WHAT NON-MUSICAL ACTIVITIES AFFECT THE CHARACTER OF YOUR MUSIC MOST?
It is difficult to say unambiguously, there are masses of factors that affect this. Sometimes after the stressful day, you try to come to your senses. You look through the CD’s on the shelf, ambient, new edge, click the specialized radio stations and fail to find what you exactly need at that moment. Then an idea starts forming in your mind about how a soundtrack should sound like and the creation process starts.
HOW, IF AT ALL, HAS YOUR CHILDHOOD UPBRINGING, YOUR PARENTS, AND OR YOUR ENVIRONMENT MOST AFFECTED YOUR MUSIC?
I presume that my musical taste was forming in the 80’s. The time of reel-to-reel machines. The sign of the 80’s can be felt in some of my records, and I was told about it.
WHO ARE YOUR MUSICAL AND OR CULTURAL HEROES?
I think this is Neo from “Matrix”. A person, that believed in the possibility of changing the world and changed it. Making the world better, more harmonic is, I think, the only and the most important task that can be a stable objective for a long time. Although I was a staunch supporter of materialism in my past years, in the recent years a lot of things have happened proving that “there is no spoon”. On the one hand, you are frightened by the fact that the actions you carry out can trigger a significant succession of events. On the other hand, a thought arouses: “But you wanted it, after all?” You start weighing you every word, actions, thoughts, and desires.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE PEOPLE TO REACT TO AND OR “USE” YOUR MUSIC?
I would like to have people listening to my music feel the same what I feel when creating it. Ideally, in the listener’s mind, the same picture should appear as in my mind. Of course, I understand that all the same combinations of sounds can arouse completely different associations. But at the same time, people have something in common, traditional images, stereotypes. I hope that with further development of my knowledge of psychology and psychoacoustics I will be more successful in carrying out of my task effectively.
WHAT IS YOUR FIRST MUSICAL MEMORY?
Randomly running my fingers over the notes of the piano I was trying to play a song. I think it was “Cruiser Avrora”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS GENRE OR STYLE OF MUSIC THAT YOU PLAY THAT MOST APPEALS TO YOU?
Although I understand that the base of the electronic music is the sound effects, I cannot ignore the melodic component of music and try to make it present in any record, at least minimally.
WHAT IS YOUR MUSIC WRITING PROCESS?
The preferable method is “from scratch “. I sit down at the synthesizer, switch the computer on recording and start improvising. Then with the fresh mind, I listen to what I’ve done, choose the melodies that I consider to be the most felicitous and they become the basis for further development and arrangement. This is the way that I used for the creation of “Storm” and “A point to nowhere”. Sometimes I construct a completely sophisticated instrument and make a full track recording in one passage, editing just some minor errors after recording. Those recordings are right from the heart. Such records are «Intuition» and «Mirror of chaos».
Sometimes I want to create something more complicated in terms of harmony. Here the base is the chord progression and it is added with the melodies of the leading instruments, one after another. The example is «Caffeine».
WHAT IS IT ABOUT SYNTHETIC MUSIC THAT HAS SO APPEALED TO YOU, EVEN SINCE YOU WERE FIVE, AS MENTIONED ON YOUR WEBSITE?
As a whole, I’m inclined to technology and electronics, that’s why my interest in electronic music is not surprising. Moreover, when programming in sequencers there is a possibility of including traditional playing elements as one of the layers. I just don’t see any serious alternative.
WHERE WERE YOU EDUCATED? WAS SCHOOL, FUN OR BORING? WERE YOU AN OUTSIDER OR INSIDER AS A TEENAGER, OR NEITHER?
Like all teenagers, I didn’t pay much attention to my studying. Although there were several people in the class that conscientiously followed the curriculum, I didn’t belong to that circle. More frequently I tried to smooth over the school process with entertainments. I was one of the first people to teach others to smoke and consume alcohol. It was in the 4th grade. Once I bought a pillow in my schoolbag and lay to take a nap in an emphatic manner right during the lesson of physics, and I should say, I was sitting three desks away from the teacher. The teacher of physics was young, just after the university. In two words, we had enough fun.
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAD A TYPICAL UPBRINGING FROM YOUR PEERS, OR DIFFERENT? EXPLAIN?
I’m a rebel by nature, and it is difficult to influence upon me. When I’m being told about some common and traditional things, I can’t stomach it and I almost by reflex start acting counter to it. But if I used to act more directly and frankly before, the practice of working in the collectives has taught me to act more flexible. But, as a result, I always achieve the purpose.
WHAT EVENT OR RELATIONSHIP IN YOUR LIFE, MOST AFFECTED YOUR INTEREST IN MUSIC?
I think the fact of the musical instrument’s occasional getting into my hands. Nothing else comes to my mind for answering this.
MUSIC INFLUENCES: TALK ABOUT THEM?
I listen to different music. At different times my favorite bands were Deep Purple, Ac/Dc, Metallica, Depeche mode, Electric Light Orchestra. Later it was Enigma, Linkin Park, Scooter, Mars Lazar. I can go on listing. But probably the strongest impression on me was made by “Magnetic fields of Jean Michael Jarre”. When I heard the album for the first time, it was something completely new for me. Before listening to this I didn’t have any idea that music could produce such bright images.
WHAT’S YOUR NIGHTLIFE LIKE?
Every morning I find myself lying embraced by half-naked chicks and traces of drug intoxication, having great difficulty with remembering what happened yesterday.
Just’ kidding.
In fact, I prefer to have a couple of beers at a pub. Prodigious parties with unlimited alcohol consumption were left behind the school walls.
HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU ARE PERFORMING OR SINGING?
Improvising, you get absorbed by it. When you switch to the rhythm and start playing guitar simultaneously… it’s hard to explain that feeling. Sitting at the speakers listening to your own record is one thing. But when those sounds are formed by your fingers and it’s flowing out of the speakers at the same time – it’s completely different. Probably, the only suitable way to describe it is as an entity with music. Because it’s indeed coming from the inside.
WHAT IS THE MESSAGE, IF ANY, THAT YOU ARE GETTING ACROSS IN YOUR MUSIC?
About ten years of my life dashed in a hurry and in following my distant aims. I can’t say that life objectives are a bad thing. On the contrary, aspiration is the only urging motive in our life. But there is the reverse of the medal here. When a person focuses on a future objective he pushes his present to the background. The person starts sacrificing something. Some books not read. Some films not watched. A postponed trip. It’s sort of: ‘Ok. When I finish that then I’ll have rest. No time for resting now.’ But when the task is done you get surprised by the fact that the moment of satisfaction takes miserably little time compared with the way you’ve had to come along. As a result, you develop the feeling of frustration and resentment over time that’s been lost in vain.
An attempt to say about the versatility of the world, drawing attention to details. I think the message is the attention to the surrounding world, to its details.
IF YOU WEREN’T PLAYING OR MAKING MUSIC WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
I’m Gemini. It reflects my inner essence. I can not stick to one thing all the time. I like technology, electronics, computers, marketing, psychology. I think I would not work in one sphere for all my life.