Fish on the window, rhythms of daily routine, and the sound of a half-peeled lemon in a mix project for the lonely person.

I have always been inspired by the paintings, schemes, texts, and projects of Viktor Pivovarov. For some tracks on the album DOMA I cheekily made use of the rhythm of words from the titles of his paintings or texts found in his works. The composition “cycle of” (it’s in the mix) is about Project for a Lonely Man, about the kind rhythm of the day, everyday rituals, a routine that does not absorb energy but provides more of it. Before there was unexpectedness and spontaneity in my life, but as I’ve become older (or more experienced) I’ve begun to love routine. This mix is for those who love to be alone, groundhog day, and Viktor Pivovarov.

BIO

Olya Maksimova (OMMA)is a producer, electronic musician, and DJ. She graduated from the Bill Evans Piano Academy[RA1] (Paris). She is the co-founder of the interactive sound studio Can Touch This Studio and a participant in Playtronica, a laboratory of creative technologies based on sound and touch. She has released three albums on the labels Antinote and Coastal Haze. She created the sound design for Playtronica installations in France and Russia. In October 2022, OMMA was a resident at OneBeat (USA), where she composed music and performed with Bianca Casady from CocoRosie.

Olya Maksimova worked with the Viktor Pivovarov archive.

This mix by the group krai explores underground recordings of the late-Soviet period, a time of flourishing musical samizdat when albums were recorded from record player to record player.

We created a mix from record player albums of the 1980s, a nostalgic homage to a time before ours which from today’s perspective does not seem to be so unimaginable.

The term “controlled burn” means a managed fire that helps a forest to grow. Today we are a forest that is enclosed on all sides so that the controlled fire does not become a catastrophe. But there are always risks for those who try to control nature.

Bio

krai is an informal grouping from Bryansk, which once had certain aims but has long since lost direction and now develops chaotically. The group includes artists, musicians, and other no less interesting characters.

krai worked with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive.

Supermen and ichthyanders, chases,podium shows, and other unusual characters and events in a musical compilationby Tesnota Bureau dedicated to the schizo-heroic reality of the Urals.

The Round the Clock Sverdlovsk mix is a setof compositions by Urals groups and performers of various ages combined withexcerpts from the idiotically legendary Urals Television Agency, which specializedin crime reporting about Yekaterinburg. Reports about other events in the cityalso made it to the screen (for example, about culture and art) and they werepresented in an ironic style that is difficult to describe. As well as shortnews reports, the agency produced full-length films, including about AlexanderGalizdrin’s action Ichthyander’s Wedding and the happening FallCabrioflight, which we simply had to include in this mix.

Welcome to Round the Clock Sverdlovsk!

Bio

Tesnota Bureau organizes cultural and entertainment events. It was founded bySasha Elsakov and Slavo Dushin, co-owners of the bar Samotsvet (Yekaterinburg).

The mix was recorded with the support of themedia outlet Uralskie franki, which covers the noughties inYekaterinburg, Russia, and the world. The authors of the project are thejournalists and researchers Aleksei Shakhov and Mikhail Verbitsky.

Tesnota Bureau worked with the Yeltsin Center archive.

Soft Blade’s mix brings together tracks from cult films and games about graffiti and street art with Russian hip hop of the 1990s and 2000s. 

I chose tracks that can call up associations with graffiti even among people who know little about the subculture, for instance from the soundtrack of the cult street art film Exit Through the Gift Shop or music from the popular game about graffiti Getting Up, and also tracks that I associate with the atmosphere of hip culture in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s. I included excerpts from the popular (within a narrow circle) podcast G-Spot, guests of which had a major influence on the development of graffiti in Russia.

Bio

Soft Blade is an experimental audio-visual project by Violetta S. in which she searches for herself, truth, beauty, and unexpected meetings along the way. Sof Blade’s multi-genre compositions are inspired by Russian-language folk music and British electronica. She has performed at the Signal and Fields festivals and sung in church choirs in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Sof Blade worked with the street art archive.

‍The audio essay by the DIG Store team is a melancholic soundscape inspired by the artistic journey of photographer Lyalya Kuznetsova.

‍This collage is an imaginary soundtrack to the life of Lyalya Kuznetsova, composed of episodes from her biography, experiences, and events. There is no linearity or chronology. It is more like a diary, the pages of which were stuck together in random order. The authors used audio fragments from films and interviews with Kuznetsova, some of them transformed or looped, leading to the appearance of new sounds and patterns.

Bio

DIG Store is one of Moscow’s most famous record stores, popular with both professional DJs and music lovers. Founders Petr Valkov, Grisha Eniosov, and Ivan Smekalin create a community around their business: they organize concerts, parties, and listening events, aiming to share their favorite music in every way.

The DIG Store team worked with Lyalya Kuznetsova's archive.

A swooning mix of Russian electronic music of the 1990s and weird audio fragments from TV of the period.

Distorted reality, myth-making, total blackout, and a ton of nonobvious inspiration: it seems to me that this is what the Russian 1990s really were. It is an era that is talked about so much but known by so few. Every conversation about that decade is an attempt to grasp its immensity, and every glance at it is just another path in the labyrinth of images and legends.

In this mix, the listener is presented with a crime drama unfolding against the backdrop of a rapidly developing electronic music scene and an inexorably declining economy. The mix is ​​inspired by the archive of St. Petersburg DJ Lena Popova, which is kept in a secluded corner of Garage Archive Collection.

Bio

Evgeny Gorbunov is a musician, producer, and artist. He is one of the most active members of the Moscow independent music scene, the author of the project Intourist, guitarist co-founder of the band ГШ, and bassist of the live version of the project Kate NV. He also founded and was a member of the band NRKTK and the electronic projects Stoned Boys and Interchain.

Evgeny Gorbunov worked with the Lena Popova archive.

No Wave! build their mix around a video chronicle that documents the life of unofficial art and the musical underground of the late USSR: the band Kino is followed by the New Artists, a performance by Dmitri Prigov is picked up by Georgy Guryanov with a solo on drums, and all of this develops into a total celebration of rock music in a Soviet house of culture.

During perestroika and in the 1990s, photographer Sergey Borisov did a lot of filming with a handheld video camera. Today, the result looks like classic home video: 4:3 format, rejuvenating imagery, tolerable sound (if something loud happens or the camera is near the sound source). The footage features musicians, artists, and poets from a close circle (all of them became famous) spending their time having fun. The chronicle is filmed in the same dashing style.

Borisov liked recording concerts, which he recorded on multiple tapes. Back then, any performance was an uncomfortable undertaking with an unpredictable result for unofficial musicians. Each time there was a struggle for working instruments, and the musicians’ own strangeness, and a collective sense of normality. The rock club was a movement that took over the seated auditoria of houses of culture. What sounded in these rooms between songs resonated with the moment as much as, say, the lyrics of the band Televizor. Borisov did not stop recording even when there were shouts, obscene quatrains, and the protracted comments of music critics.

Our mix is ​​a recording of an evening in a total rock club: the key bands of the time sing their hits, everything sounds rough, the guitar tone is sandy, and people are packed like sardines. As the bands replace each other, the fans chant something from the seats and climb onto the stage, their words pretty distinct. We can’t help feeling that we have heard all this somewhere before.

Bio

No Wave! is a project by musician Ildar Iksanov that explores alternative culture. It is nostalgic and exists between disciplines—as a record label, clothing brand, and lifestyle.

No Wave! worked with the Sergey Borisov archive.

‍Raumtester’s queer rave utopia is a homage to Pirate TV, an experimental video project launched in the late 1980s by St. Petersburg artists from the circle of Timur Novikov.

“Oh shit!” was the phrase that constantly revolved in my head while watching Pirate TV, as what I saw was so ahead of its time and so progressive. The most avant-garde music of those years, including trance, progressive house, techno, could be heard in Pirate TV’s various reports, and all this in the Soviet Union.

The visual imagery of the program, its soundtrack, and the appearance on the screen of presenter Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe (in my opinion, the main figure among the few queer artists on the domestic art scene) took me to some kind of imaginary queer techno rave. That is why I carefully studied the electronic dance music of late perestroika and the early 1990s and recorded a mix of tracks by Soviet and Russian musicians who were into the new sound—pulsating, danceable, and liberated—as well as tracks by foreign producers that may have influenced this sound. The track that ties the mix together is Pink Floyd's On the Run, a time machine connecting the queer rave utopia with the last track, which I wrote. I wanted to show how the experience of predecessors can be rethought in a new reality. I also used audio fragments of Pirate TV programs and mixed the tracks roughly to create a feeling of watching TV while listening, like when you switch channels in anticipation of what will happen next.

We sometimes underestimate the importance of culture in political change. I think that the revolution was made not by politicians but by that culture, including music, which changed the direction of society's thinking. The question remains as to whether our contemporary culture is capable of changing something.

Bio

Raumtester is a DJ and musician, resident of the promo project Popoff Kitchen, and organizer of the “vir mir” queer parties. He has performed in Russia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Ukraine, France, and other countries. Raumtester’s multi-genre mixes have been released by Boiler Room, HÖR, Crack Magazine, and Rinse.

Raumtester worked with the Nina Zaretskaya (TV Gallery) archive.

‍

16+

The story of the Kuban musical underground, compiled by Radio Fantasia from archive recordings connecting several generations of music enthusiasts.

When you hear “Soviet underground music scene” you think of Moscow and Leningrad and maybe Siberia. What role does Krasnodar play in that list?

In the private archives of DIY zines and magazines about the rock scene you can find evidence of opposition to Soviet censorship. In the city there were underground clubs and gatherings and concerts and performative actions.

We have created a mix from archive recordings of Krasnodar music from the 1970s through the 1990s. It is constructed around a story by artist Mikhail Smaglyuk about music enthusiasts who from the early 1960s would meet at the “clearing” to swap vinyl. It traces the history of the underground of Krasnodar krai right up to the 1990s.

According to Vladimir Elistratov’s dictionary of Russian slang, kreza (crazies) are enthusiasts, fans, and abnormal people. They are not yet included in the history of underground Soviet and post-Soviet music, and we are glad to make a start by presenting this survey mix that sounds like a cassette recording from your parents’ shelf: music, conversations, and excerpts from programs seem to be recorded over tracks you got sick of.

Bio

The genre-free community Radio Fantasia is a platform created by staff of the Typography Center for Contemporary Art and friends of the Center for open discussion of pressing problems of social and political systems. The radio station is an archive of materials gathered by artists, curators and journalists, theorists, sound researchers, and poets.

On May 7, 2022, Typography Center for Contemporary Art was designated a foreign agent by order of Roskomnadzor.

Radio Fantasia worked with the Typography Center for Contemporary Art archive.

About podcast

The mix by Margenrot (a project by Lusia Kazaryan-Topchyan) is built around the “wrong” music of industrial Omsk. Lusia's first musical experiments explored the Siberian experimental electronic scene of the 2000s. Margenrot finds unusual combinations in which lo-fi field recordings feature alongside noise improvisations and dark ambient with digital hardcore.

In the 2000s, everyone on the Omsk experimental electronic scene was looking for their own unique language, boldly mixing genres. I like this kind of vibe, when everyone does their own thing without looking back at colleagues. So, I have lovingly collected the musical pearls of the electronic scene of the city into this mix.

The Omsk underground was influenced in one way or another by the bands Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Kommunizm, including all of their side projects, and by brothers Evgeny and Oleg Lishchenko’s rock band Pik Klakson. In the early 2000s, the scene was dominated by guitar music. The legendary Mikhail Kolesnik (PyleSOS, Samantha Smith, Venerar) was responsible for “Tar” grindcore and noise metalcore, Dmitry Krab and Simon (Energiya) made spatial dark ambient. Artist Anton Gudkov explored noise improvization and collage techniques (U, prop dept). His works—collages imbued with the atmosphere of industrial Omsk, composed of the “trash of the past”—are now held in Garage Archive Collection.

With the advent of computers and the Internet in the mid-2000s, the electronic scene began to take shape, giving birth to a strong community of young musicians and sound producers toward the end of the decade. The electronic experiments of James Alexander Darkforce were notable for their idiosyncratic, surreal texts. In parallel with the noise scene, Andrei Mitroshin created his own lo-fi island. His method of writing music is marked by a unique analogue tape sound: “I recorded on my cassette portastudio using Soviet synthesizers and ran the music through tape dictaphones and our family Japanese Panasonic radio tape recorder from the 1980s.” He was not afraid of the classic way of working in Fruity Loops, believing that the means are secondary, the main thingis the result. Mitroshin's label Dopefish Family released Silver Boy, a detachment of post-irony and absurdity from prokin, Michanika, Myachina, romantic synth-pop Modulya, and, of course, Andrei’s own multiple projects: Milky Toad, Arm Author, later Kenneth Anger (with participation from Karina Kazaryan’s and me), Prodavtsy-Konsultanty, Biznesmen.

My group RX also experimented with genres: our music was reminiscent of Sonic Youth with broken rhythms. Later, together with Nikolai Rudik, we launched the electronic digital hardcore project Meatbeat featuring screaming vocals à la Atari Teenage Riot and managed to record a couple of tracks (one of which I included in the mix). In 2010, I moved to Moscow to keep making “wrong” music.

Bio

Lusia Kazaryan-Topchyan is a composer and sound producer. While studying costume design at Omsk State Institute of Service, she was experimenting with music. She is the founder of the band PX, the electronic project Meatbeat (together with Nikolai Rudik), and her solo project spinetv. After moving to Moscow in 2010 with her sister Karina Kazaryan and Diana Burkot, she founded the female experimental noise-rock band Fanny Kaplan. In the same year, with the participation of Karina Kazaryan and Andrei Mitroshin (Dopefish Family), the lo-fi shoegaze group Kenneth Anger was formed. In 2017, after the collapse of Fanny Kaplan, she launched her solo project, Margenrot. Margenrot’s discography includes two LPs (Zangezur and Obkhod) released on the Klammklang label. She has participated in Donaufestival, Urvakan Festival, Schwetfest, and Contra Pop Festival.

Margenrot worked with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive.