artwork by Mariia Primachenko
For this month’s episode we talk to Bayun the Cat about poetry, triggering sounds and the making of the collaborative album Blue and Yellow through Black and Gray. Our regular podcast on Resonance FM features Lesik Omodada and Yurii Bazaka from Musicians Defend Ukraine. We discuss the foundations’s work, its structure, its priorities and play a number of tracks selected by them.
We also feature an impressive crop of new releases by the likes of Pep Gaffe; Mary Druganova; anton malynovskyi; Lostlojic; InnerLicht; Zlele; Volodymyr Ponikarovskyi; Anthony Junkoid; Sexual Purity; Alexander Stratonov; Lugovskiy; Nikolaienko; Letromagnetique; Stas Koroliov; ummsbiaus and Khrystyna Kirik.
And to round things off, we feature Inglorious Officers: Russian Torturers in Kherson (with English subtitles), the latest investigative documentary scored by Alexander Stratonov as well as Nascence, the latest video from Ivan Skoryna, made for CTM.
Musicians Defend Ukraine
So, to begin with, here’s our podcast followed by our Spotify playlist.
tracklist:
Stasik – “Lullaby for the Enemy”
Lady Aphina – “Yakby ne ty”
Kurs Valüt – “Ni”
The Unsleeping – “Не сплю” [Ne splyu – I don’t sleep]
Пиріг і Батіг (Pyrih and Batih) – “Vesna”
Omodada – “Nove Zhyttia”
April 12, 2024 – KIYV
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background in music?
An impostor and charlatan pretending to be a musician.
The owner of a dubious past and an even more dubious future.
According to unconfirmed reports, I have hypnosis skills, actively using them to recruit musicians for duets and trios.
A principled ascetic, I work on minimal equipment.
As part of different bands, I played everything from pirate punk to Indian mantras, jammed everywhere a lot and ineptly.
For the last 10 years (as long as the Bayun the Cat project has existed), I’ve been on stage extremely rarely; it’s easier to say never.
I explore the adjacent territories between classical, ambient, world music, minimalism, improvisation and dark wave.
Has the full-scale invasion changed the way you think about sound and has it had an impact on your musical practice?
Surprisingly, the paralysis went away quite quickly. But not completely: sometimes it returns in different forms. More often, subtle muscle activity necessary for playing instruments, or free, spontaneous manifestations (improvisation), or long concentration on sound (mixing) are blocked. I have to constantly maneuver, look for what is possible now. Sometimes this might be organizing a collective project or recording ideas that other people can develop. A loophole can always be found.
I finally lost the desire to listen to and record something heavy and aggressive. Although some loud noises and some sharp sounds are quite acceptable. Even my beloved dark ambient has almost lost its relevance. The psyche went into self-preservation mode.
Could you tell us about the compilation Blue and Yellow through Black and Gray that you curated together with Pasha Brodskii? How did you go about selecting the musicians and pairing the music with the poems? Also, did it end up on Syrphe thanks to your previous collaboration on the Retrieving Beirut benefit compilation?
First of all, I would like to clarify that this is not a compilation. This is a large joint project in which most of the musicians actively supported and helped each other. While working on the particular, we always tried to keep the whole in mind.
All musicians are active participants in the Ambient and Experimental Music Community, know each other well and have extensive experience in collaborative projects. This is almost the same line-up that released the Communal Music, vol.10 vinyl on Real More Real in 2021. I offered them a choice of 12 poems recorded by poets themselves with line-by-line translation, and, as far as I remember, they made their choice quite quickly.
As for Syrphe, I was amazed by Cedrik’s ability to work with large charitable projects with completely non-commercial music. I saved his contact and decided to take advantage of this opportunity.
Two years on the full-scale invasion you have shown that it is still possible to make relevant and poignant fundraising compilations, but how can one avoid “war fatigue” and maintain the international attention on Ukraine?
Of course, they can be made, but they don’t attract as much attention and money as they did two years ago. Alas, it is impossible to avoid fatigue; it is in the nature of living beings – and not only living ones. You can try to delay this moment as much as possible, you can look for other forms and methods of influence – but in general the question is very complex and open.
I would like to believe that our activity (in addition to the audio album itself, we also made a video version of it with English subtitles) will play a role in maintaining attention to our country’s struggle – even if not on a political level, at least on an emotional level.
I saw with what readiness, with what zeal the musicians responded to this idea, how concerned they were with the overall result – and this, you know, is very inspiring! I didn’t see any fatigue in their words and actions!
What can you tell us about the making of A Point of Silence. Wartime Piano Impromptus (LP) and did it feel cathartic to make? Also, I am intrigued by the title. How would you say the acoustic ecology of Kyiv has changed and how do you relate to triggering sounds?
I don’t take this album seriously. This is pure therapy. Spontaneous emissions that ended as soon as the emotion subsided and a short-term point of silence occurred. It’s good if it has some significance as a document of the era. I saw that people were affected by these sounds – although there seemed to be nothing terrible in them – and therefore I decided to save these attempts for history. But speaking musically, I’m not Keith Jarrett, alas. I have another piano album – Fourteen Mornings, it is more meditative and more valuable to me. It’s as if this music is not mine, it just passed through me and still surprises me.
The words “acoustic ecology” make me laugh nervously. And this is Kyiv, not Kharkiv and not Odesa. My autistic son reacts more to the sounds of explosions. In order to somehow accept this strange and unpleasant innovation, he began to imitate them. Later it turned into a nervous tic that he could not control. At the end of improvisation number three in A Point of Silence you can hear him counting and sometimes a bear roar breaks through his voice – this is a direct consequence of the presence of distant (not always distant) explosions in our lives. Then he began to reproduce the siren sounds in the same way, and they were so realistic that people around us looked around in fear and checked their phones. It was completely impossible to control this.
By the way, “A Point of Silence 3” is the only improvisation performed on the kalimba. In the first months of the full-scale war, this instrument, which I had hardly touched before, became a real salvation for my psyche. And not only mine – my family usually also listened to these sounds and became quiet.
Following on from the previous question, how do you feel about the inclusion of war sounds and air raid sirens in recent tracks by young Ukrainian producers and what are your thoughts on bayraktar-core?
To be honest, I myself included an air raid sound on the album I’m currently working on together with British saxophonist JD Roberts. But here it is important to make a disclaimer that in our area there are no sirens nearby, and they do not wake us up at night. They are audible, but they are quite far away, and they sound simultaneously from different directions and with different phases. If it were not for the ominous context, it would be worth admitting that it sounds fascinating, like an interesting musical find, a kind of free acousmonium. In including these sounds in the album, I tried to make them sound more musical than scary, more like a feature of space than an object in the foreground…
In addition, I try to find sounds that would indicate the life of the capital in wartime, but would not frighten the listener. For example, a crowd of people on the subway waiting for the all-clear, and a small but very well-mannered boy asking permission to sit next to me. Or an old woman performing a popular Ukrainian melody near the metro station on an accordion with bass keys stuck. Or musicians who managed to have a big jam in a cafe after the ban on mass events was lifted. Of course, these are not explosions or sirens, and out of context their belonging to wartime is unnoticeable, but I myself know that these are also the sounds of war and they carry their own information.
As for the bayraktar-core we hardly notice it. It exists, and probably it is inevitable, because people are different and protect their psyche in different ways. We don’t listen to the radio or watch TV, loud music is rarely heard in the city, and music is completely banned on public transport, even in taxis. Somewhere, of course, something like this breaks through the city noise, but this is not the case when the music blatantly gets into your ears, driving you crazy. In the first months, the older children sometimes listened to and quoted such songs, and yes, it was fun and encouraging, but then it disappeared on its own. Along with the euphoria from the first victories and hopes for a quick end to the war.
Has the full-scale invasion prompted you to rediscover your Ukrainian musical heritage and has it made you question notions of identity?
I must admit that before 2014 I was of little interest in what kind of music, what kind of culture is inherent in the society I live in. Africans, Polynesians, Brazilians or Indians were much closer to me. It seems to me that the turning point was the recording I made during the Revolution of Dignity, daring to go to the Maidan on the day of the truce. I was lucky enough to meet a group of men from Lviv in a tent city, who sang rebel songs in several voices. It must be said here that one of my favorite records of all time is the acapella album English Rebel Songs by Chumbawamba. Here I heard something very similar – less neat, of course, but much more passionate and filled with the energy of the place and a real, ongoing life-or-death battle. What always pleasantly tickled the nerves, like the romance of distant times, suddenly turned out to be completely real and very close!
I can’t say that after that I plunged headlong into Ukrainian music, but something definitely shifted, and I felt that a certain reconfiguration had begun, which has noticeably intensified in the last two years. I found myself greatly influenced by Silvestrov – more than any other classical composer, perhaps on a par with Bach and Satie. We even lived not far from each other, but I have never seen him on the street – they say he almost never left his apartment. The Ukrainian underground of the 90s was a real discovery for me: Cukor Bila Smert, Foa Hoka, Yarn, Ihor Tsymbrovsky, Kazma Kazma, Valentina Goncharova…
I recently attended Svitlana Nianyo’s concert for the first time, it was an unforgettable experience. But I don’t feel it as something specifically Ukrainian; for me it’s part of the global musical process that I hadn’t noticed before. But when I dig up recordings by Hnat Khotkevych and other old bandura players, or Ukrainian funk and art-rock of the 70s, or the same rebel songs in different performances and versions – of course, completely different feelings come into play. And, probably, yes, it is appropriate to talk about identity here, especially when these musical excursions are convincingly supported by the sounds of alarms and shelling.
Are there any Ukrainian releases from the past two years that you feel can help make sense of current events?
Musical works, even if they have words, even if these words are politically charged, are far from political analytics. It is unlikely that they will be able to sort out the meaning of what is happening, and it is unlikely that they should do this. But they can definitely facilitate a certain emotional attunement and make you feel what we feel. And they probably even should do it, given the complexity of the current situation.
1. Without false modesty, I include our album, Blue and Yellow through Black and Gray, which was created precisely for this purpose, among such works.
2. Heinali’s album Kyiv Eternal is very indicative in this regard – exemplary nostalgic ambient, woven from the sounds of once peaceful Kyiv.
3. Victoria Poleva – “Bucha. Lacrimosa”. So far only on Youtube, but already in several versions. I prefer the premiere performance conducted by Oksana Lyniv. Very emotional post-minimalism – yes, sometimes scary, desperately hitting you on the head, but mostly achingly quiet, scratching your soul.
4. Pyrih i Batih – Zeleny. (Пиріг і Батіг – Зелений). Spiky chamber acoustic art-rock based on the poems of Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, the forever young poet-visionary of the Executed Renaissance era.
5. Ziferblat – Літаки (Airplanes) – A lush synth-heavy art-pop song in 5/8 with an unexpected climax. When paired with superb black and white video, it’s even more impressive. This is perhaps the most accessible of musical messages from wartime Ukraine – especially if you read the translation of the text.
Which book / film / album / song / traditional dish / podcast / blog / artwork / building / meme best captures Ukraine for you?
- Book: Ростислав Семків – Пригоди української літератури (‘Adventures of Ukrainian Literature’ by Rostyslav Semkiv)
- Film: Тіні забутих предків (‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors’ or ‘Wild Horses of Fire’)
- Album: Пиріг і Батіг – Зелений
- Song: Ігор Білозір та ВІА “Ватра” – Вівці мої, вівці
- Dish: Deruny (potato pancake), borsch, lard. How many people do you know who don’t eat meat but love lard? 🙂
- Building: Kyiv crematorium and the Wall of Memory (both in the design version and filled with concrete)
NEW RELEASES
V/A ~ Blue and Yellow through Black and Gray
To create this album, 12 Ukrainian poets (mostly young) joined forces with 15 musical projects from the USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and, of course, from Ukraine. Poems that were born in the first year of the war do not always talk about war, but the war is one way or another heard in every author’s voice. Line by line, these voices compose a song about the fullness of life on behalf of those whose lives are hunted. And the musical environment, abstract and melodic, noisy and Zen-like sparse, envelops and nourishes anxious voices, deciphers the indescribable with its language, exposes secret hints and alleviates the most painful things.
Mary Druganova ~ Dreamscapes
“This EP is my new step in piano compositions and has a special place in my heart.
Track “Longing” is my new approach in music composition, my reflections on events I went (and still going) through last two years – war in Ukraine, moving to another country, homesickness, and going through personal struggles as well.
September 25th – it’s the emotional almost improvisational piece, was written last year during the last weeks before I left my hometown, Kyiv. I tried to put there my feelings and emotions of leaving my dear home and travelling to completely another, parallel world.
And also it’s the first time I played and recorded a classical piece (Erik Satie’s “Berceuse”) – so simple but such a beautiful, minimalistic piece, written in 1913 that sounds so modern for these days.” – mary druganova
Recorded on Yamaha M2E upright piano at Mount Moon, Bloomington, IN.
anton malynovskyi ~ doppelgänger
“Doppelgänger – an evil double of a person, an image used in literature, film and psychology. I give it a slightly different meaning – the double is not evil, it is just different. I see in it an opportunity to live after it seems that life has already ended. I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately and trying to come to grips with my own mortality. This concept can be taken both literally and more metaphorically. Death does not have to be the end of physical life, it can be the completion of a major phase in life, etc. By creating my doppelganger, I interpret the last years of my life as something completely new, not what it was before. This is not the first such transition, and it seems to me that it will not be the last.”
V/A ~ Room Fiction Vol 1
“…whenever a pinch of delusion revamps the mission.
100% of the proceeds is to fund Ukrainian army.”
Osfill Klayse ~ Seaside
“What can you see on the coast line,
between your turbulent feelings and a straight blade of horizon,
in foaming rags of images and in a mirror of black waters?
You can’t take your words back,
you are staring at one point and thinking of death,
causing so much trouble to others,
you are very strange, Osfill.
But we are trying to hold your abrasive soul,
a thin watershed between inspired by awe
and inspired by horror.
Let the waves sing along,
Let the black vitrailed cosmos fall apart,
let just the melody from this shore remain.”
V/A ~ Underground Of Sievierodonetsk 17 Smells Of A Dead Chemical City
💾 We are pleased to present to you a collection of 17 underground bands from the city of Severodonetsk, Luhansk region, which is currently occupied by the Russian army. This compilation is a playlist of the frontman of the song and dance ensemble Mendeleev Was Wrong, Serhii Gorelov.
⚙️ “This is in no way a review of the local scene, but only those tracks that I can listen to, so some personalities iconic to the local scene are not here,” says Serhii Gorelov. — The scenes of cities in the east of Ukraine have always been very separate. And this sometimes created a specific aura, which could be expressed in the manifestation of some borderline detachment or derangement. Such a kind of “Japan” with its art samurais.
💿 In the compilation Underground Of Sievierodonetsk 17 Smells Of A Dead Chemical City, mostly experimental compositions are presented, and jazz, blues, hard rock are almost completely absent. The duration of the release is about 60 minutes. The cover design was developed by the outstanding Severodonetsk artist Ihor Matsyuk. “Many cities, closer to the east, lived in very unique and complex historical conditions (and, unfortunately, still complex), and because of this, the percentage of originality in the music should be staggering,” notes Mykhailo from Erythroleukoplakia Records. “These diamonds will then be searched for by new generations of young people hungry for strangeness and the underground, and it will be wild,” he is sure.
💽 The material can be listened to on all popular streaming platforms in the near future.
InnerLicht ~ Dragon Songs
Maxim Kolomiiets [aka InnerLicht] is back with a new album and so taken were we by it, that we got in touch to hear about its production process.
MK: I purposely almost didn’t write any accompanying comments on them because it’s very personal. I started making this album three years ago. And initially, there was no idea to combine these pieces into an album. I just improvised and recorded the result in my studio. That’s why you can hear some extraneous noises on some of the recordings. But eventually, these improvisations became quite a lot. And the result was sometimes quite interesting. So all these pieces started to form themselves into an album. I recorded most of them back in Kyiv, before the full-scale invasion. And despite some nuances in the recording, I didn’t rewrite them. In many respects, it was because these defects were a kind of sign of that time, of the path these compositions had taken. The whole album is dedicated to one person who is no longer with me. I started the album in the early days of our relationship and finished it when we were no longer together. This story is very painful for me. That’s why I decided to leave the album without comment. You could consider it my tribute to a life gone by. To the days and years that have passed. Gone are people and cities. A tribute to everything that was precious to us and that we can’t get back now.
Lostlojic ~ Nightxplode
After his outstanding Distant Star release, which was praised by Bandcamp as one of the best dance 12 inches of 2022, Lostlojic is back on Infinite Pleasure with more fire, this time on our LTD series. Nightxplode features 5 explosive tracks ranging from electro to breaks, all of them equally effective in creating dance floor mayhem or guiding you on your psychedelic journeys!
Sexual Purity ~ Remakes
“This time, we decided to take songs that reflect the times we are living in and our inner state. Pain, exhaustion, panic, despair, but also courage, strength, resilience, and bravery. The world is drowning in chaos. And we’re in madness. Wars, devastation, psychological breakdowns, panic attacks, exhaustion. These remakes are a reflection of our state, but with a new dark and different shade. We love you.”
Vyr Muk ~ Piano Works
Mini album that includes some melancholic piano instrumental tracks.
Khrystyna Kirik ~ In Search of Dialogue
Beguiling EP by sound artist and double bass player Kirik clocking in at at just under 9 minutes.
Volodymyr Ponikarovskyi ~ Morze Zostanie / Море залишиться / The Sea Will Remain (theatrical soundtrack)
Sountrack to the theatrical play written by Oleg Mykhailov (Kharkiv, UA), adapted and directed by Kostiantyn Vasiukov.
The play was coproduced by with Publitsist theater (Kharkiv, UA) and Teatr Zagłębia (Sosnowiec, PL).
Zlele ~ Why So Sad?
“I dedicate this album to my father, whom I miss and love dearly. Many of these songs were composed after his passing, though the ideas had been brewing for much longer. This album combines an eclectic mix of electronic music styles, creating an intense and sometimes unsettling atmosphere. However, amidst the darkness, there are moments of hope. I wanted to avoid leaving myself or the listener in a state of sadness, so the album concludes with bright, atmospheric tracks. Thank you for listening.”
Anthony Junkoid ~ Drum Vision
система | system presents the release “Drum Visions” by Kyiv-based artist Anthony Junkoid.
“Anthony Junkoid is a known media researcher interested in various fields like occult practices, ufology, cryptozoology, new media, unpopular world music, etc.
“Drum Visions” is a set of live cuts from an hour-long jam recorded at a friend’s house in mid-winter of 2023. I visited a friend, and he connected the synths. I sat down to improvise. Friends were drinking and talking behind my back. Their voices & sounds can be heard on the recording. The winter wind was raging outside the window, and the lights of the synthesizers were flickering – it was a memorable evening between the blackouts.” ~ Anthony Junkoid.
V/A ~ AUM / AYM
The sounds of life are collected and sung throughout the summer 2021 – spring 2022
Record, noises and poetry: Darya Ovchynnikova & Anthony Junkoid
Mastering: Ross Khmil
j&bdj ~ Neture and Human
There are albums that get released with no liner notes and no biographical information with Ukraine mentioned as the only location indicator. Not that it matters much with intriguing releases such as this, where piano lines drenched in reverb weave their way through a carpet of field recordings making for an equally unsettling and calming listening experience.
V/A ~ Drones for Drones, Volume 2
All proceeds from the sale of this cassette and digital album will be used to purchase drones for friends serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Thank you: Ihor, Mario, Oleksandr & Emil, Ivan, Anika, Adaa, Mike & Russell, Yuri, Norman, Liya & Borys, Anna, Thor, and Olga, for generously donating your work, and Jakub at HD.
Special thanks: Noah Poole
Shadow Unit ~ Endless
When creating the EP, I tried to keep only the main essence, getting rid of everything superfluous. Each track contains no more than 8 tracks with minimal processing. Recorded on Akai MPC and Ableton in Kyiv in 2023-2024.
YUVI ~ Спомина Любову
“YUVI’s new album is a contrast to her previous, more aggressive release, offering a melancholic and reflective look into the artist’s inner world. “This album shows a different side of me – in life I appear to be a cheerful person, but inside I often feel a sadness, which I have expressed in the music,” YUVI notes. The songs for the album were written during a depressive period, but the last two compositions, “Як спомину любову” and “Само так і я,” hint at a spring renewal and announce what’s next for YUVI’s creativity.
The artist becomes more open and sincere, striving for a deeper emotional connection with her listeners. In the new album, YUVI experiments with sound, adds more vocals, and explores new horizons. In the song “Бігти нікуди,” she used the lyrics of the composition “Жива”, but gave them new meaning and showed how music can transform the perception of words.”
Nikolaienko ~ Meta
Metallophone and tape music by Nikolaienko
“It’s an album where I’ve limited myself to using only two instruments – a metallophone and a four-track tape recorder. Explorations of the metallophone and tape sounds, deconstructed and reintegrated into tracks with cassette loops. This release is part of this year’s series, dedicated not to electronic but to electro-acoustic music with a focus on analog recording and production. Like the record released just last week – Hennadii Boichenko’s 7″ Sea Songs”
Brainhack musicbox ~ Screaming Organ
“This is music improvised, recorded, and mixed during two months of my residency at the Ostriv Platform using the vintage transistor organ they have at their location.
This instrument is far from perfect – dirty and noisy sound with not every note playable. Recorded through the effects pedals (harmonic fuzz, ring modulator, chorus, and freeze), it sounds a lot in the spirit of Canterbury rock bands of the 70s with psychedelic flavor – Soft Machine fans definitely could like it.
Some tracks needed a beat, and then I recorded Vermona DRM drum synth for them without referencing any grid – the tempo always floats following the glitchy organ lines.
Of course, it’s not exactly prog or jazz since this music doesn’t develop any particular idea – it’s got all jazzy proggish elements in a deconstructed state. The focus is always moving even when it’s about drone.”
Andrii Kunin ~ Lost Toys
Why do toys get lost? Perhaps, they were left behind in the wake of war and displacement, or children simply outgrew them. The album ‘Lost Toys’ is a childhood sonic excavation with its mixture of microscopic beats, half-acoustic textures, physical modelling synths and toy sounds. It culminates with the abstract ballad ‘Childhood’s End’ – named after the book by Arthur C. Clarke.
Stas Koroliov ~ Round 2: Цифровий Утікач
“This is Stas Koroliov’s second album, which is the finale of the project’s Second Artistic Season. The album is distinguished by its scale and emphasis on the musical component. It was recorded without the use of a metronome by a simultaneous multitrack recording of a jazz-rock band and co-produced by Stas during 2023–2024.”
Alexander Stratonov ~ Inglorious Officers: Russian Torturers in Kherson” Original Documentary Soundtrack
240 people have been recognized as victims in the case of the torture chamber of the Kherson Temporary Detention Center. On March 9, 2022, the Russian occupying forces seized the facility and turned it into a place of illegal detention of Ukrainians. People who passed through the temporary detention center say that the screams of people being tortured during interrogations could be heard around the clock. Outside of interrogations, prisoners were physically and mentally tortured by guards. It took journalists more than 14 months to identify them. The documentary tells what happens when convoys and police officers from Russia are sent on a business trip to the occupied territories and given freedom of action.
KILLA SELFIE ~ Майно
On the short but thematically colorful release “Property”, a laconic manifestation of anti-consumerism coexists with a militant ballad or a half-joking song about breaking love. It is, as before, instrumental electronics with samples of Ukrainian traditional instruments and short fragments of rap a cappella, but the word “song” is also appropriate here because each of them has its own theme and context. Stylistically, it is again a mixture of breakbeat, electro and this time a little jersey – classic club eclecticism from KILLA SELFIE.
Lugovskiy ~ Arcade Life
“I don’t want to use words to try and make sense of it. These songs say all I wanted to express. Listen to it, use your imagination, or just enjoy.”
Lectromagnetique ~ Simulation
“Are you sure that this is all real? We doubt…”
ummsbiaus ~ Enerhomor Suite No. 2, Op. 5
“This four-movement suite is a radi𓊕 𓊕f mem𓊕ries. When the signal is alm𓊕st l𓊕st, the system restarts after a c𓊕mplete em𓊕tional black𓊕ut. Created as s𓊕me kind 𓊕f electric palimpsest where 𓊕ld frequencies are layered with recent 𓊕nes, this suite references the album Enerh𓊕mor, released 𓊕n the same day a year ag𓊕.
It recalls last winter, when everything was s𓊕aked in darkness and c𓊕ldness and aims t𓊕 p𓊕int 𓊕ut that the energetic gen𓊕cide in Ukraine is n𓊕t 𓊕ver.”
VIEWING ROOM
(Gianmarco Del Re)
a closer listen 