Eastern Crates

About me : I am currently 31 years old and live in Leipzig, Germany.
I work as freelance-graphician for money (printlayout, -design, visualizations and similar stuff) but mostly I am making music aswell as DJing. I was born in 1977 in the eastern part of germany, spent the first three years of my life in Kiev/Russia (though I don’t remember much except for the birch-trees on the playground where my mother went with me) and was thirteen years old when the wall came down.

About my record-collection : I am collecting vinyl for about 13 years now, mainly from the former communist european countries. I am the oldfashioned “dusty fingers”-guy, trying to get obscure or unknown records cheap from backyard-, second-hand- and library-sales. So far I bought about two records from ebay and I never spent more than five euro on any of my pieces, most of them did cost me less than two euro (although some of them are worth up to twenty times more). This also means that I don’t have the hot, well-known and therefore expensive stuff, but I do have a pretty huge collection of rather unknown music. The first part of my collection was taken directly from my parents, gladly they had great taste in music and spent some years abroad (my mother two years in poland and both my parents those three years with me in Kiev), but I also spent quite some time digging in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the UK and ofcourse all over Germany. The main reason to start collecting was my need for fresh samples to make music with, when I realized that I did have alot of music that was generally great I also started DJing with those records.

Why I am collecting these records : Because the music is different. Somehow especially the Jazz-Scene in eastern europe developed it’s very own style. I am not geek enough to really name the differences in terms of chords, instrumentation or similar, but it simply sounds different to western jazz. (But I do love western jazz too).

About this page : This page is my effort to bring all this mostly unheard-of music to the public. Fact is that most people that are not from a eastern-european country never heard of this music and this kind of music is getting extinct slowly. Some labels from back then have entirely ceased to exist (Amiga Jazz), some have been sold to other labels that are not using the back-catalogue of those Labels (Amiga, except for some Compilations and very few re-Issues the entire catalogue is unavaiable), some have been concentrating on other music (Supraphon has turned into a classics-only label). Also it’s getting harder to come by those records, alot of people threw their collections away after ‘89 and (atleast the east-german) libraries do not have their vinyl-collections anymore because they either sold them or threw them away.

Other questions :

Why can’t I download stuff ?

1. I am afraid of legal problems. I live in germany, this page is hosted in germany and I am fully liable for any problems. I don’t want to go to jail just because I love this music. Honestly.
2. I am abit protective of my collection. It took me a lot of time, effort and money to gather all those records and I just don’t feel like simply giving it away by offering download links to full vinyl rips.
3. Ripping Vinyl is hard work. Anyone who ever tried it surely knows that, it takes about 2-3 hours to do a proper rip of one vinyl-recording. I don’t regularly have that much time.
4. This page is only meant as a pointer and as a support for the original artists. Get yourself informed about the music and use the shopping links, preferably the ones leading to amazon. Buy some of the compilations or re-issues, this way the original artists make some money too. Or look out for gigs by those artists, quite a few are still touring all over europe (Uschi Brüning, Tomasz Stanko and quite some others). The gemm links are for those people that really want to own the original vinyl.
5. Actually there is stuff to download. Subscribe to the Feed or check back regularly, I have posted some rips in the past and I will in the future. But these are specials meant for the people who really care and not people who just randomly download music from the net.

Nothing happens when I click on the links !

The links lead to playlist files instead of MP3-Files. You need to have a programm installed that can stream playlists from the net, Winamp, VLC, Itunes etc. should be able to do that … If nothing works contact me and I will try to help you.

How can I support you ?

Comment the posts, drop me a nice email, link to me, use the “Social-Network”-Buttons at the bottom of the posts, just assure me that I am not wasting my time here. And on the other hand don’t expect too much from me. This page was on a very long hiatus before (partly also because my webspace was exhausted and I had to get a bigger one) and I can’t promise too much, it will be updated infrequently.
As for monetary support, use the shopping links and look for some music to buy, I get some money with each order that is made trough my page. Especially the amazon links are great, you can find some re-issues or generally great compilations containing the music you are looking for.
If you would like regular links to another Amazon-Site (France, Canada etc.) drop me a comment/mail and I will set them up.

What is Gemm.com ?

Gemm is kinda like a global backyard-sale for vinyl. The point is that you can browse shops all over the world which is sometimes the only way to get a specific record. You won’t have much luck trying to get any of this music in your average american recordshop (just an example) but with gemm you might just find that one dealer in russia that has five mint copies of the record you are looking for. Beware though, gemm is expensive. Most dealers know what they can charge for a record (and usually even charge abit more than that). But as I said, if you really, really want a specific record and got the cash, gemm.com is often the only way to get it at all.