Petar Kanev: "In Ixtlan, the founder and frontman of the post-punk and darkwave band from the German High School – Tsvetan Metodiev, known as Tsetso – played the synthesiser and programmed the drums. He is also the lead singer of ‘Ikstlan’. At the time, Tsetso was a classmate of my brother, Asen Kanev, which is how we knew each other. On guitar in ‘Ixtlan’ is Milen Metodiev – Tsetso’s brother, who played in clubs in the capital for a long time, mainly jazz. On bass guitar is Niki Angelov. He isn’t playing at the moment. “Ikstlan” had three major live performances between 1994 and 1996. Back in the 90s, there was a big venue, somewhere near where “Toplocentrala” is now; that’s where Ixtlan’s first major solo concert took place – an hour and a half with their own setlist of original darkwave songs, and they also did a few covers of Dead Can Dance. “Ikstlan” also put on another massive solo concert at Festivalna Hall, with a more punk-inspired sound, which ended with covers of “The Clash” during the encore. Tsetso had it recorded on a video cassette. In their expanded line-up, “Ikstlan” also had drums and another guitarist – Kiro (Vampiro) and Plamen; I don’t know their surnames. Between 1993 and 1995, ‘Ixtlan’ recorded three demo albums on audio cassettes using a home recording setup. Most of the songs collected here are from the 1994 album ‘Days of Black Abbys’, dedicated to a friend who died tragically at the age of 19. Of these, ‘Blood’ is a song by ‘PeNA’ with music by Niki Angelov and lyrics by Petar Kanev. “Zmey” is a demo for a song by “Ikstlan”, which we recorded again as a duet – lyrics by Petar Kanev and music by Niki Angelov; Niki plays bass guitar, and we both sing with him. “Mens Insana” (also known as “Renaissance Punk”) features lyrics in broken Latin – by Petar Kanev and Victoria, nicknamed Speivy, who was singing with “Beznadezhdonst” at the time. All the other songs were written and composed by Tsvetan Metodiev – Tsetso. In the 90s, he distributed “Ikstlan” albums by re-recording them onto audio cassettes with hand-made covers and giving them away – mostly to friends. One of the songs – ‘Peso CHRD’ – was a birthday present for me. Currently, the founder of the student darkwave band “Ikstlan”, Tsvetan Metodiev – Tsetso, is part of “The Animators”, where he once again plays the synthesiser and programmes the drums. Some of the songs by “The Animators” are set to his music.”