Belligerent , Behind the Album

While on Break from the U.S. I moved to the Ukraine and it went like this:

December 26th, 1997 I arrive at JFK Airport to board the one and only Ukrainian jet flying to Kiev, Air Ukraine. Wearing shorts, sneakers, and a hawaiian shirt I embark on my journey in comfort forgetting about where I was actually going and what time of year it was. At this time Air Ukraine only has one aircraft that flew from JFK to Kiev weekly. It was your standard gray colored aircraft with some blue panels and other random panels being yellow. As I look out my window I try to make sense of these colored panels thinking, OK that must be where the oil goes and that must be where the fuel goes those. Those other panels well I just don’t know. Placing my feet flat on the floor and moving them back and forth I can move the carpet on the entire side of the aircraft. But Hey, I have an ash tray on my fold down armrest, thats a plus! All 3 seats to myself, this is great! Time to make a fort since I have 9 hours on board this piece of tin. A stunning Ukrainian stewardess is kind enough to bring me a blanket, a pillow, and a beer. I think I made it to heaven or I maybe on my way soon if this aircraft doesn’t make the atlantic but for six hundred bucks round trip I can’t resist a bargain. Up, up and away!

We landed in Kiev safely at Borispol airport on a landing strip placed convienently right in between all of these old disabled blue and yellow Air Ukraine airplanes. Now I know that was not where the oil goes or where the fuel goes but that my aircraft was in fact a salvaged aircraft from days gone past. Upon landing the other 10 passengers all applauded with the great excitement something I never heard when ever flying before but I guess it was well justified considering the lunch box we just crossed the atlantic in. You just don’t get that in America!

After another 12 hour train ride I took residence in a flat in Dnepropetrovsk for 6 months. During this time I was exposed to a culture far from the propaganda enduced by all who tried to teach in the west. I was able to visit some of the lovelist places I’ve ever been like Sevastopol, Kiev, Lugansk, Nikolaev, Odessa, Sumi, and the Crimea of course.

There emerged this pattern of the same everywhere. Hard working people trying to do whatever they can to survive, while the elite keep them below the threshold of the poverty line. I have some of my best and funniest traveling stories from these days.I titled this recording “Belligerent” for the billigerence of the 1% elite and governments who created this line between us. These songs were recorded from Feburary to April 1998 with some friends I had made in Dnepropetrovsk.

We managed to scrape up whatever equipment we could get our hands on. You have to understand that at this time in the Ukraine it was a total cash society. No credit cards, Banks? well I don’t even trust them in the USA nevermind anywhere else. So you will have to bare in mind that this wasn’t your 24 track $200/hour studio. We did the best with what we had.I love the lyrics and the music and it was a good time with good friends. Sitting around drinking champagne, beer, and wine. I gained alot of studio experience using samples, playing with synths, drum machines and other studio trickery some even accidental.

I do hope you like it as much as I do. It should bring you some enjoyment over reading the lyrics even if the studio quality doesn’t meet your standard. Maybe oneday I’ll revisit some of these tracks and recreate them in Red Rum Studio.

“If GOD wanted us to fly, He would have given us Tickets!”

Credits:

Yuri Svetchnikov – Drums 
Vika Svetchnikova – Keyboards 
Boris -Vocals, Guitars, Bass

All Songs Written By: Boris

Engineered, Mixed, Mastered, and Produced by : Boris

 Red Cells are United States government terms for the National Security Co-ordination Team (NSCT). These teams or units are designed to test the effectiveness of American tactics or personnel. Red Cell members demonstrated the vulnerabilities of military bases and would regularly use false IDs, mantle fences, barricade buildings, take hostages, and kidnap high ranking personnel. Additionally, Red Cell planted bombs near Air Force One, snuck into submarine bases, and took them over. 

On March 20, 1986, Red Cell team members kidnapped Ronald D. Sheridan, a civilian security guard who worked at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in Southern California as part of an exercise to test the defenses of the base. They took him to a nearby hotel where he was held for 30 hours and tortured: stripped, kicked, beaten, and repeated dunking into a bathtub filled with water and a flushing toilet. While in theory the kidnapping could prove a weakness, actually committing the torture served no useful purpose. In addition, the kidnapping was not even successful as a show of weakness; Sheridan’s wife saw the suspicious men with a van and got the drop on them with her own pistol, and was only prevented from shooting the would-be kidnappers by her husband calling her off and insisting it was part of an exercise, as he thought at the time it would be a brief matter. Since Sheridan was not naval personnel, he sued the government afterward