Summertime, and the living is not so easy, not if you are Ukrainian as Russia has upped its ballistic missiles attacks. Quinte apt then that this month we spoke to Air Defence System from Kharkiv. He told us about his latest EP please don’t stay any longer.
Before that we met with the Iranian musician and film director and producer Ramin Ghaderian who’s been living in Ukraine since he was 16 yo. The interview is an edited trascript of our conversation in Kyiv back in May.
We then chatted to Brooth about Zaporizhzhia and the electronic music scene in Ukraine.
Also, we don’t do this very often, but after more than four years, we decided it was good to catch up with artists we last spoke to at the beginning of the full-scale invasion for a catch up and to ask them about recent releases. First in line is Yurii Dubrovsky talked us through the production process for his latest album as Octopus Kraft.
Furthermore, we had the privilege to speak Viktor Pushkar after meeting him in person in Kyiv back in May. He gave us a fascinating and detailed interview looking back at his carreer.
And Vlad Pochebula gives us the lowndon on Lutsk. Speaking of which, our monthly Resonance FM podcast is dedicated to the city of Lutsk with contributions from Maksym Son, Dmytro Bereziuk and Vlad Pochebula himself. Among other things we discussed the repurposed factory Luchanka and folk music from the Volyn region.
Tracklist:
- Svitlana Nianio – Кіпариси 2023
- Volyn Field – Перелітні Пташки
- Volyn Field – Днини (Софі Янц)
- Turbinaria – Spirularia
- Михайлове Чудо – сс. Галків і Маньки
- Михайлове Чудо – с. Губарі
- DvaTry – Vals
- embased / TIM PACHE / 41th – DCBLxVYHOR
- Stÿr – Kontrabanda
Our last interview for this month is with Huggen Luft who just released a new album on I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free.
In terms of new releases we have the latest from 58918012, Andrey Sirotkin, iiuoiim, kole, Koloah, Mires, Noisoid, Михайлове Чудо, Музична Шкатулка, Rhythm Büro, Noneside, Група Б, støïbrok (with not one but two albums) and User Kyx.
And finally, in the Viewing Room we have the latest from Cluster Lizard.
MAY 2026, KYIV
Could you start by introducing yourself and telling me about your background in music?
I started playing the piano when I was six years old and continued until I was sixteen. I grew up in Iran, and then I moved to Ukraine to study at the National Music Academy of Kyiv. I’m a pianist, and I graduated in 2006.
Today I’m also a film director and producer. I’m originally from Iran.
How long have you been living in Kyiv?
I’ve been here for about twenty-eight years. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in Iran, and then I moved to Ukraine.
You’re also a music teacher, aren’t you?
Yes. For the last three years I’ve been running an online music school, teaching piano students from all over the world, including the US and the United Arab Emirates. So, I’m working both as a piano teacher and as a film director. Right now, I’m making my second documentary about the war in Ukraine.
Before we talk about your documentaries, you originally came to Ukraine to study music. What made you decide to stay after graduating?
Because I love this country. I love the people. From my very first days here, I felt as if I was already at home.
Iran is a beautiful country, but you know about the regime and how difficult life can be there. In Ukraine, for the first time in my life, I experienced democracy. Today, for me, Ukraine represents the highest level of democracy in the world. That’s how I feel.
It’s because of the people, because of this beautiful city, because of this beautiful country. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why I love it.
Have you travelled much around Ukraine?
Yes, I’ve visited every region of Ukraine.
Is Kyiv your favourite city?
Yes, Kyiv is my home. But Lviv—you’ve been there yourself—is a beautiful city. Odessa is another beautiful city. And Dnipro… I’ve been there more than fifteen or sixteen times. I love Dnipro. For me, it’s like a smaller Kyiv.
Actually, I know Ukraine better than Iran because I’ve travelled much more here than I ever did back home.
Where in Iran are you from?
I’m from Isfahan. You know Isfahan? It’s a beautiful historic city.
Let’s talk about the war. Before February 2022, did you have any feeling that something like this was going to happen?
No. Never. Not tanks. Not soldiers. I never imagined that. But once the war actually started, it wasn’t a complete surprise to me. Since childhood I’ve known what war is. During the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years, I was seven years old. I started primary school during the war. So war itself wasn’t something completely unfamiliar or unimaginable to me. Since the full-scale invasion began, I’ve never left Ukraine. I didn’t want to.
Can I ask about your legal status? Do you still have an Iranian passport?
Yes, I’m still an Iranian citizen and I have an Iranian passport, but I’ve had permanent residency in Ukraine since 2008.
I also have a daughter. She’s twenty years old. I was married, I have my family here—this is my home.
How did you find the bureaucracy in Ukraine?
For me, everything has been good. The bureaucracy, the people, the culture—for me everything has been good, and it still is. I know this probably sounds like propaganda, but it isn’t. I genuinely love this country.
The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years. Of course, warfare has changed enormously since then. Does this war feel different to you?
For me it’s different mainly because I’m older. Back then I was a child. Now I’m a grown man. I have a family, friends, responsibilities. When you’re a child you only think about yourself. As an adult, you’re responsible for many other people. That’s the biggest difference. But war itself… I don’t think war changes very much. War is war.
Maybe around a million people have died in Ukraine—soldiers and civilians. It’s terrible, but it’s the reality. I love Metallica. They have a song called Sad But True. For me, that’s the perfect description. I even have a Sad But True tattoo. It really has been an incredibly difficult time.
Were you displaced during the first months of the invasion? Did you leave Kyiv?
No, I stayed in Kyiv. During the second week of the full-scale invasion, I wanted to join the army. They asked me, “Have you ever served?”
I said, “No.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a musician and a film director.”
They said, “Sorry, man. Go home and pray.”
After that I thought I still had to do something. So, I picked up my camera. I became a one-man film crew. I was the director, cameraman, interviewer, editor—everything.
For about the first six months almost everybody left Kyiv. Many of my friends went to Lviv or to western Ukraine. I stayed. I continued filming everything on my own.
How do you think the international narrative about the war has changed over the last four years?
I think everything has changed. During the first year there was enormous media attention and very strong international support. Now it’s different. People become used to it. That’s human nature.
Today the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere. Now everyone is talking about Iran. But after two years people will probably become used to that as well. That’s just how people are.
At the beginning there was a lot of discussion internationally about Ukraine as a proxy war between Russia, the United States and NATO. One of the reasons I started my own project was because I felt there weren’t enough Ukrainian voices being heard. There were plenty of political experts, but not enough Ukrainians speaking for themselves. Did you feel the same?
Yes, but I also think that during the first year Ukrainian voices were being heard. The international support was very good. The problem is simply that people eventually get used to war. That’s human nature.
What role can culture play in Ukraine during wartime? Does culture have a different role during a war?
Of course. If we’re talking about music, music is important for people. It’s important both in peace and in war. We need it. It’s necessary for our nerves, for our hearts, for everything. Through culture you can show who you are. Through music, cinema and every other form of culture, you show your identity. I always ask people, “What do you listen to?” Once I know what someone listens to, I already know something about that person. Music is our heart. It’s our mirror.
Now, because of the war, it’s more important than ever to show your culture to the world. For the first time in decades, people around the world understand that Ukraine and russia are not the same. Culture makes that visible.
In a situation like Russia’s, where there has been a long history of cultural imperialism and the appropriation of Ukrainian culture?
Since the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians have wanted to reclaim everything that belongs to them. This process had already begun after 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, but after 2022 it became much stronger. People wanted to reclaim their culture and their language.
When I first came to Kyiv in the 1990s, I studied russian because everyone spoke russian. Today, if you live here, you learn Ukrainian. Language is part of your culture. Culture shows who you are. It shows the difference between your music and my music, between our folklore and our musical traditions. For the first time, I really feel that Ukrainians want to reclaim that identity.
There’s been a lot of discussion about composers such as Tchaikovsky. The National Music Academy has removed his name. What’s your opinion?
I’ve heard these discussions—not only about Tchaikovsky, but also Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. They were all great composers. But now I understand why Ukrainians don’t want to hear them. Maybe in ten or fifteen years everything will return to normal. I love Tchaikovsky and I love Rachmaninoff, but right now I don’t want to listen to them either. It’s a matter of solidarity.
Until 2022 I spoke only russian because everybody around me spoke russian. After the invasion I switched to Ukrainian. I speak Ukrainian with Ukrainians now.
Tell me about your first documentary.
I began filming during the second week after the full-scale invasion started. We travelled across Ukraine. I filmed in Mykolaiv and many other places. I spent time with soldiers and with civilians. We helped evacuate people during those first days. The documentary includes interviews with both soldiers and ordinary people.
It’s about how people experienced the first six months of the war—how they helped one another, how soldiers protected civilians, how communities came together. It’s really a film about humanity. Nothing else.
It also documents the destruction of places like Bucha and Irpin, and the ruins left behind by the invasion.
Tell me about your second documentary.
The second documentary is set close to the front line. The first film focused on civilians during the first six months of the invasion. This one is entirely about soldiers—how they live, how they train, what everyday life looks like near the front.
You’ve actually been to the front?
Yes. Not in the trenches themselves, but close behind the front line, between the Dnipro region and Donbas.
What stories have stayed with you the most?
The hardest part is knowing that the people you’re talking to might not be alive tomorrow. Half the soldiers who appeared in my first documentary have since been killed. Now every interview carries that possibility. The soldiers are friendly and strong, but you always feel that reality in the background. It’s incredibly difficult.
Are you still working as a “one-man band”?
Mostly, yes. This time I also brought a Ukrainian singer, Elena Zaremba, to conduct the interviews while I handled directing, cinematography, sound recording and editing. The military actually invited me because they already knew my previous work. They asked me to make a film about soldiers who might not be alive tomorrow. When you’re working alone it’s much easier. If you have a big crew, it’s much more complicated. I can decide today and leave tomorrow.
Does music have a role within the military?
Absolutely. In the first documentary I used Ukrainian rock music and Ukrainian classical music. This time I’m writing the soundtrack myself. Many musicians have played concerts for soldiers over the last four years. They have done an important job. The soldiers themselves mostly listen to rock, pop and Ukrainian music. I didn’t hear much classical music, but music is definitely part of everyday life for them.
When do you expect to finish the documentary?
I think I’ll finish filming in another month or two. Then I’ll probably spend another two or three months editing. I don’t know how many hours I’ve filmed already—maybe ten hours, maybe more—but only a few minutes from each interview will make it into the final film. Editing is hard work. You live through everything once while filming, then you have to live through it all over again while editing. But I love it.
Let’s talk about Iran. How did people there react when Russia invaded Ukraine?
Everyone told me to leave Ukraine. But ordinary Iranian people supported Ukraine. Only a small minority supported the regime and, naturally, they also supported russia. Around ninety percent of Iranians supported Ukraine because they know what dictatorship looks like.
How did you see the Woman, Life, Freedom movement?
At first Ukraine couldn’t pay much attention because it was fighting its own war. Later, though, we definitely felt Ukrainian support. Many Ukrainians also supported Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah. People often ask why. The truth is that many Iranians don’t really have another recognised leader. Ukraine was actually the first country whose president—President Zelensky—publicly met with him. For many Iranians that was a very important symbolic gesture.
Are you optimistic about Iran’s future?
For the first time in my life, yes. Completely optimistic. Maybe I’m the only one, but I really believe this is the last chapter of the Islamic Republic. Not because it will happen quickly—it won’t—but because the system itself can’t fundamentally change without ceasing to be what it is.I think 2026 could be the turning point.
JUNE 23, 2026 – KHARKIV
I started making music 10 years ago, when I was 16. It was a period of constant discovery—I found artists who completely changed the way I listened to and understood music. I was deeply involved in post-rock, and from there I naturally drifted toward ambient. Over time, I realized that ambient wasn’t just a genre I enjoyed; it became a way of living through and processing my emotions, almost like a personal form of therapy.
Across releases such as втратити себе, щоб віднайти спокій (Lose Yourself to Find Peace), я забув як працюють цифри і що значать слова (I Forgot How Numbers Work and What Words Mean), пролісковий пилок (Snowdrop Pollen), дербі екстра (Derby Extra), вибач і благослови (forgive and bless) and now please don’t stay any longer, your work often feels like a sequence of dreamlike diary entries or fragments of an ongoing internal narrative. The titles read almost like pieces of poetry, while the music itself seems to move between despair, wonder, memory, and reconciliation. Do the titles come before the music, or do they emerge from the finished pieces? And when you look back at your discography as a whole, do you see these records as documenting a personal journey—perhaps from uncertainty and loss towards acceptance—or are they better understood as separate snapshots of different emotional states and moments in your life?
The titles and the music are meant to work together. Every release is an existential journey accompanied by poetry, where the words expand on the record’s central themes and add another layer to its narrative.
As for understanding my music, I see each album as a snapshot of a particular emotional state, my attempt to deal with certain things that happens with me. Sadly, a lot of the time it’s not very pleasant things: fear, despair, grief. And i hope that my music just helps someone who’s also not doing so well.
The new EP please don’t stay any longer is built entirely around the Elektron Model:Cycles, yet the resulting music feels remarkably intimate and fragile. You describe combining the machine’s sterile digital character with deliberately lo-fi processing. What attracted you to this particular instrument, and how did its limitations shape the emotional language of the record?
Recently, after experiencing some difficult life events i was directed to the mental rehab center. So i grabbed my Model:Cycles and, during my rehabilitation, i was spending some time with it. I love the instrument for its compact size and endless potential for experimentation, but also for its distinctive sound—liminal, pale, and, in the best possible way, almost empty.
That aesthetic perfectly matched the state I was in at the time. Without really planning it, those sessions gradually evolved into the PDSAL EP.
You are from Kharkiv. Are you still based there? How has the city changed over the past few years, and what does the current music and experimental arts scene in Kharkiv look like from your perspective?
I lived in Kharkiv for like 6 years now. I love this city so much and consider it my home. For the past few years Kharkiv slowly reclaiming what made her legendary – techno shows, unique projects, interesting and strong people. It’s difficult. There’s still russian drones and rockets that aimed to kill our independence, but we live and will not step back. As for the local music scene, projects like Kazka Family, Obscure Bookings, and the DRUK Culture Center are, in my opinion, defining the current wave of experimental music in Kharkiv. They’re building spaces where new ideas and new sounds can grow despite everything happening around us.
What does it mean for you to be Ukrainian today? Has the full-scale invasion changed the way you think about identity, language, memory, or the role of music in everyday life?
I was a peaceful cosmopolite for all my life until 2022. Then I understood it will kill me. I learned that if there’s terrorists nearby – you always have to be ready to defend yourself. I worked for the people of Kharkiv as a civilian, then joined the army, and now trying to make something for the victory. Also, I learned that I don’t want russian culture in my life. I don’t say it’s a bad or stupid culture, I just will never want this in my life. Because russian equals trauma to me. Same for music: we cannot forget that any russian artist or russian project always pushes russian narratives.
Are there any albums by Ukrainian artists released during the past four years that felt particularly meaningful to you—either because they captured something about the current historical moment, or because they opened genuinely new artistic territory? What recent Ukrainian music do you think deserves more international attention?
First of all – plaaaato, for sure. It’s a Ukrainian shoegaze legend. His albums deliver beautiful canonical shoegaze experience, and i recommend the last of them – brightdeadstarr. As for ambient and bedroom pop – Dirtbag Loris is my recent discovery. Very deep recordings about love and loneliness. Колискова (Koliskova) is must-listen for sure. Also, Всього Найкращого (Vsʹoho Naykrashchoho – All the best) makes decent indie-folk clearly inspired by Neutral Milk Hotel and Jordaan Mason. I think the world should become more familiar with Ukrainian art, because it will only grow more distinctive and groundbreaking with time.
JULY 1, 2026 – KYIV
I’m Anton Umerenko, a Ukrainian music producer and live performer also known as Brooht.
Music has been part of my life since childhood. I started playing music when I was around six years old — my first instrument was the sopilka (traditional Ukrainian flute), and I played it in an orchestra. Later I tried many different instruments: drums, saxophone, guitar, flute. I think this experience shaped the way I approach music today because I always see sound as something physical and emotional, not only technical.
My journey into electronic music started when I got my first computer in the 9th grade. I became fascinated by the possibility of creating entire worlds from sounds. I started experimenting with beats, production and electronic instruments.
Before focusing on live electronic music, I spent a lot of time with finger drumming and learned how to scratch. I was always interested in the performance side of music — the connection between the person creating the sound and the audience.
Later, together with one of the first beatmakers from Zaporizhzhia, Anton Lyrik, we created a small studio where we worked on music and collaborated with local artists.
Together with my friend Ihor Kishman I was also part of the Mushool Roll promo group in Zaporizhzhia between 2010 and 2015. We organized underground parties once a month, usually bringing together around 600–800 people. Most of them were our friends or people connected through the local scene, so it felt less like an event business and more like building a community. Those nights had a huge influence on me.
Today I focus on live electronic performance and production. I like improvisation, hardware instruments and creating music that feels alive rather than perfectly fixed.
At the same time, music is not my whole life anymore. Today it probably takes around 5–10% of my daily time because I also work in other creative fields. But it remains one of the most important ways for me to express myself.
Over the past few years you’ve played at many of the key venues and collectives shaping Ukraine’s electronic scene—Closer, ∄, Brukxt, Keller, Some People in Kharkiv, Ganok, Kultura Zvuku, Criminal Practice, Terms of Groove, and many others. Each of these spaces seems to have its own identity and community. How would you describe the different energies of these venues and collectives? More broadly, what role does community play in sustaining electronic music in Ukraine today?
Every venue and every city has its own character, and that’s what makes the Ukrainian scene interesting.
For me, Closer has always been one of the coziest places. Especially Lesnyi Prychal during the summer — there is something very special about playing there. Nature, the river, people gathering together, the feeling that everyone is relaxed and open. It creates an atmosphere where you can build a longer musical story.
∄ has a completely different energy. It is very connected to the dancefloor. There is a strong physical energy there — people come to dance, to experience sound together, and that creates a very special connection between the performer and the audience.
Keller has a more raw underground feeling. It always felt like a place where you can experiment and take risks. Some People in Kharkiv has always impressed me with its warmth and the people around it. Even during difficult times, there was a strong feeling of community there.
Zaporizhzhia is also an important part of my story. Around 2010–2015 we had a very active underground community. Through Mushool Roll we created parties where hundreds of people came together every month. Today the situation is different — many people from that community moved to Kyiv, and right now there isn’t the same strong local scene in Zaporizhzhia. But I hope it will recover one day, because that city has a lot of creative energy.
For me, community is the foundation of electronic music. Clubs are not only about music. They are places where people meet, exchange ideas, support each other and create something together. Especially during the last few years, this human connection has become even more important.
Your debut collaborative EP Present, created with Roman Khropko, revolves around improvisation and the idea of capturing “the essence of the present moment,” particularly in the closing track No Tomorrow, which reflects on the longing for a peaceful life while holding onto hope. How did working so spontaneously shape the music, and do you think electronic music can express experiences of war and uncertainty without addressing them explicitly?
The whole idea behind *Present* was to capture a specific moment without trying to control everything.
Roman and I had only two days to work together, so we decided to create one track per day. Instead of spending weeks polishing ideas, we focused on reacting to each other and following the moment.
This limitation actually helped us. Sometimes when you have too much time, you start thinking too much. Here, we had to trust our intuition and accept imperfections. I think those small unexpected moments are what make the music feel alive.
I believe electronic music can express experiences like war and uncertainty without directly talking about them.
Everything we live through affects the way we create. It appears in the atmosphere, the tension, the silence, the energy of the music. You don’t always need words to communicate emotions. Sometimes people can feel the story behind the music even if nothing is explained.
How would you describe the electronic music scene in Ukraine today, and how do you see it evolving under present circumstances?
I think Ukrainian electronic music has become much stronger and more confident.
Before, many artists were still looking outside — comparing themselves with other countries and scenes. Today I feel that more people are focusing on developing their own identity.
Each city still has its own character. Kyiv has a wide range of different communities and spaces. Kharkiv has always had a very special underground spirit and a strong cultural background. Other cities have their own stories too, even if some scenes have become smaller because of the circumstances.
What inspires me most is seeing people continue creating. Not because it’s easy, but because they genuinely need it. Ukrainian artists are not trying to imitate someone else anymore. They are creating from their own experience, and I think that’s what makes the scene interesting.
Looking back over the past four years, are there any Ukrainian albums that have helped you make sense of contemporary life in Ukraine?
During the last year especially, I haven’t listened to much music at home. I prefer experiencing music at events — feeling the sound in a room, seeing people react, being part of the moment. For me, that’s where music feels the most alive.
But one Ukrainian album that has always stayed with me is *Mova Ryb* by Skriabin.
I grew up with this music. What I love about it is its honesty. It doesn’t try to be complicated or impressive — it just talks about life, people and emotions. Even years later, it still feels very sincere.
More generally, I find inspiration in Ukrainian artists who continue creating despite everything happening around them. Their persistence and ability to find beauty during difficult times says a lot about Ukrainian culture.
Finally, what does it mean to be Ukrainian today? And if you had to introduce someone unfamiliar with Ukraine through a single book, album, song, film, monument or building, artwork, meme and traditional dish, what would you choose — and why?
For me, being Ukrainian today means staying human, continuing to create and supporting each other even when circumstances are difficult.
Ukraine is not only about war. It is about culture, nature, humor, creativity and people who continue building their future.
If I had to introduce someone to Ukraine through different cultural references, I would choose:
- Book: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. I love how deeply it connects people with nature, traditions and spirituality. It shows a very important part of Ukrainian identity — the connection between people and the land they come from.
- Album: Mova Ryb by Skriabin. I grew up with this album. It represents a very honest and human side of Ukrainian culture. The lyrics and atmosphere still feel relevant because they talk about emotions that are universal.
- Film: Homeward. For me, it’s a film about identity, family and the meaning of home. It shows Ukraine not only through history or politics but through personal stories.
- Sacred place: Khortytsia Island in Zaporizhzhia. This place is very important to me personally. I spent a lot of time there growing up — walking, thinking, being in nature. For people from Zaporizhzhia, Khortytsia is much more than an island. It is connected with Ukrainian history and represents freedom, strength and connection with nature.
- Artwork: Cossack Mamay. I like that this image is not about aggression or victory. Mamay is usually shown sitting peacefully with a bandura, with his horse and weapons nearby. To me, it represents a balance between strength and peace — the idea that freedom is something worth protecting.
- Meme: “russian warship, go f*** yourself.” It became much more than a meme. It represents Ukrainian humor, courage and the ability to keep dignity even in the hardest moments.
- Traditional dish: Borscht. Every family has its own recipe, and that’s why I think it represents Ukraine so well. We share common roots, but every region and every person adds something personal.
JULY 5, 2026 – IVANO FRANKVISK
Hi Yurii, the last time we spoke, Null felt like a reset—a deeply personal record that allowed you to begin creating again “without baggage.” Since then you’ve mostly been working on your electronic project Zlele. Looking back, what has changed for you over the past few years, both as a musician and as a person? Has living through another three years of war fundamentally altered your relationship with music, creativity, or even hope itself?
The biggest change has been exhaustion—both emotional and physical. These days, before I can write something new, or even return to material that’s already been recorded, I first have to gather enough energy. The war hasn’t fundamentally changed my relationship with music or creativity, but it wears you down. It never really gives you a chance to recover. I still haven’t found a way to switch off, to rest, or to distance myself from it.
It feels like carrying a burden. At first it isn’t so heavy that you can’t bear it, but as time goes on you feel its weight more and more. Your body tenses up, your strength slowly fades. Now I approach every album as if it might be my last, and each one takes far more out of me than the one before.
TAU is your darkest and most direct work to date. The album is dedicated to “those who could not find themselves and left us behind,” while also being written in memory of Ivan and your friend and guitarist Andrii. The six movements seem to trace a passage—from fear and despair through trauma to a final farewell. Was it important for you to build the album almost as a single emotional ritual rather than a collection of individual songs? And how did you approach writing lyrics that engage so directly with grief, loss, and the desire to disappear without reducing these experiences to simple answers?
A tragic death affected me deeply, and I immediately knew I would have to write something about it. At first I only wrote a few lyrics, and later recorded some demos. That was before 2022. But after the full-scale invasion, and after losing my father and my friend Andrii, I felt the need to confront that pain and turn it into something much more substantial.I wanted to capture the emotions, thoughts, and experiences that so many people—including myself—go through when they find themselves standing on the edge. That’s how the idea of TAU gradually took shape. I wanted the album to feel like one continuous emotional journey rather than a collection of separate songs. I wasn’t interested in offering answers or conclusions. I simply wanted to give those feelings a voice.
Musically, TAU feels both heavier and more spacious than Null. Long-form post-metal crescendos sit alongside moments of near silence, while the vocals move between intimate confession and something almost liturgical. How has your compositional process evolved since Null? Are you still working largely alone in the studio, and what role do dynamics, texture, and silence play in shaping the emotional architecture of the album?
I wanted to put together a full band, but it’s difficult to find musicians in a small town who want to play this kind of music. And that’s without even mentioning the war, which has made that possibility even more remote.
Eventually I accepted that I would have to do everything myself and take responsibility for the entire process—from recording to mixing—even though I would have gladly shared that work with other people. On Null I had help recording the bass and programming the drums. On TAU I did all of that myself, and it was incredibly draining.
In terms of dynamics and texture, this album is slower and more patient, but I never wanted it to become so monotonous that the listener would lose interest halfway through. It was important to me that it remained engaging enough to carry you from the opening moments to the very end. Sonically, I wanted it to feel sharper as well, with guitars and vocals that are denser, dirtier, and more abrasive.
Throughout TAU, forests, birds, darkness, graves, and thresholds become recurring symbols, while the album itself takes its name from the final letter of the Hebrew alphabet—a sign of passage and transition. The record seems less interested in explaining death than in remaining with those left behind. Do you see TAU primarily as an act of mourning, a memorial to Ivan and Andrii, or ultimately as an attempt to offer some form of reconciliation for those who continue living?
Forests have always appeared in my lyrics as a metaphor for life, but on this album the forest carries a more specific meaning because it also becomes a place of death. TAU itself is a symbol of transition—death, an ending, or perhaps the beginning of something else, depending on what you believe.
What I wanted to express is that when someone consciously chooses to end their life, it becomes a tragedy for the people left behind. Yet for the person making that choice, life itself may have become the tragedy, and death can seem like a release from suffering. I wanted to explore that contradiction without judging it or reducing it to simple answers.
In that sense, TAU is at once a funeral march, a requiem, and an attempt to look at suicide from the perspective of those living through that pain rather than from the outside.
JULY 6, 2026 – KYIV
I’m Viktor Pushkar, a musician and researcher, a resident of Kyiv’s Yevbaz district, someone who is deeply rooted in one particular place—almost an endemic species. At the same time, I’ve seen a bit of the world beyond the city. I spent a couple of years travelling across Ukraine for work, and I’ve also travelled a little to Western Europe and to the South.
Originally, I conceived Blemish as radical pop music. Since it only made the charts once, and never really fit into the pop scene, the project simply kept becoming more radical.
After ten years I realised that Blemish had run its course. In 2005 I went through a serious crisis and even considered giving up music altogether.
What saved me was meeting the violinist Serhii Okhrimchuk, together with the arrival of several fundamentally new musical instruments. That was how Chomub.ini was born: structured improvisation, microtonality, and pursuing my own visions instead of the radio formats that were popular in my neighbourhood.
You have worked in Ukrainian experimental and electronic music for more than three decades. How do you think the scene has changed from the early 1990s to today? And what, in your view, distinguishes contemporary Ukrainian experimental music from earlier generations?
When I started, what I lacked most were like-minded people. Too many musicians in Kyiv were oriented either towards the Moscow scene or towards earning a living playing in ordinary restaurants. Drummers played the same 4/4 beat regardless of the context, guitarists competed over who knew the most chords, and only a handful of people really cared about sound quality or about working with texture.
My favourite Kyiv guitarist? Oleksandr Yurchenko, who played in Blemish before later moving to keyboards. Then Serhii Popovych from Rabbota Ho, who later joined Chomub.ini. My favourite drummers—the ones I genuinely enjoy playing with—came along a little later. As for keyboard players, Stas Bobrytskyi, who also moved to Kyiv later on.
My overall impression?
Musicians today have much better sound. They are extremely well informed within their own genres, but unfortunately many show little interest in anything outside their chosen subcultural circles.
There are more professionals now and far more Ukrainian creators producing work, but fewer genuine visionaries like the composer Danylo Pertsov.
Content production is the opposite of art. It is background that never becomes the foreground.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian artists have had to rethink their relationship to society, history and politics. Do you think the role of the artist changes during wartime? Should musicians feel responsible for engaging with current events in their work, or is it equally important to preserve artistic autonomy?
A musician is also a citizen.
Who was stopping the countertenor Vasyl Slipak from continuing his career in the opera houses of Italy? Yet he chose to go to war, and he was killed.
Besides being a musician, I am also a researcher.
I knew there would be a war with the Muscovites as early as 2008, when they attacked Georgia and faced no consequences. I wrote publicly at the time: we’re next. Prepare yourselves.
To begin with, I was never particularly interested in russian music. Likewise, throughout the 1980s I was sceptical of the Soviet Union, and afterwards I became even more sceptical of attempts to sell Ukrainians nostalgia for the Soviet past.
We relaxed too much. We hoped they would simply let us go—that they would hand us sovereignty without bloodshed. That was a mistake, one that could have proved fatal. Muscovy became the russian empire with the help of Ukrainians. The outcome of this war, in which Ukrainians are fighting Muscovites, will probably please them even less than it pleases us. See you in the post-russian space, where I would happily play music with Adyghe or Bashkir musicians in their own free republics.
Art reflects the world selectively and non-linearly. It should not compete with the internet news feed.
The greatest artistic works about this war will appear after the war is over, once we have finally been able to take one—or perhaps two—deep breaths.
Last year the bandura player Volodymyr Voit invited me to create a programme about the Holodomor of 1932–33. We did, and we now perform it as a duo; one day we’ll record it.
I’ve also composed the soundtrack for the documentary film Under the Shadow of the Atom, which deals with events from 2022 onwards.
How successful it is—I leave that for others to judge.
Countess Kapnist and the Young Pioneers transforms the life of Mariia Kapnist—from aristocratic Crimea through revolution, repression, imprisonment and eventually cinema—into something that exists somewhere between historical biography, folklore and ghost story. What drew you and Stas Bobrytskyi to her story? Do you see the album as a reflection on the way collective memory transforms real people into myths, particularly in societies where official history has often been fragmented, suppressed or rewritten?
What I see is the story of a noblewoman who managed to preserve her dignity under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Nobility is not simply a matter of privileges inherited by birth. It also carries obligations that come with those privileges. As a child I loved the films in which Kapnist appeared as Baba Yaga. She always seemed more sympathetic to me than the supposedly positive characters. Many years later I read her biography.
Then one day I went to visit Stas, who happened to live on Kapnist Street. A fairy-tale coincidence.
An urban witch who is also an hereditary countess, survives the Red Terror, and later plays witches in children’s films—that’s a wonderful story.
The album repeatedly connects Mariia Kapnist’s life with the Dovzhenko Film Studios—a place where history, memory and imagination intersect. Following the recent Russian strike that damaged the studios, that history feels even more immediate. Did working on the album change the way you think about cultural memory and artistic institutions as places where history is preserved? And does Mariia Kapnist’s ability to survive war, terror, imprisonment and oblivion now strike you as a symbol of the resilience of Ukrainian culture itself?
I have a very personal relationship with both the film studio and Dovzhenko himself.
When I was studying audio engineering, there was a possibility that I’d go on to work in cinema. People told me, “Get your diploma, then come and join us.”
That was in 1992. I graduated. I turned up. And by then the industry had collapsed. Instead of hiring new people, they were laying staff off.
Dovzhenko was a genius of Ukrainian cinema. He also became someone who adapted himself to the Soviet system, making propaganda films. Stalin personally saved him from the camps for precisely that purpose. Parajanov went to prison. Kapnist went to prison. Stus died in a labour camp. Dovzhenko survived, but in his diary he described his final years in Moscow as life inside a golden cage.
So whom should we forgive for collaborating with the Soviet regime? And whom should we judge as collaborators? I would forgive those who still managed to create works of genuine artistic value. I would judge those who crossed certain red lines and caused lasting damage to Ukrainian culture. I hope that at least the next generation will never have to choose between betraying themselves and dying.
One of the studio’s sound stages is still named after Shchors, because Dovzhenko made his famous film about the Red Army commander there. It is extraordinarily accomplished Soviet propaganda. It also has wonderful acoustics. One day I’d love to record a large ensemble in that space.
Nova Pobudova, Bobo Strikes Back and 3.1416 of a Gentleman seem very different on the surface—one reconstructs a historical environment, another playfully reinterprets Albert Bandura’s famous psychological experiment, while the third is based on live electroacoustic improvisation in a twenty-four-tone tuning. Yet all three appear to investigate different kinds of systems: historical, behavioural and musical. Do you see a common thread linking them? What attracts you to conceptual systems as starting points for composition?
A concept helps you concentrate. It filters out everything unnecessary. Nova Pobudova is about Kyiv as it existed more than 110 years ago, and about the district that bore that name. Of course electronic instruments didn’t exist in 1910. But architecture has rhythm, vertical and horizontal organisation, and texture. I’m certainly not the first to notice this parallel. Xenakis also explored it, although in relation to different buildings.
Bobo is about the ambivalence between aggressor and victim. Even a punching doll eventually grows tired of being beaten for no obvious reason—simply because someone can beat it. Eventually Bobo comes up with a way of escaping and striking back asymmetrically. Then the nasty children end up flying across the kindergarten thanks to his entirely non-violent kicks.
When should Bobo stop? Albert Bandura’s theory never answers that question. So I decided to continue the story myself.
Usually I have only a limited amount of time to record a duo or trio with musicians I genuinely admire. They enjoy working with me and appreciate my ideas, but they all have plenty of other commitments. My task as a composer is therefore to formulate a shared problem in such a way that it admits a meaningful solution. I want them to discover something that is interesting both for themselves and for me. When Serhii tells me that he has never played like this with anyone before, and Martin agrees, I take that as a compliment.
3.1416 of a Gentleman combines a carefully designed microtonal structure with improvisation and a pronounced sense of humour. How do you negotiate the tension between control and chance? And what do the mysterious “0.1416 of a gentleman” represent within the album’s conceptual world?
It’s really about the musicians’ self-control—the ability to listen to one another and to know when to pass the initiative, especially when moving from a solo to counterpoint and back again. Meanwhile, those elusive 0.1416 of a gentleman wander freely among us, committing small acts of mischief that we then have to keep under control.
Pi, of course, has many more digits after the decimal point, but on this recording you only get to hear the first four.
Nanonich feels like a philosophical comedy inhabited by prophets who warn of catastrophe too late, experts who fail to notice the obvious, keys that open nothing, collapsing towers, and dreams that require technical maintenance. Through humour, absurdity and wordplay, you seem to be addressing profound questions about knowledge, progress and meaning. Do you see the album as a response to the uncertainty of contemporary life in Ukraine, or are these themes part of a broader investigation into the human condition?
It’s probably broader than Ukraine alone. I actually wrote these texts before the music, and on this particular album the stars simply aligned. I found myself missing the song form. So I invited Yevheniia Chupryna to sing, and Vlad Yakovlev to play guitar. Vlad has always liked the old Blemish, especially Yurchenko’s guitar parts. In the end we did arrive at a song form, although—as is usually the case with me—it ended up being slightly twisted.
I don’t particularly want to explain the poems in prose. Everything I wanted to say is already there. They’re poetic visions. When I want to write analytical texts, I do that separately.
Perhaps I’ll only mention postmodernism, which I regard as an intellectual dead end. I’m much more sympathetic to the theory of radical modernity. From that perspective, post-truth is simply a euphemism concealing either lies or bullshit. Likewise, post-heroism is a euphemism for cowardice—including intellectual cowardice.
Most people have grown tired of progress because they no longer see what it offers them personally. That’s why regressive thinkers have become increasingly influential. They constantly promise to take us “back,” yet never specify exactly how far back, nor where controlled regression is supposed to stop before it turns into uncontrolled decline.
Those are precisely the kinds of theories that dominate today’s russian federation, and they are one of the causes of the current conflict. Ukrainians are being dragged somewhere they absolutely do not belong.
Your recent work brings together Buddhism, Kabbalah, alchemy, folklore, artificial intelligence, speculative science, internet culture and your latest experiments with microtonality. What connects these seemingly disparate references within your artistic thinking? And what new possibilities did reviving Blemish after almost thirty years open up for you?
I simply made something that interested me artistically without worrying too much about whether it would “find its audience.”
I received a number of encouraging responses from people whose opinions matter to me. At the same time, it became clear that Ukraine lacks the infrastructure capable of bringing this kind of music to a wider public.
Perhaps I’ll eventually put together a trio to perform Blemish songs live.
Where? That’s another question.
Just as they did thirty years ago, most event organisers still believe in the magical power of formats™. They rarely bother to study what real, living people actually want.
Paradoxically, it’s easier for me to get booked for an instrumental improvisation session than for performances of these songs.
Then again, if I start missing the song form once more, I’ll simply write another song—or two, or seven.
Who’s going to stop me?
Listening to Blemish today, it’s striking how different it sounded from most Ukrainian alternative music in 1994. Tracks such as “The Drawing” and “Song About You” inhabit a surreal world of strange infatuations, wandering and dream logic, while the music itself seems to avoid both rock orthodoxy and the expectations of the local scene. What kind of artistic world were you trying to create at the time? Was Blemish a response to post-Soviet reality, or rather an attempt to invent a separate imaginary universe?
Definitely a separate imaginary universe.
I followed my own visions and intuitions, with some advice from colleagues who were themselves visionaries rather than people reacting to reality according to the usual fight-or-flight reflex.
With a different line-up, Blemish turned into something completely different.
It’s also important to remember that I was working with an entirely different set of tools. A generative drum machine instead of step sequencing. Much fatter synthesizers. My own microtonal tuning systems. Digital multitrack recording instead of bouncing overdubs between two cassette recorders.
Technically speaking, I think I’ve done everything much better this time around. And yet I still haven’t had any hits.
So where exactly is the problem? Is it me personally? The universe itself? Or perhaps our local tastemakers, who seem to prefer acting as gatekeepers rather than discovering new talent?
Omni appeared only a few months after Blemish, yet it sounds like an entirely different project. Inha Blazhchuk’s invented language replaces conventional lyrics, allowing melody, timbre and sonic poetry to take centre stage. What inspired you to abandon ordinary language? Did you see Omni as an attempt to discover a more universal—or perhaps subconscious—form of communication than was possible in Blemish?
I wanted to give Inha the opportunity to reveal another side of herself. And I asked Yurchenko to help. Sometimes simply changing the chairs that the same people are sitting on changes everything.
For me, the voice is first and foremost a musical instrument. Only afterwards does it become a vehicle for verbal meaning. If a poem is truly good, it tells you itself how it wants to be sung. Or perhaps it shouldn’t be sung at all, but spoken as recitative. An invented language immediately opens a different channel of communication.
I’ve often thought about using artificial languages in music. For example, a syllabary based on Ukrainian phonetics. The sounds would remain exactly the same—but where would the meanings go? They would disappear. Only emotion would remain. And not just one or two emotions. At least nine, as taught by the classical Indian theory of aesthetics. Not simply major for dancing and minor for squeezing out tears. But Peace, Heroism, Wonder, and many others.
Many of your works return repeatedly to alternative ways of perceiving the world: microtonality, invented languages, mythology, dreams, esoteric traditions, speculative histories and philosophical paradoxes. What questions occupy you most as an artist today, and where do you see your creative journey heading?
I’d like to expand the Society of Witnesses to Microtonal Music.
At the very least, enough so that I’ll have people to jam with and people to record fixed compositions with. Hopefully an audience will gradually grow alongside us.
Microtonality is actually much better suited to human hearing than the equal division of the octave into twelve semitones. It’s one of those rare moments where ancient Pythagorean number theory and modern psychoacoustics reinforce one another.
And if some nineteenth-century Theory™ still insists that microtonality is of no possible value—well, so much the worse for that theory.
It’s relatively easy for me to imagine what I’ll be playing tonight. These ideas simply revolve around in my head, asking to be organised and transformed into sound coming out of loudspeakers. Sometimes a synthesizer texture creates such a compelling relationship between verticality (pitch) and horizontality (time) that the texture itself begins attracting all the other elements it needs. That’s how entirely new musical forms emerge—forms discovered through unconventional means.
I have enough instruments. I have more microtonal scales than I have had time to explore properly. What I occasionally lack is free time. And sometimes I simply lack companions to play duos, trios or larger ensembles with.
What does it mean to you to be Ukrainian today? And if you had to explain Ukraine to someone who knew almost nothing about it through one film, one album, one monument, one dish, one meme, one song, one book and one work of art, what would you choose, and why?
It means living among your own people, on your own soil, according to your own laws and customs. I suppose that’s what sovereignty is.
- A film? Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Parajanov, an Armenian, understood us in a more interesting way than some of his ethnically Ukrainian colleagues. He was also a style icon in Kyiv, and people still imitate him today.
- An album? The one I’ve been trying to record since 1993.
- A monument? Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.
- A dish? Most people would say borscht. But Ukrainian cuisine should be experienced as a whole. Borscht alone isn’t enough.
- A book? Everyone knows Shevchenko’s Kobzar, and rightly so—it’s one of the great monuments of the Romantic era. Emotionally, though, I feel closer to Vasyl Stus.
JULY 6, 2026 – DNIPRO
I’m an artist based in Dnipro, Ukraine. Music came into my life not because I wanted to become a musician. At some point I simply realized that some images are easier to express through sound than through painting. Music had been with me since my years at art college. Back then I used to record my first ideas on a simple voice recorder. For a long time, they were just small experiments.
Before Collage Y, a friend and I had another music project called Chorni Tury (“Black Tours”). It has existed since around 2011. We were most active between 2011 and 2015, and now we only return to it occasionally. It’s very different from what I do now — more improvisation and poetry than finished compositions.
Then I noticed that individual tracks became less interesting to me. What interests me now is watching how a small image, or a soundscape, slowly, almost imperceptibly, begins to take on a life of its own.
I live and work in Dnipro. The war became part of the reality in which these albums were made.
I think Collage Y would have appeared even without the war. Music had been important to me long before 2022. But the war changed the way I see many things and, of course, it also found its way into the music.
In less than six months you’ve released Mechanical Voice, Маніфест DA-DA (DA-DA Manifesto), and now Inside. Although each explores collage and abstraction, they seem to move in different directions: Mechanical Voice imagines a dialogue between human memory and machine logic, DA-DA Manifesto embraces glitch, repetition and controlled chaos, while Inside withdraws into what you describe as “a sound contained within a closed system.” Do you see these records as parts of a larger artistic trajectory?
I don’t see these albums as a planned series. To me, they’re simply different states, or different moments in working with an image.
Everything usually begins very simply — with a feeling, a sound, or an image. I never know where it will lead. I just watch how it changes.
Mechanical Voice gradually began to feel like movement — almost like a signal, or a memory repeating itself. Over time it found a more continuous structure, almost like a story.
DA-DA Manifesto is built more around chance and fragments. It’s a collage where the encounter between elements matters more than their development.
Inside is a different state. More still and more inward. I became interested in how sound exists within a limited space, rather than how it moves outward.
None of this was planned as three separate directions. It’s simply something I begin to understand while I’m working, or sometimes only after the work is finished.
Inside is built around the idea that “nothing enters from outside; only internal signals remain.” It almost reads as a metaphor for psychological isolation or introspection. Were you thinking about interiority in a personal sense, or does this closed system also reflect something about living through wartime, where external reality can become overwhelming?
Inside is a way of working with sound in a closed space.
I didn’t begin with the idea of isolation or a particular psychological state. What interested me was what happens to sound when it remains inside a system.
While I’m working, I feel as if I’m inside the process myself. I’m part of it. It’s simply a way of working with sound and with time.
When an album is finished, it begins to exist separately from me. That’s when I can listen to it for the first time, instead of still being inside it.
Sound collage has always balanced accident with intention. Your music often transforms found textures, glitches and mechanical artefacts into something strangely coherent. How much of your work is carefully composed, and how much depends on chance, software behaviour, or discovering unexpected relationships between sounds?
I don’t think of it as a fully controlled process.
I usually begin with something very simple — a sound, a fragment, or a texture. Then I listen to how it interacts with other sounds. Sometimes unexpected combinations appear.
Some decisions are conscious. I might remove something or change it. But many things emerge simply through the interaction between sounds.
What matters to me isn’t creating a perfectly planned form. It’s noticing the moment when different elements begin to connect. Sometimes that connection appears on its own, and I simply try not to get in its way.
Since the full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian artists have had to reconsider their relationship to society, history, and politics. Do you think the role of the artist changes during wartime? Should musicians feel a responsibility to respond to current events, or is preserving spaces of ambiguity and abstraction equally important?
For me, the role of an artist hasn’t really changed because of the war.
Sometimes outside events become very present, even when I’m working with abstract things or with sound. But I prefer not to explain them directly.
What matters to me is simply staying present and continuing to work, even if that work is quiet and almost unnoticed.
My music isn’t tied to a particular country or place. It’s abstract, with very few words and no direct references.
But I live in the reality around me, and that inevitably becomes part of what I make, even if I don’t try to put it into words.
To me, the important question isn’t what the music is about, but how it comes into being.
Looking back over the past four years, are there any Ukrainian albums that you feel have captured the experience of the full-scale invasion—or contemporary Ukrainian life more broadly—in a particularly meaningful way?
I don’t follow the Ukrainian music scene closely enough to see it as a whole.
There are artists I’ve been listening to for many years and still return to — Volodymyr Ivasyuk and the early albums of Okean Elzy, for example.
There are also individual musicians whose approach means a lot to me. One of them is Кажуть Подешевшало, who mastered my releases. I really like his music. Every time I listen to it, I find myself wondering how he does it.
A lot of my inspiration also comes from Japanese electronic music. I’m especially drawn to Susumu Yokota, Nobukazu Takemura, Meitei, H. Takahashi, and Yutaka Hirose. They all have a very careful way of working with atmosphere, space, and sound.
What can we expect from you in the future?
Right now, it simply feels like I want to try things I haven’t done before and move into different states of sound.
Maybe something completely different. More raw. More energetic.
Or maybe… an acid techno album.
If you had to introduce someone unfamiliar with Ukraine through a single book, film, artwork, monument or building, meme, album, and song, what would you choose—and why?
It’s difficult for me to choose just one.
If I had to recommend a book, it would be Notes of a Ukrainian Madman by Lina Kostenko. It still feels remarkably relevant today. Or Palimpsests by Vasyl Stus—that’s a different kind of conversation altogether, one that feels timeless.
If I had to choose a film, it would be The Lost Letter (Propala Hramota) by Borys Ivchenko, with Ivan Mykolaichuk in the leading role. There’s something about that film that captures the Ukrainian character, humour, and sense of freedom in a very subtle way.
In painting, I’d mention Mykola Pymonenko and Ukrainian Night by Arkhip Kuindzhi.
As for music, I’d recommend Volodymyr Ivasyuk, old Ukrainian folk recordings from the Kuban region, and the work of Taras Kompanichenko and Khoreia Kozatska. I keep coming back to their music.
JULY 6, 2023 – LUTSK
My name is Vlad Pochebula. I was born in Netishyn, a town in Khmelnytskyi region near a nuclear power plant. In 2018, I moved to Lutsk to study journalism, and since then Lutsk has become my second home.
Music appeared in my life even earlier. In high school, I started writing lyrics, rapping, and trying myself as an artist. I already came to Lutsk with this feeling that I wanted to be on stage, write songs, work with sound, and develop myself in music.
But in Ukraine, you often think of creativity as an ideal plan that, most likely, may never happen. Especially if you want to be not an academic musician, but a rapper, DJ, or independent artist. So almost automatically, the idea of a “normal” profession, some kind of insurance, a backup plan appears. For me, journalism became that kind of foundation.
After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I stayed in Lutsk. In 2023, I became part of the environment around the urban NGO misto.reboot, which was just beginning to form at that time. At first, for me, it was more like a continuation of journalism and communications: writing, explaining, working with texts, and talking about the city in an understandable language. But very quickly, the civic sector opened something bigger for me.
Before that, I often perceived any job as a transitional stage before music. As if the main goal was to one day fully move into creativity. And then another feeling appeared: I wanted not only to keep searching for where I could get something, win something, or take something for myself, but also to think about what I could share, who I could support, whose path I could light up a little, and what opportunities I could create for others.
At the same time, I felt a need to understand my own local identity more deeply. Lutsk became not just the city where I live, but an environment that I want to understand, support, and develop. In 2022, I felt very clearly: being an artist is great, but if there is no stage around you, no venues, no community, and no cultural infrastructure, then you have to not only create your own music, but also build the space where this music can sound.
That is how the first events began: charity hip-hop parties, which later grew into the Volyn cultural platform De Tse Bulo? At first, we simply wanted to combine hip-hop and electronic music at local events. Later, we came to a wider idea: to create an environment that could remain after us.
So now I do not really separate music, journalism, communications, and urban activism anymore. For me, these are different tools for working with the same community.
As a musician, I work with sound, emotion, and personal experience. As a communications specialist, I work with language, meanings, and explaining complex processes. As part of Misto.Reboot, I work with the city, space, and the interaction between people. As part of De Tse Bulo?, I work with the cultural scene, artists, and opportunities for local music.
For me, all of this is about one thing: how people in a city can hear each other better, trust each other, and create something together that is stronger than what each person could create alone. I feel like I am testing a theory for myself: that interaction has a greater impact than constant competition.
In Lutsk, this is felt very clearly. Here, culture and urbanism already naturally intertwine: in events, spaces, festivals, educational programmes, and support for local artists. For me, these are no longer separate fields. This is one ecosystem, in which I feel organically present and together with which I want to grow.
Lutsk doesn’t usually receive the same international attention as Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Odesa, yet through projects such as Misto.Reboot, Urban Vision Lutsk, and DCBL you’ve been actively documenting and reshaping the city’s cultural life. How would you describe the sense of community in Lutsk today? Has the full-scale invasion strengthened local networks and civic engagement, and what makes the city a distinctive place to create music and culture?
Lutsk really does not receive the same international attention as Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Odesa. But it seems to me that there is something special in this: many processes here happen more quietly, less visibly from the outside, but very meaningfully from within.
Of course, it is important to say honestly that because of its location in western Ukraine, Lutsk is in a relatively safer situation than cities closer to the front line, or cities that experience massive attacks much more often. This does not mean that the war is not felt here. It is felt constantly: through losses, air raid alerts, mobilisation, fatigue, the news, volunteering, the presence of soldiers, and the experience of internally displaced people. But at the same time, there is a little more space here not only to survive, but also to think about the future.
And it seems to me that part of the Lutsk community felt this very clearly. If your city has the possibility to work, gather people, create events, open spaces, and build new connections, then this is no longer just a privilege. It is a responsibility. When other cities are experiencing destruction every day, you do not have the right to simply wait for better times. You have to invest in your own environment now.
The full-scale invasion definitely strengthened local connections and civic activity in Lutsk. But I do not think it created this activity from zero. It had existed before: in cultural initiatives, the civic sector, urban discussions, and volunteer communities. The war rather highlighted very sharply who was ready to act, take responsibility, and work with the city not only as a place of residence, but as a shared cause.
How would I describe the Lutsk community today? Probably as a community of people who care very deeply about their city. There are many fans of Lutsk here. And that matters. Yes, we are all very tired. Yes, Lutsk can be conservative in some ways. But at the same time, there is a great openness here to new experiences, to rethinking ourselves, and to talking about local identity.
It seems to me that many Ukrainian cities are now going through a new stage of self-awareness. People are beginning to ask themselves more deeply: who are we, where are we from, what makes our place special, and what story do we want to tell about ourselves? This is also very noticeable in Lutsk. And I think that thanks to local communities, cultural initiatives, and the civic sector, the city’s brand has become stronger in recent years.
If we speak specifically about the music community, it seems to me that it is only now entering the stage of self-awareness. For a long time in Lutsk, there were many separate small bubbles: someone was doing something in a garage, someone was writing music at home, someone was playing electronic music, someone was doing hip-hop, but all these people did not always see each other. Now they are beginning to come out of their separate niches, get to know each other, look at each other more closely, and understand that they are not alone.
For me, this is a very important process. That is why we created a community chat, develop events around DCBL, and are working on the music and educational space SKIT. It is important for us to give this community not only online communication, but also a physical place where people can meet, try things, make mistakes, record, play, listen to each other, and grow together.
What makes Lutsk a special place for creating music and culture? First of all, it is the scale of the city. Lutsk is small enough for people to find each other quickly, but alive enough for different scenes, initiatives, and conflicts of ideas to appear here. The closeness between people can become an advantage here.
Secondly, it is the development of the civic sector and the culture of interaction. In a small city, competition can exhaust everyone very quickly. That is why it is especially important to learn not only to compete, but also to negotiate, collaborate, share resources, and support one another.
Thirdly, it is a very strong, but still not sufficiently explored, cultural and natural context. Volyn, Polissia, rivers, swamps, forests, local mythology, traditional music, crafts, stories of towns and villages — all of this is huge material for contemporary culture. It seems to me that many artists are only beginning to touch it.
For example, on the territory of the Luchanka factory, where we are now developing a space, there is a workshop of a master of traditional instruments. And for me, this is very symbolic: electronic music, hip-hop, urban projects, traditional instruments, and new cultural formats can exist side by side. This is not a contradiction. On the contrary, something very interesting can be born precisely in such combinations.
So for me, Lutsk today is a city that has not yet fully told its own story. And perhaps that is why it is so interesting to create here. There is still a lot that has not been named, not explored, not voiced. And we have a chance to do this carefully, meaningfully, and together.
Your work often revolves around territory—not only through urban planning and public space revitalisation, but also through documenting Volyn’s underground music scene and supporting local artists. Do you think music can change the way people relate to the places they live? Has working so closely with Lutsk’s streets, neighbourhoods, and public spaces influenced the way you write lyrics, produce music, or think about sound?
Yes, I definitely believe that music can change the way people perceive the places where they live. And for me, this is not an abstract idea, but a very personal experience.
When you begin to work more deeply with territory, you gradually start to look at yourself differently. I began to feel my belonging more strongly: as a Ukrainian, as a Volynian, as a person for whom Lutsk has become home. Volyn’s history, its symbols, landscapes, mythology, and traditional culture all give an artist a new depth. It is as if you receive a wider context in which your creativity no longer exists by itself, but is connected to place, people, and memory.
For me, space is not only about walls, streets, or architecture. It is also about people, connections, atmosphere, shared care, and the environment you build around yourself. The Luchanka factory has influenced me very strongly. This is where our space is now developing, and where I have a small improvised recording studio in Maksym Son’s last workshop. For many residents, Luchanka is not just a location, but a place that has almost become home.
We do not only organise events there. Together with the residents, we take care of the territory, clean it, work with the space, created a pedestrian route to the factory, and try to gently open access to the river and interact with nature without violence towards it. And when you are so physically involved in a place, it begins to influence your thinking, your lyrics, and your sound.
It seems to me that there is a certain chthonic quality in Lutsk and Volyn music, which is very connected to the nature around us: rivers, swamps, forests, fogs, and riverside areas. This can sound in different genres. For example, in the band Styr — sludge and doom metal — this dark, heavy, natural energy is felt very strongly. And I do not think this is accidental. The landscape influences the sound.
There have also been more Volyn and natural images in my own lyrics. Not necessarily architectural or literally urban images, but images connected to land, water, mythology, and local memory. I began to think more not only about the city as built environment, but about the city as part of a wider landscape.
I am also very interested in traditional music. At the same Luchanka, there is Dmytro’s Bereziuk workshop — he is a master of traditional instruments. And for me, it is very powerful that you can cut elder wood near the factory, bring it to the workshop, and make a flute from it. I have such a flute hanging in my studio now. It is a very simple, but very strong connection between place, material, hands, sound, and memory.
I think that in the future there will be more reinterpretation of traditional music, local instruments, natural landscapes, and Volyn’s mythical quality in my music. Right now, I am learning more about writing electronic music, and I am very interested in combining it with traditional sound — not as a decorative element, but as a living context.
It is also important for me to document places as they are now. Because reality shows that any street, riverbank, riverside area, workshop, or even an entire factory that has become home for someone can one day disappear or change beyond recognition. In this sense, music can be a way to preserve the feeling of a place and pass it on.
So yes, my interaction with Lutsk, its spaces, streets, nature, and people has very strongly influenced the way I write, the way I think about sound, and the way I see myself as an artist. I no longer perceive music separately from territory. For me, it is a way of listening to the place where I live and responding to it with my own voice.
Many people outside Ukraine are familiar with the country’s music through artists from larger cities, but much less is known about the scenes developing in places like Lutsk and across Volyn. If you wanted to introduce someone to the region through culture, which local musicians, venues, community initiatives, or cultural projects would you recommend? And more broadly, are there any recent Ukrainian albums from the past four years that you feel have captured the experience of the country in a particularly meaningful or innovative way?
When we talk about Ukrainian music and artists from big cities, I think it is always worth asking: where are these people actually from? Because many Ukrainian artists who now work in Kyiv, Lviv, abroad, or in larger cultural centres actually come from smaller cities and regions. And Volyn is no exception.
Maybe we are already just very passionate about Lutsk and Volyn, but the Volyn diaspora in culture is truly large. There are many talented people from Volyn who work in different cities and countries, even if they do not always publicly build their personal brand around their small homeland.
If I wanted to introduce someone to the region through culture, I would start with musicians and people who work with Volyn in very different ways.
In hip-hop, R&B, and soul, I would definitely recommend Matviy M. and рома майк. These are artists through whom you can feel the contemporary voice of the region, its language, intonations, and emotional state.
Separately, I would recommend getting to know Dmytro Bereziuk, a master of traditional instruments and the founder of Volyn Field. For me, he is one of the strongest examples of a person through whom you can literally hear how Volyn Polissia sounds. He works with traditional instruments, local materials, memory, craft, and sound. When friends or guests come to Lutsk, I often take them to his workshop, because it is a very honest way to get to know Volyn.
I would also mention the band “Styr”. This is heavy, slow, chthonic sound — sludge, doom, stoner metal — which for me resonates very strongly with the Volyn landscape. They call their initiative Polissian Witchcraft, and you can already feel their connection to Polissia in that. For many years, the guys have been supporting the heavy scene in Lutsk: organising concerts, bringing bands here, and introducing the local audience to different heavy music.
From electronic music, I would recommend paying attention to Volodymyr Gnatenko, shjva and Dmytro Faraday. These are very different artists, but in their music you can find interesting ways of working with electronic sound, rhythm, minimalism, ambient, breaks, or four-on-the-floor kick. I would also mention the band Shum and the artist Daryna Panas. Daryna has a wonderful one-hour set with Volyn Field on YouTube, recorded during our event Bluk in Lutsk. I would recommend listening to this exact recording as a very atmospheric introduction to the local sound.
If we speak not only about musicians, but also about cultural initiatives, I would recommend following the project Дім Пако [Dim Pako – Pako house]. It is a cultural residency dedicated to Yurko Pokalchuk — a writer, translator, musician, patron, and a person who influenced many Ukrainian artists. For Lutsk, he is an important figure, but it seems to me that even in the city itself, not enough people know about him. Dim Pako works not only with his creative work, but also with his way of thinking: openness, support for others, attention to young people and to those who often lack a voice.
I would also recommend paying attention to Harmyder Theatre. It is a very progressive independent theatre in Lutsk. It is a good example of how the cultural ecosystem already works in the city: Dim Pako and Harmyder staged a performance together based on Yurko Pokalchuk’s novella Ozernyi Viter, and the music for it was created by Daryna Panas. For me, this is a very symbolic story: literature, theatre, music, local memory, and contemporary culture can work together.
As for venues and spaces, I would of course mention the Luchanka factory, where many cultural processes are now developing, as well as our future music and educational space SKIT. It is important for us that Lutsk has not only events, but also places where artists can meet, rehearse, record, learn, exchange experience, and feel that they are not alone.
In fact, many more people and projects could be named. But if we are talking about the contemporary, living, and diverse sound of Volyn, then I would recommend starting with these names, initiatives, and spaces.
Finally, are there any albums from the past four years that have managed to capture current events in a meaningful way for you or that felt fresh and innovative?
First of all, this is the Kharkiv band TYSK. I am really waiting for their full-length album, because what they are already doing now, in my opinion, very accurately conveys the experience of Ukraine — and especially the experience of Kharkiv. Their music has the energy of a city that lives under constant pressure. There is anger, observation, adaptation, strength, and a desire not only to survive, but to continue creating culture. Anton’s lyrics, Sasha Pervukhin’s music, the energy at their concerts — all of this, for me, very precisely conveys the feeling of “reinforced concrete” Kharkiv.
Also, at one point, Andrii Barmalii’s album Autoportrait really surprised me. I do not know if I would call it innovative in the direct sense, but for me it was definitely a work that opened up unexpectedly and left a strong impression.
And one more very important direction for me is Покам, also known as Bob Kroma, and his collaborations with different artists and beatmakers: Polarpalm, Lasta, Wootabi, and others. In particular, I would recommend the albums Стріха, ВАГА, and Плесо— the collaborative work by Polarpalm and Покам.
For me, this is very interesting contemporary Ukrainian music, because there is careful work with material there: with samples, instrumentals, skits, atmosphere, and the construction of concept. It is not just a collection of tracks, but an attempt to work with sound, memory, local intonations, and contemporary Ukrainian experience in a very concentrated and delicate way.
If someone wants to hear Ukraine in its diversity — not only through obvious big names or direct wartime statements, but through more local, attentive, genre-interesting, and sometimes unexpected forms — I would definitely recommend starting with these examples.
JULY 10, 2026 – BERLIN and KRAKOW
Heyo! Dmytro and Sofiia here:) We’re friends since carefree times of cultural projects of NGO VIDLIK PROJECTS for youth in Kramatorsk, still rolling around. Dmytro is experimental musician based in Berlin, performing since 2022 as solo act and in various collaborations. Sofiia is based in Krakow, where she studies visual arts and develops her other project D016. She is the only one who received some form of music school when she was younger, yet doubting if it helped or harmed her.
Has the full-scale invasion changed the way you think about sound and music and has it changed your setup and playlist?
Sirens became annoying and cheesy. No offense to dub sirens though. Generally, I think I (Dmytro) started searching more realness in music, specifically in the one which is covering some hardcore death/dystopia/loose of senses type of motives. Randomly, I hate some of namings lately. Like, there is a guy in Berlin whose nickname is „Human Safari“. And he‘s just a DJ doing commercial something. I really hate him for that name ha-ha.
Ataraxia is described as an album about inner peace despite catastrophe, but the title track begins with a declaration of speech, protest, irritation, refusal and destruction. How do you understand “ataraxia” here: as calmness, resistance, exhaustion, or the attempt to find equilibrium inside aggression?
If we try to conceptualize it a bit, I think the structure of the album implies some for of claim: for authenticity/disobedience and freedom in it. Finding freedom and peace in tension around you.
Sofiia’s lyrics often move through very physical, everyday images — sticky skin on a beach, a bathroom turned into a jungle, a broken battery, hunger, stench, trains, rivers, gates. How do these fragments usually become songs? Do they begin as observations, memories, emotional states, or something more surreal?
I think about lyrics the same way I think about my life: I write about everything that unsettles me. The surreal elements, to some extent, come from the fact that I overinterpret my own existence. I’m simply trying to describe the way rooms, eyelids, eyelashes, and fingernails press down on me. I try to do it through visual imagery.
For a long time, I simply couldn’t believe that reality was actually like this. I don’t know – I just constantly need to describe this reality so that it will finally leave me alone. But at the same time, I’m trying to turn this abstraction into something larger.
“Bathroom Jungle” was inspired by Susan Sontag’s essay Regarding the Pain of Others. The lyrics for “AN55A” were inspired by memories of traveling to Crimea, memories that have been returning to me more and more often lately.
My lyrics don’t carry that much meaning for me. I just can’t not write them. Writing is the way I digest information. I simply hope they’ll end up meaning something to someone else.
Musically, the album avoids conventional song structures, moving instead through harsh asymmetric sound canvases, industrial textures and trip-hop traces. How do the two of you work together to connect Dmytro’s sonic experiments with Sofiia’s voice and lyrics, and how important was it for the album to feel unstable while still reaching toward peace?
This is the first time we actually recorded and produced the majority of tracks together in one place – at my home studio in Berlin. Usually, we do this work digitally, which is, well, way way worth. It was long, mind-blurring sessions with extreme coffee doses ha-ha. I think we were reaching a lot of middle grounds between what me and Sofiia like, creating a lot of space for this very inventive vocal melodies, in my opinion.
It’s hard to say, I think we naturally go darker from more “pop” stuff we did before. However we still wanted a lot of rhythm and groove, and I honestly think some of the tracks fuck:)
So to summarize, a lot of intuitive stuff, but also wrapped into my (Dmytro) fascination with early industrial.
Ataraxia is released in Kotra and Zavoloka’s fundrasing label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free. After over four years since the full-scale invasion, international attention towards Ukraine has been waining, at the same time, increased balissitc missles attacks on the country with Ukraine also hitting several strategic targets within Russia seem to have redrawn the power balance. From a cultural point of view, what do you think should be done to keep Ukraine in the spotlight?
I think doing honest work like I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free is the way. We should integrate in Europe on equal basis, not from position of vulnerability, as it is the position that separates and secludes us in wanabe inclusive European environment. Honest reflection will be visible and feelable through even the most abstract instruments.
Since the full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian artists have had to reconsider their relationship to society, history, and politics. Do you think the role of the artist changes during wartime? Should musicians feel a responsibility to engage with current events, or is preserving artistic autonomy equally important?
I am able to answer only part of the question: modern art is reactionary to social-political events, disregarding if you agree or disagree to actively engage. Being honest about things that bother you and creating your work with this recognition is the way. I don’t even know what is worth: creating political piece imitating your concern/pain/empathy or compromising with industry per say and exclude radical political topics in your work. It sucks to be any of this polarities.
How do you see the industrial and experimental music scene developing in Ukraine under present circumstances?
We are not the ones to give judgement to it, as we don’t live in Ukraine. However, I believe that due to conservation of scene, there are a lot of fresh and radical ideas and senses being born here. Writing it straight before our concert in Dnipro today, and I can say that it is to be respected how self-centered and proud scene here is. In Dnipro and Kyiv we were/are proud to share stage with really outstanding experimental musicians: Oleksii Podat, Chloë Landau, KSZTALT and Parking Spot.
Lastly, from what I heard, currently scene is experiencing really complicated times, a lot of people are in disbelief, which I completely get why.
Are there any Ukrainian albums from the past four years that have captured current events in a meaningful way for you or that has managed to be both thought provoking and innovative bringing a distinctive Ukrainian sound to a larger international audience?
- Cluster Lizard – Herts
- Chloë Landau – Dream House
- Ujif_Notfound – Postulate
- Machukha – MOCHARI
Each of this albums are limbos between eternal darkness and light, which I deeply love. Also, absolutely non-conventional ideas and approach to rhythms, lyrics, energy and super-super real people.
What does it mean to be Ukrainian today? And if you had to explain Ukraine to someone unfamiliar with the country through a single film, album, monument, dish, meme, song, book, and artwork, what would you choose and why?
Been thinking about this question for a week at least… looking for the meme I was thinking about. Maybe i find it, but so far – picture of sticker in files…
NEW RELEASES
Mires ~ Electic Observe
Музична Шкатулка [Muzychna Shkatulka] ~ Donbas in Memoriam
This work is dedicated to my home – the Donbas.
kole ~ Agraphia; dyslexia; delusions; death; Lazarus sign; solace.
laptop, synth loop, delay, very slow black abyss diving.
originally a two-hour recorded live delayed synth melody loop, slightly edited and abridged to 29 / 30 minutes.
støïbrok ~ smalltalk
small clean guitar improvisations
User Kyx ~ Xism
Rhythm Büro ~ VA – All Things Broken
The perfect Summer vibe, a wonderfully cohesive blend of ambient and techno bringing together international and Ukrainian artists. Rhythm Büro at their best.
NOISOID ~ Imprisoned Ocean
An ambient drone album inspired by Susanna Clarke’s book, Piranesi.
The world in Piranesi is a huge, mysterious house, not quite of this world, with endless halls and ocean tides flowing through it. To me, it feels like an in-between place — empty, sacred, and suspended outside ordinary reality. But it’s also more than just a limbo. It’s a refuge, a quiet place away from the outside world.
That feeling became the heart of the album — a place where being alone slowly starts to feel almost peaceful.
A long drone improvisation became the foundation of the album. I cut it into short loops, pitched them down, and stretched them in time. Later I added small melodic synth fragments, field recordings, and noise.
The album unfolds slowly, like moving through silent abandoned halls.
“…a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls. I closed my eyes. I felt calm.”
— Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
Andrey Sirotkin ~ Nothing Behind The Words
Nothing Behind The Words is a study of statements that carry no weight. Promises made without cost, identities shaped by what is said but never tested. Between intention and action there is a gap—this record lives inside it. Raw, stripped, and unresolved, it reflects a reality where words are easy, but nothing stands behind them.
Koloah ~ Residual Future
Six tracks of futuristic electro exploring the space between machine rhythms, deep bass pressure, and human expression. Driven by sharp drum programming, distinctive vocal elements, and immersive synth work, Koloah creates a sound that feels both mechanical and emotional.
“Residual Future” moves with energy and detail — blending robotic voices, broken grooves, and atmospheric textures into a powerful vision of modern electro.
iiuoiim ~ пuiiс
An album of collaborative experimentation of Khrystyna Kirik and Yuri Boyko.
“This music extends through a distance that remains close, never fully arriving yet never truly disappearing. It holds tension as a continuous state of becoming: tightening and releasing at the same time, without resolution.” – iiuoiim
This album unfolds as a shared field where sounds turn into flow, flow into melody, melody into circles. Sometimes melted, sometimes rough, sometimes tender, sometimes strange.
Михайлове Чудо [Michael’s Miracle] ~ Проводи русалок між Дніпром і Десною [Mermaids’ processions between the Dnipro and Desna]
On the eve of the day of sending mermaids to the other world, we want the space to be filled with songs created especially for this event hundreds of years ago. In the days when you couldn’t walk past rye, when mermaids led people through the forest, when cornflowers were blue.. In this album you will hear mermaid songs from the interfluve of the Dnieper and Desna. We tried to reproduce the East Polesian timbres, calls and dialect, which gradually changes downstream of the Desna from Chernihiv, as accurately as possible.
Gender Studies ~ Часослов
Gender Studies presents its second album. It was recorded in Kyiv with an almost completely new line-up over the past two years. We’ve listened to it so many times while we were making it that we can’t give any objective assessment – so please tell us. Sometimes it’s hard to gather thoughts, and even more so sound combinations, but we tried. You manage to capture something, and everything else is scattered everywhere, go look for it now. Whatever you do, the best sounds are always unrecorded. When you think about it at three in the morning in a crowded reserved seat car, it feels good in its own way. The music is done, now it’s time to rest. Hooray!
støïbrok ~ abandonded.
Unused soundtrack for survival game.
Noneside ~ Sometimes I am Blinded by Beauty
The album from an association of Ukrainian artists called Noneside brought musicians and painters together under the famous words of the writer Lina Kostenko “Sometimes I’m Blinded By Beauty..”. The painting by contemporary figurative artist Danik Manzhos “Decadence/Zaruba” frames the prog, trance housy music of such performers as Saturated Color (Neptune Discs, Nerang Recordings), with a real acid test for you, JJ Fortune’s (Late Night Superglue, BOOOoo! Rizzwax) LSD trip remix on Lostlojic’s tune, Brooht (Mr.Banger, Silias Records) with summer electro fairy-tale, and Slava Los backs with his timeless work “M-14”. Mastered by Taras Bril, also awesome typefaces of Ivan Tsanko-Khlibovich used in design as always. First of all, this is the music of love and unity, wherever you are – at home dancing in the kitchen or on the big festival floor – common feelings will unite and spin you in a crazy rhythm, will make you understand that we are not strangers to each other. Together we dance for a better future!
Група Б ~ Це виглядало би добре навколо шиї [This would look good around the neck]
DOEPFER A-100 / KORG MS-20 / ROLAND JX-3P / MOOG MATRIARCH / SHERMAN FILTERBANK 2 DUAL / FENDER STRATOCASTER / SONY TC-630 / TAMA TECHSTAR TS305 / DIY ELEKTOR VOCODER / DIY STEREO GRISTLEIZER / VOX AC15C2 / DREADBOX ARTEMIS / DIY DUAL BENJOLIN / JOMOX T-RESONATOR II / BOSS EQ-200 / BOSS IR-2 / BOSS CE-3 / BOSS DS-1 / BOSS VO-1 / BOSS DD-8 / BOSS SL-2 / BOSS MT-2W / EHX MEMORY MAN WITH HAZARAI / EHX 95000 / EHX 22500 / EHX BASS BIG MUFF / DIY COMPANION FUZZ / ЕЛЕКТРОНІКА ЕМ-25 / ЛЕЛЬ РЦ
Hi guys! A lot of things, even in the modern world, are going around the church and religions. I don’t want to discuss anything about it, just because I think that every human being should choose their way and relationships with church, religion, and finally God. So, this album is only my subjective experience.
Sometimes I talk to myself. I think it’s okay. But sometimes, I also speak to god. Not in some weird way…I mean, I don’t need any medical help 🙂 It’s just like a one-way dialogue. Mostly, questions that will stay without any answer forever. This album is a kind of sum of those questions and thoughts reflected in music. Lyrics are proverbs about god, and my own rhymed words. There are not too many lyrics…but sometimes less is more. They are in Ukrainian, so if you want, you can translate them (all lyrics are available on Bandcamp).
Musically, this stuff sounds like nothing I’ve released before. It’s a mixture of a lot of musical genres + spoken words. The overall mood is energetic / dark / sad. Personally, I love this album. I think that this dialogue with god is the best one I’ve ever had. Enjoy ❤
CMYK // струнно-смичковий рейв СМИК ~ Весілля в Стратині [Wedding in Stratyn]
“I’ve already recorded you a whole wedding’s worth here!” said Mykola during the studio session — and that offhand remark turned out to be the perfect name for the album.
Wedding in Stratyn is 9 dance tunes — polkas, waltzes, and kolomyikas — that once rang out at every local feast and wedding in the region.
Stratynski Muzyky are an authentic village capella from the village of Stratyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, carrying on a tradition passed down from those who came before them.
VIEWING ROOM
(Gianmarco Del Re)