Plato Newsroom #25

Discover the latest gems in Belarusian music, from Emil Zenko's noir vibes to Kriwi's folk-electronica revival. Newcomers, legends, and fresh sounds await!

24.12.2024

newsroom

Welcome back to Newsroom, where we share with you, dear listeners, the latest findings from our quest to find the best of modern Belarusian music. I'm your host Alik Khamiak a.k.a. Schmoltz and let's get into today's episode that features both newcomers and absoute legends of the local scene, as well as everybody in between.

In this episode:

Precautionary noir of Emil Zenko;
Warm vinyl house grooves by Vova Potapenko;
An excellent shoegaze album by Avian Lung;
Applepicker’s new single;
Aryna’s indie-pop debut;
A new album by the legendary Autism;
A lesson in folk electronica by the genre’s pioneers Kriwi.

We begin with a name familiar to our listeners. Emil Zenko is a multimedia artist from Horadnia, known for very cool noir-atmospheric video works, who over time has also ventured into creating equally atmospheric and noir music. In early November, he released a single in collaboration with his Spanish musician friend with Horadnia roots under the alias Enkaff. The song is a reminder of what happens when you get involved with femme fatales. I'm sure the upcoming music video will fully explore the theme, but for now, we can fantasize to the soundtrack – the actual song, that is, titled Pretty Shark. Here's what Emil had to say about the track:

– The initial idea for the song and the video came to me about a year ago. I knew about the ladies that devour their victims just like sharks in the sea and that's where the name of the song came from. I made a short demo, but I had no idea how to finish it. I wanted to use vocals. I tried female vocals first – it didn't work, then I tried singing myself – that wasn't it either. Eventually, in spring I invited my friend from Barcelona to collaborate on this idea and we enthusiastically began to look for creative combinations. We settled on him doing the lyrics and the vocals, while I provide the music and the video. The video for the track is also coming out soon. It's gonna be hot!

We continue with a house EP by Vova Patapenka called Bisous, released on vinyl in November on the Funkyjaws Music from Horadnia. That's right, a vinyl label from Horadnia (here you can find how Funkyjaws runs it). Although, this is a good time to remind you that Funkyjaws has also launched an official bandcamp page where you can now purchase all of his sold-out vinyl releases in digital version. Go check it out! And while we're here, I wanted to remind our listeners that Bandcamp is nowadays, perhaps, the only place online where independent musicians can earn something more or less tangible, as opposed to Spotify. So make sure you do the right thing and support your favorite artists there. Back to the show! The EP has a very warm and cosy vibe, which makes it perfect for both dancing and chilling. This is house music with the emphasis on music – with plenty of live instruments and even Vova's own vocals. Here's more on that from the author:

– I have a few musical projects. And this house music project, under my own name, must be the longest-running. I got into house and dance music in general around mid-2000s by DJing at my school discos, as it often happens with DJs. I got interested in dance music, and I started installing some music software. I was already attending music school and played a bunch of instruments, had guitars and keyboards at home. And here we are now, some 20 years later, I’m releasing my music on vinyl. And here's my latest EP with four new tracks. It features a lot of live instrumentation from myself and my friends. I played Rhodes piano, there's also live guitar and bass, etc.

The track number one is, perhaps, the heaviest on the instrumentation. I also sang on it myself in French. A lot of people helped me record it, including Ihar Papoŭ on bass, Michaił Kalinin, who helped me make my Rhodes arrangements richer and deeper, him being a professional pianist. My friend Nascia played the percussion instruments and Pafnutiy played the trumpet. And my French friend Clemence Decouchon helped me out with the lyrics that I sing in this track. Or this song, rather.

Next up is a Miensk shoegaze band called Avian Lung. Shoegaze is a genre that could be described as guitar trance music. And Avian Lung would be a brilliant illustration of this formula. Hypnotic tracks that really don't make an impact unless you listen from start to finish, and are best consumed one album at a time. Going back to shoegaze in general, it is an odd offshoot of both rock and noise genres, which, paradoxically, spawned a very soothing-sounding subgenre. There must be something to that white noise effect on the nervous system. We'll check out some of that in a minute, but first let's meet the guys from Avian Lung all together:

– Avian Lung is our second project after Sny Nad Ovragom. We decided to rethink our previous sound and start fresh, which is how Avian Lung started.

We still play shoegaze, but we are open to experiments and new musical elements and things like that. We got to working on this mini-album right after we put out our previous single. It actually took us about a year to record this EP, during which a lot happened, which contributed to the versatility of ideas used of this record. Each track is a snapshot of a certain period when it was created, so the vibes and the moods on the record vary. On tracks like Red Sun and Apple Tree we achieved and interesting blend of shoegaze with hip-hop drum parts. We think this is an interesting choice, and we would like to explore it more.

We would also like to point out the cover art of the release. We did it ourselves and we're happy that we can express our feelings in more ways than just through music and we hope to continue this synthesis of media.

Shout out to Vlad from Twigs Garden for featuring on a track. It was an honor and a nice surprise. It was also our first time collaborating with another musician, and we think it turned out great. Follow us on social media. Very soon we will have a giveaway of cassettes and some other very unusual items on Instagram.

Next up is someone truly prominent and important on the contemporary Belarusian scene. Mikita Arloŭ, a.k.a. Applepicker, known both as a member of the renowned band SOYUZ and for his involvement in numerous other projects. Mikita has been acting as a producer of other projects lately, giving them the distinctive vintage sound that he is now famous for. We've featured a number of those projects in Newsroom over the last year, and actually there is one more coming up in this very episode. But let's get back to Mikita's solo project Applepicker, that released a new single called Upside Down this November. And if it's not yet in your Spotify favorites – we're here today to correct that!

– Last spring I made friends with a great Polish musician Macio Moretti – shout-out, you're the best! – and got a chance to work in his home studio. I used that opportunity to try and write two sketches for stock music websites utilizing minimalist three-four chord structures. With that idea in mind, I sat down and recorded four demos within a few hours. Of course, I liked the results so much that I decided to leave them for myself.

The very first demo recorded that day was what was to become Upside Down. A while later I wrote the lyrics for that sketch and it quickly became my favorite of the bunch. By the way, another demo recorded that day, ended up as Look At Me – our joint single with Twigs Garden released this August. I'm planning a new single as Applepicker and some live shows in Warsaw early next year, more details on that coming shortly. Besides that, I have tons of material for other projects I work on, including numerous collaboration with various Miensk musicians. I hope most of that work sees the light of day next year. And besides that, I recently started playing bass and keyboards in serveral local Polish bands as a session musician recently. These bands are Javva, Mojo Exposure, Jantar. Plus, a tour with SOYUZ is coming up so there will be a lot of work and a lot of live shows in Poland and Europe. I also recently realized that I love working with other people's material as a sound producer. I recently produced a song by Aryna called Through Her Eyes, I'm very happy with the result and I would love to develop further in this direction.

As promised, next up is Applepicker's newest protege, who he helped record her debut single. Meet Aryna – a young indie-pop singer-songwriter from Miensk. We'll hear her debut single in a minute, but first let's meet Aryna and have little chat:

– Hi all, my name is Aryna, I am from Miensk. I write songs and learn to produce them. I am a huge fan of people and I love exploring the ways we live and experience the world. I love exploring how we perceive the world and ourselves – consciously or unconsciously – the way we do, and writing songs about it. I have recently moved to Warsaw, where I'm learning what it means to become a grown-up. And it is here that I wrote this song about totally honest openness to the world, that we typically tend to have in childhood. And it has a lot of wisdom to it, which is why it's important not to lose track of it while coming of age. I wrote it as a reminder to myself that being hypersensitive does not equate being infantile, but is a great thing that makes life more colorful, intense and filled with meaning. And it has to be appreciated.

I decided this is a good song to be my first single. And, because it's an important first step for me, I decided to do something really brave about it – to ask for help. That's why this track has that distinct Applepicker production sound to it. He recorded and mixed the whole thing, for which I am enormously grateful. Mikita made my debut recording a really fun and inspiring process. It was a great experience overall. So, my thanks to Mikita once again, thanks to everybody who already checked the song out, and thanks to Newsroom for showcasing my debut. And, it's gonna sound pretentious, but I’ll say it anyway: this is only a beginning. More songs coming soon. Thank you.

We'll start off the next segment with a little promo of the other Radio Plato product we released earlier this year: the podcast called Ikarus. Histories of Belarusian Electronic Music. This truly unique multimedia trip into the sounds and the memories of the early days of the electronic scene in Miensk was crafted by our very own KorneJ. I encourage everyone once again to check it out, if you have not yet. An English-language text version is also coming out soon. And the reason we bring it up today, is that one of the earliest Belarusian electronic projects featured extensively in that podcast has released a new album that we'll cover next. That project is Autism. We're always very happy to see the legendary local musicians in action, which is not a frequent sight in the Belarusian scene. Autism's new album manages to sound fresh today while being filled with references and the atmopheres that date back to its origins in the 90s. Vadim, the project's sole member for years now, seems to have kept that enthusiasm for new technologies that early electronic musicians were steeped in back in the day. At the same time, sonic themes and throughlines very familiar to fans of 90s UK chillout and intelligent scenes make their appearance on this album as well. To put it in other words – Autism is clearly a project with its own characteristic sound that manages to evolve with the times. I asked Vadim Militsin to tell us more about this album, and received the following audio recorded by AI in response. Well, of course. Aren't we all living in the future right now?

– My name is Vadim. Autism is my main musical project. I released the previous album four years ago. This album was recorded relatively quickly during this autumn. The album title Incommunicado means cut off from the outside world. That's how I recorded this album, alone, without a guitarist or a vocalist. I haven't shown this material to anyone until very recently. The new thing about this album is heavy use of AI alongside hardware synthesizers. Stylistically this album is pretty diverse. There is a lot of ethnic elements on it, but nothing revolutionary.

The album mostly echoes the music that I listened to back in Miensk: The Orb and similar ambient house stuff. Back then, I was technically under-equipped to approach this kind of sound myself. But now, technological advancements allow me to create something on a similar level. I would like to tell you more about the track Lexingtone. It is a centerpiece of this record for me.

One day I was waiting for my bus back to Staten Island on the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington in Manhatten, when I suddenly thought of a demo on my phone. I put my headphones on to check it out right there and decide if it's any good to keep tinkering with. It was a late autumn aftrenoon. The wind was rustling the fallen leaves under my feet. The Manhattan skyline lit up by a myriad of lights from skysrapers' windows. It all came together in the moment and the song sounded just perfect. I decided to call the track Lexingtone, after my location at that very moment, adding letter 'e' to the street name. Tone means sound.

And another big name from the 90s to close this episode with. Kriwi are true pioneers of what might be called Belarusian electro folk nowadays. They started combining traditional Belarusian signing with dance beats back in 1997, when they released their first cassette album. I got a hold of one of those cassettes as a youngster myself – shout-out to Michelson – so I had very little hesitation what to remix when I was invited to a Belarus Outside Sound System compilation earlier this year. I picked a track from what I always considered one of the essential Belarusian records as a source of inspiration. That's how Hej Loli (Schmoltz RMX) was made, apologies for another unsolicited advertisement in this episode. In my defence, this is somewhat on topic, as both remakes and collaborations with electronic artists are both very relevant themes for Kriwi nowadays. The track called Łosia that they released in early Novemeber is also a new interpretation of a song they first performed back on their debut album. Here's more details about the band nowadays from one of its members:

– Hi! This is Akvaleria from Kriwi. Here's a little background info about our new track Łosia. It's actually a track from Kriwi's first album. Of course, I was just a kid back then and not a member of the band. But we still like the song very much, so we decided to bring it back with a new arrangement, which was made by me, I also do other electronic arrangements for the band. Besides that, we often collaborate with T-Trider, a known Belarusian drum'n'bass musician, a founder of promo group Elektrokids that organized a lot of drum’n’bass events in Miensk in the 2000s. We are now finishing a few tracks that we made together with T-Trider. We work remotely, via zoom, telegram chats etc and rehearse when we meet before concerts. That's how the band operates in the modern era.

It's also worth mentioning that Kriwi is a project with a long history. Its leader is Vieranika Kruhlova since the beginning, and the band has seen a number of lineup and format changes over the years. We played with a live jazz-funk band for a while, we play accapella with an acoustic guitar and live-looping. And now we are preparing an electronic live show, because we see how well people respond to dance music during live hows. We are open to collaborating with DJs, electronic musicians and anyone who wants to collaborate and to make music with authentic Belarusian folk singing. The three of us, current members of Kriwi, are all professional musicians – composers and arrangers – and we love collaborating with other musicians. So feel free to reach out.

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!