Look at both (album)

The departure in the spring of 1984 of Alexander Davydov , as one of the founders (the keyboard player of the Kulikovskys also left with him), could not but affect the overall sound of the group. Lyric numbers disappear from the repertoire (“Bad Reputation”, “We Must See”, “The Sun Slides Differently”), reggae (“Lost Love”). Music is becoming more intellectual, verified ^[1] . At the second (1984) and third (1985) festivals of the Leningrad Rock Club, the group largely focuses on the stage show (the song “There is no telephone” sung and “played” by Rakhov ). Processing of classical themes (“Shostakovich”, “Waltz Serebryany”, “Baron von der Pschik”) and the first lyrical experiments of Gusev (“Anxiety”, “Aha”) appear ^[2] . The group, having replenished their composition with the trombonist Nikolai Olshevsky, in 1985 recorded in the studio of Andrey Tropillo his second, which became the last, album.

The track list was made up of some of the songs that were still played under Davydov: “Memory of the Past”, “Pipeline ...” (the original name was “The Death of the Gadyukin Spy”), “Immersion”, “Song yes” (sang at concerts by Davydov himself ^{[ 3]} ), capitalized. As texts, basically, verses of the 20th century European poets are still traditionally used for the collective. The main vocalists are the Sologub brothers.

The record was originally released as a magnetic album in early 1986, when the band no longer existed. In the same year, part of the songs appeared on the collection “ Red Wave ” published in the USA with the help of Joanna Stingray (with whom the Sologub brothers made friends).

She someone slipped our cassette - and she liked it. She chose to her taste and wanted to publish. I don’t remember who — it seems, Kurekhin — advised me to give her a master.

- Victor Sologub ^[4]

In 1988, with the assistance of Tropillo, it was published on Melodies ^{[5] [6]} . The cover was painted by the artist Nikolai Beltyukov, who was also involved in the design of other records and minions of the Tropillo series (for example, The Night of the Kino group).

The idea of ​​the cover — with the border guard reflected in the dog’s eyes — belongs to me. More precisely, it was a wolf, but I introduced it to a dog that looks at its master.

- Victor Sologub ^[4]

According to the memoirs of Tropillo ^[7] , the “ frontier guard ” reflected in the dog’s eyes was finished by another artist, Nikolai Kibalchich, who later helped him with the design of envelopes for reprints of foreign rock classics.

In 1989, a vinyl edition was released on the little-known Yugoslav-British label “Points East” under the name “Strange Games: (Leningrad)” and with a different cover ^[8] , as well as the erroneous designation of Davydov and Kulikovsky as participants in the recording ^[9] .

The first (doubled with the album "Metamorphoses") reissue on CD was released on the label "Bomb-Peter" in 2009 . In 2014, a separate version with a new cover appeared on the same label and the 2009 re-release repeated in vinyl. Reprinting was done by Alexey Weiner.

Music and arrangements for all songs - Strange games , except (10) - using fragments of the music of the song “ Felicità ” (authors - Cristiano Minellono, Dario Farina, Gino De Stefani)

• Victor Sologub - bass , vocals
• Grigory Sologub - guitar , vocals
• Alexey Rakhov - saxophone , vocals
• Nikolai Gusev - keyboards , vocals
• Nikolai Olshevsky - trombone
• Alexander Kondrashkin - drums
• Andrey Tropillo - sound engineer , vocals (5, 6)