There’s a horrible myth that difficult times produce great music – the sort of thing said by people in privileged positions romanticizing crisis. Ukraine’s experimental and leftfield scene deserved more attention long before the full-scale invasion – like so many marginalized scenes. And from the experimental edges of this scene, our friends and colleagues continue producing wonderful sounds that you simply won’t want to miss. Ganna Bryzhata and Svitlana Nianio are here with music across two generations that all ambient and experimental lovers will be happy to enjoy. Here’s to Ukrainian Independence Day – and to the successful end of the war and hope for this scene gathering freely again.
Read more“Piano” is bookended by sketches on a partly-ruined piano in a war zone – messages over an army radio heard crackling in the background. In between, there is the warmth of a 1920s German instrument in the artist’s Kyiv flat and grandmother’s house before the war. Ukrainian artist John Object is now living mainly as PFC Timur Dzhafarov, deployed to the front. In sounds, images, and words, he has opened up about what that reality means.
Pulsing with electronic punctuation, fuzzy layers and distorted pianos across expansive introspective surfaces, Emmanuel De La Paix on Terre brûlée charts richly imaginative narrative ambient. We caught up with the Zurich-based artist to premiere the cinematic “Heathen” video, reflect on life and December breaks, and get an eclectic end-of-year playlist refresh.
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