Red Disco. Unlike official decorous Soviet dance bands of Perestroika which were heavily influenced by the Western 'party' disco and festive synthpop, their undeground peers, developing alongside, took quite an opposite course, first of all, in means of lyrics. The peak of this 'street' or 'red disco' movement came by the late 80s when the Soviet society declined in its lowest morale and the haunting depression of the inevitable end of the state was oppressive enough to bring certain reaction. And it did bring. It was a time when the so-called 'technical school' disco grew so shamless as to bubble with all the colors of the rainbow atop of the Soviet electronicdisco scene. It was a response of the college-dropouts and young, yet upset with life underdogs to saccharine and studio-polished sound of the mainstream Soviet disco. It was the negation of torch-songs so hugely popular nationwide; the ugly, simplistic, pessimistic lyrics, whacky, stultifying beats and lo-fi, poor vocals sung to the accompaniment of analogous synths went for a counterbalance to the Soviet TV and radio format. The youth of the era embraced eagerly this nascent subgenre to dub it street disco and trash. This music had no chance of being marketed and with the USSR's dissolution in 1991 it sank into oblivion, as in the 'new' Russia everything had gone commercial and show business called for cute teen pop boy- and girlbands only. Therefore, the recordings of such acts of red disco as Barbie, Angelika, Malvina, Constance, Rodnik, to name a few, have never been reissued or played on the radio and bearing in mind a strong tendency towards romanticizing of Perestroika in modern days, these records are most likely to be lost forever. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.