Plato Newsroom #23

Fresh and underground music from Belarus.

01.12.2024

newsroom

Greetings! Welcome to Newsroom – the podcast about fresh releases from Belarusians by Radio Plato, and your host today is Alik Khamiak, a.k.a. Schmoltz.

In today's episode we will hear:

an epic collab between Aum! and Autonomicon;
Flying Pluto Flowers' psychedelic ambient;
dreamy trip hop by Levangur and Lemniskata Petrikor;
soft acid jazz by Mvli and Oh, My;
record-breaking singer songwriter Michael Dailida with yet another album;
an introduction to the Belarusian IDM label People Can Listen.

We're kicking off the episode with a collaboration of two projects from Horadnia: Aum!, who we already covered earlier this year, and Autonomicon. They released a joint longplay album called Bestiarium. Both of the projects have their roots in turn-of-the-century local underground rock scene. Stylistically, this album is a mix of musical forms of the dark introspective spectrum, with the lyrics of the entire album, quite unexpectedly, rooted in animalistic archetypes. But instead of ghostly cryptids of the actual medieval bestiaries, the critters in focus here are domestic animals, but not quite in their usual roles. Which makes the album play out like an Alice In Wonderland-type story, where the Wolf, the Kitten and the Gray Rabbit are not at all what they seem. In any case, I highly urge you to take a listen for yourself in order to piece together this unconventional puzzle of images and atmospheres. But first, let's hear from the authors.

Dzianis Trusaŭ (Autonomicon):

– Autonomicon is my second project. Having played in a band during the 'roaring 90s' in Horadnia, I later moved to Poland and found myself completely alone in a rather small village. That's when I got my first PC with a Pentium 100 processor and some music software. I began recording my songs on it, which started this project. Back in Poland, we did occasionally play live shows. Now I live in Vietnam, where rarely ever play live. It's mostly a studio project, as I simply have no time for touring and live shows with my lifestyle. I can still say music is an important part of my life, but rather as therapy and spiritual practice. I simply can't do it, I can't stop expressing myself and reflecting through art. For me, it's a very important form of expression, and a Buddhist practice. It's a kind of exercise, an exercise in being human. I’m actually really embarrassed to admit it, but I still don’t know how to tune a guitar, I can’t read sheet music, and I can’t seem to learn the chords. But I have my own way of memorizing sound sequences, organizing them visually through all sorts of associations.

As for the collaboration with Aum!, we've known each other for a long time, since our Horadnia days. We're both mature, even old, you could say, and now that we’re working together, we understand each other really well, literally with half a word. And Ilia is simply the chief executive wizard of sound creation – give him a task, and he does it unbelievably well, both in terms of arrangement and performance, down to the tiniest details. Plus, Daša has this magical voice – exactly what I needed for someone to perform these songs. You can say, our projects just magically fit together.

Ilia Pechinin (Aum!):

– I’ve known Dzianis Trusaŭ, the creator of the Autonomicon, musician, poet, and writer, for a very long time. He is a talented songwriter who knows how to express profound thoughts concisely and in simple language. You can say he is a real hitmaker, if the word ‘hit’ can be applied to niche and underground music. A couple of years ago we decided to collaborate on his song Olenyonok Bembi. I arranged it, and Dzianis did the vocals. Then I edited together a music video – a collage of Kalykhanka (nightly children's show on Belarusian TV - translator's note) footage, Un Chien Andalou, and various chronicles. We went on to work together on other songs and eventually, the amount of our collaborative material has reached album-sized proportions. And although, based on my description, it is rather a compilation of the project’s songs than an album, the work turned out to be conceptual, as we followed a specific emotional and cognitive direction throughout all our collaborations. In short, Bestiarium is a trip to your inner zoo. Welcome!

We continue with Flying Pluto Flowers from Miensk. The project has released a new album called All The Whales Will Turn Into Birds this September. Stylistically, it is an album of mystical hauntological ambient. One of the album's highlights is a collaboration with Japanese musician 053, that, without leaving this stylistic territory, is enriched with kaleidoscopic beats and vibrant sound design of meticulously fine-tuned synthesizer riffs. Emotionally, the album's atmosphere is perfect for sinking completely into the cozy mist of deepening autumn. Let's meet the project's creator together:

– I would say, I'm only beginning my creative journey. I started making music about five years ago, and only now am I beginning to understand how a particular genre is constructed. In my case the genre is ambient. My main inspiration is Sam Ray, especially his side-project Ricky Eat Acid, that explores abstract ambient with a dash of chillwave and noise. Brilliant stuff! It was his sound that I got hooked on a while ago and that inspired me to start making my own music. But I digress.

I've been working on my album for about a year. The main concept, that the album revolves around, is whales. I once had this vision of dying whales turning into birds that soar into outer space, and the following year I kept making soundscapes with that image in mind. Some of those were inspired by a dream of mine or something I heard about or saw in nature. And some things came to life simply because I randomly struck a great chord in the sequencer. The more I listened to my demos, the more I wanted to add some abstract, weird, unusual elements to them. That's how I eventually got to this otherworldly psychedelic sound. Honestly, a lot of the time it's a really arthouse vibe, for real.

One of the tracks that stands out from the album is a collaboration with a Japanese artist known as 053. It all started with me writing a guitar part and running down to my friend's place to record it. Shout out to Kiryl Kavalioŭ and thanks for lending your guitar! Then 053 composed the piano part, which I really loved. So I recorded the vocal part and sent it to him. We were both amazed how well it all worked together as we were mixing the song, adding drones, drums, etc. You could say this track has additional trip hop and witch house elements, or whatever you want to call it. By the way, the name of the track means 'source of light' in Japanese. Or 'a lighthouse'. Hope you enjoy it!

Ira Levangur's name is well-known among local indie pop fans. Today, we're checking out her latest single, created in collaboration with the Russian project Lemniskata Petrikor. It’s an atmospheric trip hop track, with tones that evoke both 4AD-style dream pop and Enigma/Deep Forest vibes. My references could be more up-to-date, but something tells me they would likely be artists inspired by that exact '90s soundwave, which blended electronic underground and pop, abstract and ethnic elements, contemporary art and pop culture. If we were to categorize tracks by elements, this one would likely belong to air – or perhaps even ether.

And I do have one gripe with this track. Upon each listen, I catch myself thinking it ended way too soon. Perharps, this would be the perfect track to use the unfashionable sound-engineering technique known as the fadeout, that seems to extend the song's melody beyond its playtime, with the listener humming along to the melody in his mind after the track fizzles out in the speakers. But enough of me rambling. I've certainly dreamt up a lot of my own concepts around this one. But that's down to the dreamy state of mind that this beautiful ethereal song puts you in. Here's what Ira had to say about this joint project:

– If bedroom pop is a genre, then mine should be called kitchen pop, even if from purely technical standpoint. Last November I recorded a mini-album right here, in a tiny kitchen of my Khruschev-era apartment in Zavadski district of Miensk. This album is about life in the outskirts, the feeling of timelessness, the cold charm of my hometown, and the anxiety that today’s youth live with. About the questions we keep asking ourselves, like ‘should I stay or should I leave the country?’ and ‘am I happy here?’

Miensk, for what it's worth, is still quite a provincial city compared to other capitals. It often feels like nothing is happening here at all. And I, for one, often feel like an astronaut, cast beyond the event horizon into a distant, empty galaxy. Right now, I’m having a period of intriguing partnerships, and unexpected collaborations, so to speak. One of the latter has resulted in this song called "V Tvojej Futbolke" made with with Moscow-based producer Andrej Karakin. Lemniskata Petrikor is one of his projects, in which he works with guest female vocalists and channels his songs through a their voice. To me, there is something poetically tragic about this. By the way, the second member of this collective is Alexander Kolupai, known in the field as Artek Elektronika. For me, this is a warm summer song. When working on it, I imagined a July night in a residential neighborhood: the potent bird cherry scent fills the air, the cicadas are singing, I'm swinging on an old rusty swings set, while the huge summer moon is overlooking the whole scene from above. And for some reason, I really want to embrace and warm everything around me with my voice.

I would really love it if, on a cool, misty morning, my imaginary listeners poured something warm into their thermos mugs, wrapped themselves in a cozy scarf, went to the nearest park, and played my songs. This song is about seeing the light even in the darkest hours, being able to fall in love, live, and find joy in the here and now, exactly where you are.

Next up is a light jazz-funk neo soul flashback to May, when the Belarusian-Swedish duo of Mvli and Oh My released a deceptively understated yet incredibly stylish track. It’s the kind of tune you could easily imagine as either a soundtrack for a trendy city café or as one of Khruangbin's hits – though the more discerning might say they're one and the same. Still, it goes beyond that – it’s ‘ambient urban music’, as the artist himself describes his style. And I really love this interplay of meanings in that term, combining sounds of the urban environment with Erik Satie's furniture music concept. It's the type of music I'd love to have full-length album of to put on in the background while I go to work. But for now, let's meet the man behind the music. Zmicier (Mvli) is on the mic:

– I've been making music since about 2015. I play electric guitar, bass, rhodes and piano and make music in such styles as lo-fi hip hop, neo soul and instrumental hip hop. My main instrument is guitar and it holds down the melody on most of my tracks.

Here's a little background on this release we made with my Swedish friend Oliver, known as Oh, My. He's from Sweden, from the beautiful city of Malmö. I'd say he's quite a successful musician within his genre. We’ve been online friends for a while and we really clicked when it comes to musical preferences. So, it was only a matter of time until we collaborated on a track. It all started with me sending a demo with the main piano melody to Oliver. I did a basic arrangement with a bit of electric guitar, bass guitar and drums, and then Oliver took it from there. He really polished it up with properly sampled drums, and added a melody that gives the track such a great vibe.

We ended up releasing this single on Nine to Five Records, a Swedish label with a really cozy, welcoming community that releases a lot of music similar to what Oliver and I make. Releasing an EP on that label had been a milestone for me in the past, while Oliver is actually one of their main artists and regularly puts out new releases almost every couple of months.

The track is called "Murmuration," and I chose this name because it refers to this beautiful natural phenomenon where a flock of birds comes together to form a single shape, moving as one in a fluid, three-dimensional formation. It's just mesmerizing to watch. I hope the title captures the mood of the track well.

Our next featured musician today is almost a regular, but I just couldn't help featuring him again. Here's Michael Dailida with his new album Pikasso Za Rojalem – seventh album in his discography, released just months after his previous album. Those of you who follow his social media know that Michael is a professional artist, which somehow explains, at least to me, his incredible creative productivity. I'm reminded of a hand-drawn motivational poster saying ‘do everything at once’ that I once saw in the room of another student at the Miensk Academy of Arts. It seems, Michael shares this approach. These songs are probably exercises in songwriting and style more than they are carefully crafted artistic statements. It may also be that the songs themselves serve as fuel to Michael's creative engine, rather than being some sort of an end-product. Either way, the exercises are clearly paying off, as his songs about everything and nothing are absolutely brimming with style. We had another chat with Michael, and once again, he shared a lot of fascinating insights with us, especially about creating a seventh solo album in just a few years.

– This is my album number seven, because I like to work fast. I never liked overthinking my songs, because pop and rock music is actually pretty simple. There's nothing too complicated about composing songs in those genres, people often like to over-think it all. Plus, despite my intense productivity, I don’t promote my music at all. For me, it's more of a hobby and a form of self-entertainment. If I had a home studio, I’d probably have released seventeen of them already, considering I have so many songs in the vault, along with countless sketches and drafts – plenty of material for new tracks. It's my seventh album, but there was a long break, and during that time, I accumulated a lot of songs. I could have released them even sooner, but it takes money to record an album. That's what it all comes down to. There’s nothing really new in this album, except for the sound – it has changed. For once, I played all the instruments myself, even drummed and played the bass guitar. So it turned out as a very personal record that way.

I think, releasing three albums a year is definitely feasible. Especially, with modern technologies. You don't need to fuss about with tapes, although some do... If you produce it yourself and have complete creative control things are simple. Managing a band is harder. A band is a mix of different personalities and opinions, and on top of that, musical tastes. It's challenging to actually find like-minded people that you would function as a unit together with.

As I mentioned, I don’t invest in promotion because this isn’t a band – it’s a solo project conceived for my own entertainment. I’m basically a studio guy, to be honest. I don't do live shows, which frees up a lot of time. I’ve already written a new album, by the way. All the songs are ready, we could come in to the studio for a day and just polish everything up. Some might find it a bit rough and undercooked, but again, I don’t really care because I’m my own boss here and the producer to myself, so I can do whatever I want.

I believe we are flooded with music, indie music of varying quality – from amazing to mediocre. I think time will sort it all out. Some of it will fade into obscurity, while other things will get rediscovered. Some weird music freak will dig through this thick layer of underground, and maybe uncover a few of my songs. Although, I do have a ton of material to dig through myself, enough to put together a box-set already. While I sometimes think that nobody will ever hear these songs, I can't bring myself to shove them down people's throats by promoting them. Perhaps, they better stay my so-called guilty pleasure. It makes me uncomfortable when people listen to my music in my presence, and my last solo performance at a house party really stressed me out. I struggled while playing and ended up torturing the audience, which is why I don’t give concerts – it’s become something I really hate. I can't perform in front of an audience, especially my own songs. I’m terribly shy about it. They’re purely mine – meaningless, elegant, bohemian, and bourgeois. That's basically how it is.

And last, but not the least, is yet another reminder of the depth and power of the underground, both local and global. Yes, there's a Belarusian label that you’ve probably never heard of, with a strong niche fanbase, which has been releasing not trendy but relevant music from all over the world, from Tula to Texas for years now. Releases from People Can Listen, which is the name of this notable label, have crossed my path multiple times before, often leaving me bewildered by the variety of sounds. Everything fell into place when I recently discovered their compilation from this July titled Seventeenth Listen. This release features fifteen tracks by artists from around the world, showcasing different shades and mutations of classic IDM. A genre that, despite peaking decades ago, still hasn’t aged in its original form, in my opinion, thanks to the futurism and experimental spirit embedded in its DNA from the very start. Moreover, it's a genre of music that can combine intimacy with danceability, academicism with technology, offering vast opportunities for artistic expression. Quite a phenomenon, wouldn't you say? This genuinely independent global scene thrives on local labels like these, away from mainstream trends, but with a dedicated following of their own. We spoke with the founder of the label, Zmicier Ciaslionak, about its history, and encourage all curious minds to explore its catalog. We suggest starting with the mentioned Seventeenth Listen compilation, which we’ll check out a few tracks from. But for now, let's meet Zmicier:

– The three of us started this label back in 2005 in Mahilioŭ: myself, Maksim Hardzienka, a.k.a. DJ Fin and Andrei Mielnikaŭ. We just wound up discussing why don't we start our own label over beers. We were all making music ourselves by then, sending demos to labels, but nothing was coming of it. The name People Can Listen came from a very simple concept – electronic music people can listen to. By the way, initially we planned to release different sub-genres of electronic music. Each of us founders is a musician with his own vision, responsible for different stylistic directions. But, we gradually drifted apart with time. Maksim got into DJing, Andrei got busy with his musical project. I myself am a musician too, my projects are Nearfield and D.Tek, where I experiment with mixing ethnic elements with techno, trance and electronica.

Also, the initial concept was for the label to focus primarily on local musicians. Eventually, we would end up working with relatively few Belarusian musicians, though. Some of them stopped making music, others got caught up in family matters. I mostly find new musicians for the label on SoundCloud, keeping an eye out for interesting projects while browsing likes of those who follow us, seeking lesser-known artists with a unique sound.

The concept of our label today revolves around IDM and IDM-adjacent music, preferably melodic and easy to listen too. Experimentation is possible, but without going overboard; ambient is fine, but not too drawn out. In the future, we would like to have some physical releases, but we haven't found a good way to do that in Belarus yet. Vinyl releases would be worth their weight in gold, plus it's really tough to get things shipped here from abroad after 2022, and it will take very long. So we are completely digital for now, Bandcamp exclusive. We don't want to go to streaming services like Spotify or Yandex Music. We see ourselves as an underground IDM label.

That's it for today. This was Newsroom, the radio show about Belarusians who make sounds by the Radio Plato team: Reemotto, Stwone, Helga, Krik, Schmoltz, Nadya Ya, Stereobeaver and KorneJ and graphic desiger chernova.ya.

If you're a Belarusian making music, share it with us on social networks and we'll share it with the world in our next episodes. Subscribe to the podcast on streaming platforms, support us on Patreon, or simply Paypal us a donation – this helps us do more cool stuff. Don't forget to support your local artists by buying their music on Bandcamp and, of course, by coming to their live shows. See you next time! Radio Plato loves you!