, which Sergey considered the most successful of their early records. Sergey really loved this hard rock work, with its slight elements of krautrock. In one interview, he even remarked: "Why do you parrot 'Stremya and Lyudi, Stremya and Lyudi' over and over? Yes, it's a good album, but you should find and listen to 'The Great Harmony'—now that's power!" 
Indeed, "The Great Harmony" turned out to be a very solid, interesting, and, as always, completely unique album. Vladimir Budnik (from the group Svyataya Luiza) handled the vocals here. His piercing voice, which at times seemed on the verge of breaking, fit perfectly. The lyrics—telling tales of the working class's heroic feats as they provided the country with coal, evening outings to restaurants for active recreation, and of course, the "wonderful" relationships between "deeply loving" and "respecting" people—sung in a mockingly sincere voice "full of hope and strength" over driving hard rock, sounded like an atomic bomb exploding in a desert, echoing through the corners of our vast homeland. The band was immediately put on the radar by the appropriate "serious agencies". It's a good thing they were talked out of distributing the song "Ballad of Love and Death", which Sergey's close friends referred to exclusively as "To the Death of Brezhnev". Otherwise, every member of the band would have been "done for" back then. On this same album, the musicians sent "about three hundred cheerful, cheeky portions of profanity" the way of journalist Artemy Troitsky (in the song "Warp, Critic!"), who, in the musicians' opinion, praised all sorts of pseudo-musical nonsense while ignoring truly interesting bands. They were simply too young to understand that the man just had a different taste and couldn't comprehend the work of bands playing interesting music. To be fair, Troitsky wasn't offended and later spoke quite highly of Oblachnyy Krai in his book.

1. In the Dead of Midnight Part 1
2. In the Dead of Midnight Part 2
3. Introduction
4. Into the Mine! (Miner's Song)
5. Youth (Restaurant Sadko)
6. All Good!
7. Tenderness
8. No Place for the Weak Here!
9. Serious Agency
10. Instrumental: Part 1 - Nebula; Part 2 - Homoglobular Function
11. Warp, Critic (To A. Troitsky)
12. Shaitan-Arba
13. Banquet
14. Ballad of Love and Death (bonus)

• Original 1982 layout: Sergey Bogaev
• Front cover concept: Igor Plenov
• Computer design: Sergey Supalov
• Audio restoration and mastering: Igor Plenov 2009, St. Petersburg

• Thanks to Ivan Sidorov (St. Petersburg) for providing the tapes with the first copies of the album

• Thanks to him and Sergey Supalov, who preserved the original titles and 1982 artwork, the album was able to see the light of day in 2009 in its original, uncut form