In my latest podcast for audio.com I talked to Blanc Sceol, the London based sound art duo of Stephen Shiell and Hannah White. Stephen and Hannah work together across disciplines, incorporating field recording, intervention, voice, acoustic ecology and instrument building. They often focus on participatory… Read More
The underground music veteran Mihály Víg looks back on Hungary’s Soviet-era scene.Image: Balaton’s Károly Hunyadi (left) and Mihály Víg in Budapest, 1980s. Photograph by János Vetö Outside of his native Hungary, Mihály Víg is best known as a soundtrack composer. His work is closely associated… Read More
Text and interview by Ilia Rogatchevski.Photos by George Nebieridze. Ilia Rogatchevski speaks with Berlin-based producer Misantrop about their new album Reproaching the Absurd, which is out now on Opal Tapes. The artist discusses their writing process and talks about how night life, collaborations and musicology inform their… Read More
Photo: Hippies at their summer camp in Vitrupe, Latvia, 1978 (Photo courtesy Archive G Zaitsev, The Wende Museum, Los Angeles) Ilia Rogatchevski speaks with historian Juliane Fürst about her new history of Soviet hippies and the counterculture of the former USSR. Juliane Fürst is a… Read More
Molchat Doma: (from left) Roman Komogortsev, Egor Shkutko, Pavel KozlovPhoto: Stas Kard The dark synth poetics of Belarusian group Molchat Doma transcend language barriers “Minsk is very much a post-Soviet city, with its gloomy panel highrises. It was in this atmosphere that we thought to… Read More
I am Meat was formed by Jonas Golland and Kazuya Ohtani as part of their university project in 2011. David Gadsdon, who was moonlighting as a stand-up comedian at the time, was drafted in to front the band. While Golland and Ohtani composed the frenetic… Read More
Ilia Rogatchevski catches up with the Polish quartet’s front man to discuss Gdansk’s tumultuous history, the films of Werner Herzog and the importance of boredom to the creative process Trupa Trupa are an art rock band from Gdansk. Fusing elements of post-hardcore, no wave and… Read More
Photo: Teo Yoo as Viktor Tsoi and Roma Zver as Mike Naumenko in Leto (Summer) Russian underground chronicler Artemy Troitsky talks to Ilia Rogatchevski about Leto, Kirill Serebrennikov’s new film documenting the 1980s Soviet rock scene. Artemy Troitsky is a Russian music journalist, cultural critic and… Read More
Disintegration Loops Swedish duo Neutral dig repetition with their reel-to-reel version of blasted psychedelia. Photograph by Erik Gustafsson. In 1843, Søren Kierkegaard published Repetition, an essay on experimental psychology that argued for the importance of recurrent actions and events. The essay opens with the Danish… Read More
Ilia Rogatchevski 