In this interview spotlight, I chat with NFNR about adapting during a worldwide pandemic, technology, and the latest music, Dog Rose, now available via Corridor Audio.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and how do You describe your style of music?
I`m Ukrainian musician and composer, based in Kyiv.
I would say now my style of music is a mixture of genres. My tracks may have sensitive ambient lines, dronny bases and at the same time are combined with saturated multilayered industrial textures and demanding techno pulse. Having choir conductor’s background I tend to polyphony- DAW from the very beginning became to me a powerful orchestra with limitless number of voices.
How did you get here? As in, what inspired or motivated you to take on this journey through music and the music biz?
In childhood when I started singing in a school choir totally new magic world opened to me. Besides my everyday road to school and back by foot was quite long and so boring that it made me permanently imagine and play some games or sing songs. Very soon I started improvising melodies and lyrics. I was in love with choral singing and entered the choir conducting faculty. After I finished music college I worked as a free-lance theatrical composer and very soon understood the need to record my compositions by myself. Parallel that time I was composing music for keyboards, suffering trying to find musicians whom I would love to play with, with guitarists and bassists mostly, but we didn’t have common views and I wanted to experiment more with the sound and to add electronics. And then learning sound software opened me doors to what I was searching for: independence, interesting sound, interesting projects and performing a lot solo as electronic musician and as a theatrical composer and performer.
How does your latest project compare/contrast with your previous release(s)? Were you setting out to accomplish anything specific, follow a specific theme, or explore different styles of creation?
In this new release, I learned to express myself more clearly musically thanks to frequencies and textures. I’ve always been interested in a rich sound palette, but I couldn’t sufficiently equalize and build the mix. Also I improved skills of working with virtual modular synthesizer which gave the main color to each track. And I feel all tracks became confident in general and as one of them ‘Chorda’ is about finding the inner support and strength, a very powerful core, such as the spine in chordates, to which type belongs and man.
Name the biggest challenge you faced as a creative during these unprecedented? How did you adapt? How have you kept the creative fires burning during all this?
As for the artist to whom priority is to work with space and perform live – the hardest was to stay without `periodical practice`. I even felt that permanent training of my ear, working with the sound in space, working with frequencies during live performance, ability to develop the energy of performance for me as electronic musician is as important as every day training is for a violinist player. Live video streams and some online-concerts helped partly to keep technical skills in shape.
I didn’t have problems with motivation and inspiration as had a lot of interesting online sound projects and was quite busy with them, had possibility to learn and practice new in sound. But as artist now I feel that our community of independent and ‘underground’ electronic musicians lost somehow their audience. Some of former fans became too passive over covid lockdown, some audience started choosing other clubs that were working illegal during quarantine, some became `family people` and more `home sitting` than before etc. And this is very hard aspect. I try to involve more actively new audience and expand the territory of my concerts, contacts and collaborations abroad.
What was the last song you listened to?
Actually the last music I listened to was not a song but a symphony №5 by Tchaikovskyi. This amazing music piece for me always associates with the snow and the one has recently fallen down in my city. I remember how my teacher in music college when we were studying Tchaikovski’s symphonies compared one of his music with the fallen snow that covers all, calms passions and purifies. Since then I always wait for this time in the end of the year, to have some rest, calmness and inner peace.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? 8-tracks? Cassettes? CDs? MP3s? Streaming platforms?
I would prefer vinyl if I had the vinyl player and cool sound system, but in everyday reality these are streaming platforms.
Where is the best place to connect with you and follow your journey?
Welcome to connect and follow my journey here:
I really appreciate Your time. Anything else before we sign off?
Thank you for the interview it was very interesting to think about your questions and analyze own art processes and states. And thank you for your interest and important cultural work!
