We were crowding at the Manhattan Express club entry and wondered if Art Troitzky kept his promise and included our names in the list of invitees. At last we were allowed to come in. Too loud a sounding didn't make it possible to appreciate the music of a DJ plaing at the moment. Then Artyom appeared on the stage and delivered the opening speech, complaining of the audience unwilling to dance to ambient music.

    Artyom:  Today we open BRITRONICA, A festival of new British electronic music. It's event are going to be held at the Moscow Youth Palace (MYP) and night clubs on friday, saturday and sunday. Now we are having the presintation of the festival. You just can't miss the opportunity because we'll never have a similar festival in Russia again. By the way, even in England they never had anything of the kind, to say nothing of Germany or something else. You've just listened to DJ TONY MORLEY ambient set and after a while DJs Julian liberator and Sherman and the controls and BANCO DE GAIA will be playing their ones.

    We managed to interview Artyom only the next day. We were chatting belind the curtains, SEEFEEL tuning up on the stage at the MYP.

    RM:  Atyom, what's going on in here?

    Artyom:  There's a huge mess around, because the Russian organisators can't deal with such a large - scale event which the festival I'm deeply grieved that our audience appeaed to be completely unprepared for the music being played here. At the clubs people dance only to disco and techno and psychedelic, atmospheric, more exquisite and trendy music are not success. Anyway it's absolutely new culture for us though somewhat known due to the records, but never practiced in live perfomances.

    RM:  Was the idea of the festival simply to bring progressive music to Russia?

    Artyom:  It can be formulate as a provocation. But I'm afraid even the organisators have swallowed this bait. The people didn't allow to provoke themselves in full measure.

    RM:  What about the reputation of the bands and DJs?

    Artyom:  As for the latter, those who partisipate in Britronica are the most well-known. For example, PAUL OKENFOLD is famous both for his remixes of more orthodox music, such as U2, Smply Red etc. And his own Djing activity. Julian Liberator and Sherman and the controls are really famous techno DJs. ALEX PATERSON (aka ORB) is the most well-known English spacey DJ, I think these four names are totally representative for the elite of British DJing. As for the musitians, first I would name BRUCE GILBERT who used to play with THE WIRE and DOME and has released over ten albums. At Britronica he performed interesting short, but are suggestive and enigmatic pieces. These are very much alike what he would do with DOME plaing on balkonies and attics. The most successful perfomance was that of DREAD ZONE, ambient-techno-reggae outfit, lively and bracing.

    It's worth mentioning that club performances advantageously differed from those at the MYP. For us it was amasing to see stars we had watched before only on MTV in flesh a meter from us.
    A sad accident kept AUTECHRE from perfoming at the Pilot club. The securities made a row and when it came to blows the musicians packed their eqipment and left with dr ALEX PATERSON, who wasn't allowed by the club administration to work at the mixer. We also took oursellves off.
    We can only guess at the reasons of Moscow enthusiasts not having visited the gigs at the MYP. It resulted in the bands performing for a hundred of listeners. Now the situation certainly wouldn't be the same.