Our relationship with Vodinkja is a strange one. We first met Idrik on a radiology exchange between Kishinev State and Basingstoke hospitals. And thus we discovered Vodinkja. When it came to the Moldovan visit we quickly arranged for Idrik to bring some tapes with him, and put him up for a week. One night we talked at length about Moldova, music, authority and the State. This is a few quotes from our chat. The man is quite insane. About thirty-eight, five foot six, bald, and dressing like Gary Numan's leather look, circa 1987. Check him out below. While it was quite obvious he was on the exchange, he still maintained he was here purely on a record smuggling tour looking for Blondie tapes. Jasko may, or may not, be a figment of Idrik's imagination.

Irritant: As I understand it Vodinkja is Moldova's second city. Virtually all other bands named after cities are poor quality US rock, like Boston (dig "more than a feeling", though), so why?

Vodinkja: No, no, no. Vodinkja is not a city. It is an underground group, an undergroup. Vodinkja is undergroup.

Irritant: How many of you are there in the band, have you had many line up changes?

Vodinkja: If you saw us perform you would say three or four or five or six, depending on how many of us are able to attend. But we say that the whole of Moldova is potentially a band member, and the whole nation writes the songs, so there are four and a half millions.

Irritant: Why does the number of live performers change? Do political difficulties come into play?

Vodinkja: Sometimes. Often one of us must lie low for a while. When I return to Moldova I will "disappear" a while, the authorities are suspicious of people who go abroad, and I am known to them. Jasko is in juvenile detention at the moment after the sweet shop incident, and sometimes his schoolwork precludes his appearance.

Irritant: (laughing) What was the sweet shop incident?

Vodinkja: Yes, he set fire to a shop in Tiraspol after the owner refused to sell him fireworks.

Irritant: How old is he?

Vodinkja: Eight.

Irritant: (laughs some more) Come on, you're bullshitting now, what does he play?

Vodinkja: Eight is not too young. It refreshes us to see his youth. On stage he is a giant, brimming with energy. He sings, dances, plays percussion, bugle and fireworks. Eight is not too young, look at the Jacksons, at Musical Youth, they had youth and people listened to what they had to say with dignity. We must ask ourselves: does the state want the young to be the workhorses of society, or would it rather the workhorses were boiled down to glue for the young to sniff?

Irritant: What instruments do you use?

Vodinkja: We have keyboards and bugle and fiddle and Blaghorn (Moldovan instrument a bit like a French horn apparently) and wooden sticks and flies in a jar and rockets and hot oil and whatever else we need to get our message across. We make some of our own electrical instruments in our workshop.

Irritant: What is your message?

Vodinkja: We must change. Change everything. Enjoy this life and each other's lives. We must build monuments to ourselves and to our ancestors. We must stop all the arrogant dismissals of those with power over those without.

Irritant: So are you preaching revolution? How would you change your government, for example?

Vodinkja: Some people say it is best to grab the bull by the horns. We say it is better to crack his skull while he sleeps.

Irritant: Have you ever heard of a band called Anal Cunt?

Vodinkja: Are they named after an American city? Is there a city called Anal Cunt?

Irritant: Are you big sellers in Moldova?

Vodinkja: No. Ownership, and therefore the official sale is actually illegal. Our last seven inch record, "Szuko!", sold three hundred and four copies up until Tuesday last week, and that is our best sale yet by two. We play gigs in secret. Word of mouth carries the message no more than an hour before we go on. We've been busted about six times but on five occasions since the first one we've convinced regional authorities that we are a Vodinkja tribute band only, and have escaped with fines and instrument confiscations. Performances in Kishinev are very limited these days as authority is strong there. Performances there are considered real events, and people are usually very disappointed to discover they've missed us. Our last performance was in Cahol near the Romanian border. There were only seventeen people there but the atmosphere was highly charged. It was a night of high defiance. We wrote and performed two new songs there and then, "Kastrul", about defying thought control, and "Triiko skim hvop?", or "Where are the authorities?" - a particularly popular song that night which we will do again and again, hopefully when the authorities are listening in.

Irritant: Are there any British bands that you like?

Vodinkja: British bands are all hedonists, enjoying playing and counting their money but doing no good to anyone but the unthinking fools who buy their records and t-shirts. A band must both enjoy being heard, and fear being heard. Be loud, but only at the right time, in the right place. When would you hear a British band say, "members of the audience unite, you have nothing to fear but a fine and a weeks detention by the authorities" ? Never.

Irritant: So what are your musical influences?

Vodinkja: We strive for repetition. It reflects life in Moldovan cities. We enjoy blending what the state would have us believe is very austere and respect worthy with what we know to be banal and frankly ridiculous. To hear and see an eight year old boy accompany a military march with bugle is laughable, and yet a warning that the state would conscript us all, even babes in arms, to support itself.

Irritant: Who appears on the tracks on the tape?

Vodinkja: Okay. There are three on these songs. Vinko is responsible for most of the instrumentation. He used to work for children's television programmes in Moldova, but he left because there is only so much (sings) "Blim Blam Blam, Vinkoi sint var kvor. Plim Plam Plom, Kovi hum sggorr" that you can take without really twisting your mind. A lot of electrical instruments in Moldova are sixties technology, but Vinko (ß there on the left) rewires some of them with telephone pieces and televisions and such. Szerpi is a classically trained violinist, but he turned his back on state organised musics because he says; "music may be the fabric of the popular masses, but I am the scissors to trim that cloth". I write the songs.

Irritant: And what are the two songs about?

Vodinkja: Well, "Bogd hmi glasz kvor?" is in English "Where to put your dirty cotton?". It is a protest against the uprooting of Moldova's traditional fruit farms to grow cotton and only cotton which then can not be sold at a good price. It is a throwback to the Soviet era really, but the present government is not reversing the process. The clattering percussion is reminiscent of, and indeed inspired by, the clattering cotton spinners. What other song have you used? A slow noisy one? You mean "Priter Radio Tiraspol" , an anthem in praise of a small illegal radio station in Moldova's 2nd city. Their motto is: "Listen to a vulture and he will persuade you you are a corpse". It is an adaptation of the station's news jingle.