Victims is a double cassette+zine released by Tabula Rasa in 1995 with the help and support of Contaminated Productions.
The project was about the war in the ex-Yugoslavia happened in the early 90s.
The zine included some letters from Yugoslavians friends of Contaminated Prods telling their experiences during the war and few interesting articles about the reality of that war.
The music is by Extreme Smoke 57 on one tape and the other tape is a compilation of Yugoslavian bands playing mostly grind core.
The package was very well done-the two tapes glued on a piece of wood and then all attached to the fanzine-All was coming in a fabric folder sprayed with a stencil.(pics here)
All the articles and letters are in Italian,however in this folder I did included all the English translations,provided by my friend Babs,thanx a lot Babs.
As introduction to this very special tape production I think it is just easy and better to let you read what Contaminated Productions boss wrote to introduce this project at the time.
I guess Carlo of Tabula Rasa didn`t print many of these tapes and I know this is pretty rare now days.
Enjoy it and good reading too.
ps-these tapes are not indexed.
~f~a~r~a~w~a~y~
click me
Victims
– A problem solved
Tabula
rasa
Creating
Producing
Distributing
… It
doesn’t seem easy to write the presentation of this double-tape
because of all the things that have happened in these years, so I’ll
try to go in order and explain the reasons of this revival occurred
four years later.
In
September 1991 I received these two tapes from MILAN DURIC (from
Smeredevo) along with thirty numbered covers so that I could help him
spread the work made by his friend, the then singer (or guitarist)
with EXTREME SMOKE 57, in Italy.
At
the time I was regularly in touch with Milan as we used to exchange
tapes and ideas. Then with his last letter (which came along with the
two tapes and is published here), Milan warned me of the coming of
the conflict and asked me not to forgive him should he die in that
absurd war.
During
the same period (1990-91) I established a strong and extensive
correspondence with SASA MILUTINOVIC (from Sarajevo), and I still
manage to exchange letters and messages with him thanks to
some
Catholic humanitarian associations, which are currently providing for
postal services in those areas of ex-Yugoslavia.
I
wonder whether the two boys have ever met. However we decided to
publish their letters for this reason: on the one hand Milan’s last
letter which was never followed by any other (perhaps Milan died in
the war, perhaps – as we hope – he managed to escape), on the
other hand the many letters sent by Sasa, which depict the tragedy of
the war, its fears and the horror which is going on a few kilometres
away from us.
Their
letters are a direct, simple and effective documentation of the war
in Yugoslavia.
Two
boys who
before
the war were interested in self-production, distribution, punk music
… who are they now? What have they become?
We
can have a hint from Sasa’s last letters but we don’t intend to
play the sociologists or psychoanalysts. What we feel the urge to do
now is to make known the work of these two boys who had so much in
common with us.
Coming
back to the music, when I received these two tapes I was a little bit
puzzled. Indeed, some of the titles on the cover of Extreme Smoke 57
didn’t appeal much to me (see ‘Rape Your Sister or ‘Cicciolina’).
The recording was not that good either. For these reasons, added to a
series of coincidences occurred at that time in my life, I didn’t
take care of spreading these tapes.
Today,
in the light of the mistakes made in these years, I decided to pass
this material on to Carlo of TABULA RASA!, and help him prepare this
production, especially to get the chance to talk about my Yugoslavian
friends and of this sad war.
If
you bought this production only to listen to the bands you might be
disappointed, but in this world there are many other things besides
music… a word to the wise…
RAFFAELE
of CONTAMINATED PRODUCTIONS
The booklets reports leaflets(with English translations) of different actions and repression happened in the small southern Italian town+ lots of other cases of police repression.The photocopies of my copy are not the best and I tried to make the best out of it while scanning those pages.
