condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (ring wear)

The Russian zvon is a technique in which one ringer plays a whole chord of bells at once from ropes tied to hands and feet, producing polyrhythms that Arvo Pärt would spend a career trying to reproduce on a piano. This Melodiya LP documents the bell towers of the Arkhangelsk region in the far north, recorded at the very end of the Soviet period, when the churches were being handed back and the ringers, some of whom had learned in secret, could finally be recorded.

As pure sound it is the wildest of the bell records in this sale: bells treated as a percussion orchestra, tuned by accident, recorded close. Soviet pressing, late Melodiya.