1990 – The Petersburg Squats – Fontanka and Svechnoy

Denis Oding:
«My romance with club life began in 1990, in the squat on Svechnoy. We had an apartment there, three hundred square meters, acquired by the method of self-seizure. Back then there was nothing unusual about it. Petersburg artists quite often found studios for themselves this way – they'd simply wander around the city, peer into windows and calmly occupy empty premises. My friend Oleg Nazarov, also an artist, and I did exactly the same.
By and large, this whole building existed on borrowed rights. There were, of course, "official" residents too, but more than half of the apartments there had been arbitrarily seized.
We did, however, try to give our squat at least the appearance of a legal existence. At the same time, no one observed any laws back then, and all our moves in that regard were a fiction. But we stubbornly did the rounds of the executive committees, collecting various papers. During one of these outings we met a businessman who for some reason took a great liking to us, and decided to help. Andrei Haas's book says he was practically a porn king, but that, of course, isn't true. This gentleman simply wanted to be part of contemporary art. He had a great yearning for the beautiful. At the same time he traded in paints and varnishes, was a well-off man and very ambitious. He essentially took us on and helped solve our problems with the city authorities. In the end he supposedly rented this apartment and fictitiously subleased it to us. Though I never saw any documents, and to this day I don't know whether that lease actually existed.
Soon the squat on Svechnoy came alive with nightlife. We began throwing parties for friends, some concerts, spinning music. It was right at this time that everyone in Petersburg started getting "hooked" on the new beat. Recordings of unusual music began appearing in the city, some of which ended up with us too. I had a buddy who had set up supplies of records from the West. There were all sorts of recordings – from Technotronic to Snap. I started listening to them and gradually got drawn in. And I can't shake this addiction to this day.
Then Afrika, Novikov, Guryanov appeared on our horizon – people who could take in the new currents, the new music. The club on Fontanka came into being precisely thanks to their efforts. They were often abroad, communicated a lot with musicians and promoters, told them what was happening in Russia at the time. When the squat on Fontanka appeared, they pulled all their connections and started dragging disc jockeys onto the "dancefloor." The first, in 1991, was Yanis, an excellent Baltic DJ they arranged to bring in. Then there was the fantastic story of Westbam's guest appearance in Petersburg. He essentially became the first well-known disc jockey to come to Russia back then.
Under the influence of Guryanov and Afrika, of all this new culture, Mikha Vorontsov and Lyosha Haas got behind the turntables themselves and began organizing their own parties. At first – right on Fontanka, later – in the "Planetarium" and even in Moscow.
It's very hard for me to describe the music that played in that squat back then. At the time the very notion of "format" didn't exist. All of it was considered house music, no division by genre simply existed. Back then "the new sound" meant everything at once – American house, and British acid, and techno. We knew one thing – between this sound and rock, for example, lies a real abyss.
In general, Fontanka specialized in house parties. On our Svechnoy, eclecticism flourished – either bands played, or "tape-deck" DJs. Vinyl as such didn't exist, and very few disc jockeys used it.
We differed from Fontanka in our approach to organizing parties too. The thing is, we didn't set ourselves the goal of making money. We had an intimate, almost homely establishment where our friends gathered. Fontanka, over time, turned into a practically open club that a lot of people, often complete strangers, started coming to. So the guys began thinking about the commercial side, tried to charge for admission and make money on the bars.
We had nothing of the sort. We simply spent nothing at all on organizing our home parties. We used whatever equipment we managed to gather from friends. Guryanov, for instance, gave us speakers that lasted us about a year and a half. Bands and disc jockeys played for free. In short, the budget of such celebrations was zero. We spent nothing and, accordingly, earned nothing».