Antrop

Around the late 1980s and early 1990s, Antrop became an official label, and Tropillo, taking advantage of the imperfection of the then legislation with regard to copyright protection, released classic albums of Western rock bands ( The Beatles , Led Zeppelin and many others). On the plates themselves, the note “broadcast recording” (from the radio) was posted, which, according to the law of that time, eliminated the observance of copyright in commercial use ^[2] . On the Beatles records, for example, it was generally indicated that the record was “taken from the collection of Nikolai Vasin ” (the famous Beatleman).

All kinds of liberties were allowed in the design, covers were often distorted - the names were written in Cyrillic or even translated into Russian, sometimes even photos of people were replaced or substituted. For example, on the cover of the record “ Ice Zeppelin IV ” Dmitry Shagin (“ Mitki ”) is depicted ^[3] , and on the cover of the Beatle Sergeant Pepper in the back rows appeared the faces of Tropillo and Beatleman Kolya Vasin ^[4] , on the cover of Abbey Road barefoot Lennon was depicted instead of McCartney ^[5] . Sometimes two independent albums were released by doubles ( Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with Revolver The Beatles ^[6] , Led Zeppelin II with Led Zeppelin III Led Zeppelin ^[7] ). The fifth album of Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy was named, by analogy with the four “number” previous ones, “Ice Zeppelin V (House of Saints)” ^[8] . The Three Imaginary Boys album of the British band The Cure has also undergone major changes. The name of the group was translated as “Eccentric”, and the name of the album as “Three unreal boys” ^[9] .

In 1993-1994, Tropillo used the name Santa Records ^[10] .

In 2011 , an attempt was made to evict a production center based on the territory of the Leningrad gramophone record plant ^[11] . In support of the Andrei Tropillo Center, the Antrop Help! Action was held at the Kurekhin Center for Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg, in which Boris Grebenshchikov , Andrei Makarevich , Oleg Garkusha , Padla Bear Outfit and other musicians took part ^[11] .

Antrop Records released by Melody

In 1987-1988, at the company “Melody”, Andrey Tropillo released on his records several magnetic albums recorded by him in the studio of the Palace of Youth, as well as several minions with or without material from these albums.

On the envelopes of the records it was indicated: “Sound engineer A. Tropillo, recording of the studio of the Leningrad City Rock Club ”, and the AntTrop logo appeared on the front side of most covers next to the Melody logo - this is obviously the first appearance of the Antrop label on vinyl records.

These were one of the first Leningrad rock albums released on vinyl and thus made available to a much wider audience than before, when rock albums were replicated almost exclusively by copying from tape to tape. The significance of this peculiar mini-anthology of Leningrad rock of the mid-1980s is comparable to the meaning of the series “ Popular Music Archive ”, which for the first time presented on Soviet vinyl a high-quality selection of foreign rock music of the 1960s and 1970s.

Albums

Tropillo’s studio recordings were also released on several other Melody albums, for example, on the collection Leningrad Rock Club ^[13] and on the so-called White Album of Aquarium, which is a compilation of Silver Day and December Children albums.

Minions

AnTrop and Santa Records

In 1991, Tropillo began releasing records under the AnTrop label itself, most of which were reprinted in an unlicensed fashion as a classic of English and, to a lesser extent, American rock of 1960-1970. This was the first time that a Russian music lover could put together a collection of classic rock albums on “vinyl” by simply coming and buying it at a store (and not at the black market), and at affordable prices ^[14] .

The full name of the label was called "The Producer Center for Rock and Roll Parishes of the Unified Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia " and was written in this form on the back of the envelopes. Most likely, the name is due to the fact that the Leningrad recording studio is located in the building of the Lutheran church on Vasilyevsky Island . Antrop used the technical capabilities of the enterprises included in the Melody concern, as there were no other enterprises in the production cycle of records in the country. On most records on the inner ring, next to the “apple,” you can see the WASH catalog number (a code in a format like C90 XXXXX XX). On the “apples” themselves, the WASH code was originally written on the right, the AntTrop catalog number on the left (eg ^[15] ). Sometimes you can see the inscription Riga ^[15] , which, obviously, says that the print run (possibly repeated, judging by the year) was printed at the Riga factory of gramophone records.

• Website of Antrop Studio
• Catalog of vinyl records of the company "Antrop"
• Detailed catalog of AntTrop records