What can music do against darkness? It may be our one fuel for emotions, a weapon against depressive inertia. Today, on Ukrainian Independence Day, it’s a perfect day to catch up with Ukrainian label Prostir/I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free — especially as these platforms have been a hub for solidarity with other resistance struggles worldwide.
Пізнаєш істину – ввійде тоді у кров твою сонце… [from Zavoloka’s release]
Image at top: Ujif_notfound (Photography & artwork concept by Georgiy Potopalskyi / Design by Zavoloka)
I want to focus on Zavoloka, but it fits best to close on that. So let’s set the clock back across the last months and review the albums from the Ukrainian-born, Berlin-based label.
It’s a crime, really, that Dmytro and Kateryna aren’t getting more attention, as I think collectively they’ve put together not one but two releases that easily are on my 2025 essentials list. (I do also know them, but that makes it somehow more difficult. It’s easier to feel marginally superior to your friends, really. Especially as then you can josh them more easily.)
We’ve written about their interdisciplinary Cluster Lizard project before — see below. Herts is a driving epic, playing out like the soundtrack in your head to a great novel. Great waves of fuzzy distortion crash in with hypnotic percussion surfing over top, peeling out in a battle cry.
But there’s no image I can make that’s more poignant than the backstory for the title, which I think resonates deeply with all forms of resistance:
In previous centuries, Ukrainian warriors invented an audacious macabre ritual called Herts, a courageous death dance. Before the battle, a few ruthless Cossacks would leave their ranks to perform a mocking dance right in front of their enemy lines, laughing and shouting insulting indecencies at them. Herts, a mixture of laughter and death, was a psychic attack to crumble and degrade the enemy soldiers’ morale.
And today our ancient Herts have returned to Ukrainian fighters to stand once again in front of the enemy, facing and mocking its grey unconscious masses of non-beings with fierce laughter.
This album is dedicated to those who can stare into the abyss with a smile. Fighters of the fight, for their home and their heart.
This is a vital counterpart to the more fanciful Cluster Lizard we’ve visited before, channeling the pain and loss our Ukrainian friends and their allies have endured. I’ve watched the funerals from a distance. The music embodies the defiance that plays through that grief:
I’ve mentioned it before, but let’s spin it again: Kotra’s Grit Light is a reminder of why Dmytro’s musical imagination is so invigorating. Somewhere between noise, industrial, and dark techno, he’s found a voice that is on a higher compositional level — as visceral as it is targeted, like a jet engine.
As if to strategically annoy naysaying westsplainers, label boss Dmytro has also been outspoken about solidarity. That includes regularly releasing the work of Muslimgauze, a clear musical touchpoint for the imprint and Dmytro’s own work. Muslimgauze, aka UK-born Bryn Jones, was an early example of what could happen when Western artists broke taboos about speaking out for resistance, Palestine, and the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The re-released album is also just really good, even if I hadn’t talked about what it was; this sounds like something that just came out:
Following that thread to January 2025, Holzkopf produced a blistering, brutal album that needs to flash loudly at the center of your radar. It also feels like sonic resistance, an answer to the evil of banality around us, to flip around Hannah Arendt’s construction. Bland mediocrity in music, tame conformity, is what allows music as entertainment to so often serve the status quo. Blast this to shake yourself out of it:
Holzkopf is Canadian Jacob Audrey Taves (jacobaudreytaves.ca) who has also done this wonderful live exploration of Xenakis, if your eardrums can take a little more excitement today:
But we can go a different direction with all of this; this is a label programmed like a festival. (Apologies to Berlin Atonal, but I think I might even prefer the last year in I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free as a festival lineup!)
Max Kuiper & Thorsten Soltau, as Chanteclin ɛt Chantecler, have a mystical, strange sonic world that tugs at your heart like a dream, the kind you wake up from inexplicably with tears. I had no idea of this source material, and don’t even know that you really need it, but it gives a window into their esoteric charm and inquisitive souls:
The second cornerstone of the project is the Book of Ysegrim, otherwise known as Reynard the Fox. This book is the subject of Thorsten Soltau’s long-term fascination. The story of the morally corrupt fox who betrays the other animals around him for his own advantage clearly reflects medieval societal structures, disguised as a fable. While it is undoubtedly a witty satire of the nobility and the Church, it also offers a balanced view of personal behaviour and enrichment.
Also just released this summer — get on that, spend those five Euros — there’s this wonderful Philippe Petit outing. The theme is Elegy, but to me, listening to it felt like a release. Petit’s expertise, honed at the CNRR Conservatory in Nice, France, on their EMS, Buchla, and Serge, is what he calls “electronic abstractions” and plastic sound-objects.” The delicate dances of electronics and echoing utterances set this album into motion as a kinetic sculpture, or the sound of an alien bird. It has that sense of when you let some of the heaviness go, which perhaps is the best form for an elegy.
I’ve talked before on CDM about Kyiv’s Ujif_notfound aka Georgy Potopalsky – more than once, even. And Georgy has a new one, which, speaking of jet engines, feels like being caught in the jet wash, only somewhere deep inside.
From the text for the prerelease:
With the third release on our label, Ujif_notfound drastically changes his approach and method and fully transcends his anger through the blasting overloaded breaks and rude guitar distortion. There is no place for the high art indulgences on ‚Postulate‘, here is nothing but raw and heavy energy directly extracted from the tremors of the endless destruction.
„𝑆𝐻𝐴𝑇𝑇𝐸𝑅𝐸𝐷 𝑊𝐼𝑁𝐷𝑂𝑊𝑆 𝑁𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑅 𝐹𝐴𝐿𝐿 𝑆𝐼𝐿𝐸𝑁𝑇 —
𝑇𝐻𝐸𝑌 𝐾𝐸𝐸𝑃 𝑆𝑂𝑈𝑁𝐷𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑈𝑁𝐷𝐸𝑅𝐹𝑂𝑂𝑇,
𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑆𝑂𝐿𝐸𝑆, 𝐼𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐻𝐸𝐴𝑅𝑇.
𝑆𝐼𝐿𝐸𝑁𝐶𝐸 𝑁𝑂 𝐿𝑂𝑁𝐺𝐸𝑅 𝐸𝑋𝐼𝑆𝑇𝑆: 𝐼𝑇’𝑆 𝐵𝐸𝐸𝑁 𝑅𝐸𝑃𝐿𝐴𝐶𝐸𝐷 𝐵𝑌 𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑆 𝑀𝑈𝑆𝐼𝐶 — 𝑀𝑈𝑆𝐼𝐶 𝑂𝐹 𝐶𝑂𝐿𝐿𝐴𝑃𝑆𝐸, 𝑀𝑈𝑆𝐼𝐶 𝑂𝐹 𝑊𝐴𝑅𝑁𝐼𝑁𝐺.
𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑅𝑌 𝑆𝑇𝐸𝑃, 𝐸𝑉𝐸𝑅𝑌 𝐵𝑅𝐸𝐴𝑇𝐻 — 𝐴𝑁 𝐸𝐶𝐻𝑂 𝑂𝐹 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐸𝑋𝑃𝐿𝑂𝑆𝐼𝑂𝑁.
𝐺𝐿𝐴𝑆𝑆 𝐵𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝑆 𝑆𝑂𝑈𝑁𝐷.
𝑆𝑂𝑈𝑁𝐷 𝐵𝐸𝐶𝑂𝑀𝐸𝑆 𝑀𝐸𝑀𝑂𝑅𝑌.
𝑀𝐸𝑀𝑂𝑅𝑌 𝐷𝑂𝐸𝑆 𝑁𝑂𝑇 𝐹𝑂𝑅𝐺𝐼𝑉𝐸.“
But let’s absolutely close on Zavoloka — the other half of Cluster Lizard — and her solo triumph. ISTYNA is magical, its opening tones rotating as a music box in high orbit before giving way to a buzzy, fuzzy groove pumping beneath washes of color that melt into one another. The cover image, also Kateryna’s artwork, is fitting — these are moving, glowing pigments throughout. The rhythms can hit hard — more industrial influences — but the melodies bounce and intertwine like Ukrainian folk melodies, and hop and skip with odd rhythms. It’s an electronic, synthetic, free-flowing take on a folk dance.
That hypnotic, brain-tickling feeling never abates through the full release — this has the intensity and resolve of these other albums, but with a joyful abandon flowing out of them.
The title track comes with this dreamy video now:
Aw, and in case you missed it, let’s revisit “SNAGA” from Amulet, the earlier LP:
з днем незалежності україно. Слава Україні!
Two ways to support Ukrainians right now:
Supporting any release above is a great start. If you want to do more:
Timur is further on the way to getting a van for his unit, but hasn’t hit the goal. Follow this story for what to do:
AID_X_10 is also doing terrific work; the all-female-led organization is uniting culture and defense, and includes some fine folks I’ve been lucky to know:
https://aidx10.org or follow their latest on Instagram
Previously: