People already mentioned Kino and Tsoi,
also I tried starting a similar thread almost four years ago, but anyway here's another one of my rants no one ever gives a shit about.
This is Kino's song from 1989. Doing a scan of it with MAAT DROffline MkII says it's DR10, so it has good dynamic range. It has high fidelity, Tsoi's voice is clean, straight from the microphone with no post-processing.
I also have a rip of an original reel-to-reel copy of the album Gruppa Krovi from 1988 obtained from RuTracker. That has DR11 and the sound is just as clean.
Have you noticed that absolutely every post-punk band that came after Tsoi's death tries to emulate a sound that never existed? Chernikovskaya Hata adds heavy reverb to the vocals on every track and Molchat Doma does that, and has a very low fidelity sound. Yegor Letov isn't an excuse, he used the shit audio quality as a stylistic choice and also wasn't really a post-punk artist. Kino's recordings from Gruppa Krovi all the way up to the untitled black album had a clean sound and the reverb was used as a stylistic choice on only a few select tracks.
This is what I like to call making the music sound like you remember it and not how it was. Another good example of this phenomenon is synthwave and musicians like Kavinsky:
This music doesn't sound like the 80's, it's an exaggeration based on one's memories of it. Heavy synths that are too clean and too modern for your brain to associate with the 80's.
Two examples I can bring up here that made music the way it sounded and not how people remember it is David Hasselhoff's "True Survivor" made for Kung Fury where clearly there was care taken for the authenticity of the sound:
And for a slightly different style of music from the 80's, Systems In Blue's "Children of the Night" in the Itamar Moraz's Pure 80's Mix version. For me, it's the most faithful recreation of how this music was like back in the day. Then again, Systems in Blue is the brainchild of producers behind Modern Talking, so it's a given.
This is what I'd like to hear from post-Soviet post-punk bands. To me, it feels like bands like Molchat Doma base their sound on how they remember listening to bands like Kino. Not from a high quality first-hand reel-to-reel album, but from some piss poor compact cassette rip, all done on typical Soviet quality hardware that significantly degraded the sound quality. So I'd really like to see them make music like it used to be made, not how they remember it.
By the way, did you know that the remaining members of Kino are still seldom active? They do live show gigs and on December 22nd 2022 they've released an album that consists of remakes of their previous tracks:
And also the last song from Tsoi released in 2012, that initially survived as a low quality vocal demo recording. They've since cleaned it up as much as they could with modern technology and this is the end result:
This is the type of sound I'd like to see from modern bands. It stays true to it's roots but it still sounds fresh, and most importantly, clean. It always aimed to be clean, which was evident when Kino overcame technical limitations starting with the album Gruppa Krovi.
Anyway, enough of that, let's share some music now.
Siekiera - Nowa Aleksandria
Siekiera only ever made this one album in this style. Initially it was a completely different band, all the initial members left, then the new members created this album and disbanded not long after.
Kryzys - 79-81
Another short-lived band. This here is a compilation album of their works from their titular activity period between 1979-1981.
Now let's move onto some more influential bands that made more than just one album, so I strongly encourage exploring their discography outside the examples given.
Republika / Obywatel G.C. / Grzegorz Ciechowski
One of the most influential bands of the period, with the frontman Grzegorz Ciechowski picking up a short solo career during his split from Republika under the pseudonym Obywatel G.C.
Grzegorz died on December 22nd 2001 from a heart attack, but his legacy and impact on Polish culture lives to this day.
Lady Pank
Back in the day they were as big as Republika, leading to clashes between fans of the bands. Their first self-titled album was their best work, and as time went on they've strayed away from this sound. One track that was never released on an album that I believe is their best work is Sztuka Latania.
Kult / Kazik Na Żywo / Kazik Staszewski
You know, at this point I'm starting to move more and more away from strictly post-punk and more into wider Polish rock music. Some of Kult's first albums were more strictly post-punk/new wave, but as time went on, of course, their style has changed. I don't know many bands that didn't go that way, or bands that try to emulate that sound, but with Kult, even though their music changed, it was, and is still very solid. Kazik is also a prominent artist, known for his open critiques of many issues of the Polish society, and his strong stance against accepting any awards for his work. He's also done solo work, and collaborated with other artists, though the more he strayed away from Kult and Kazik na Żywo, the more absurd and light hearted he got.
I could keep going, but I've already strayed away from post-punk/new wave enough and I don't know what else I could recommend in this vein.
