DMCWORLD gets the world exclusive with the latest electronic star to emerge from the Ukraine…
Maksim, a huge welcome to DMC World. Where on this crazy planet are you?
In the best place on this planet – in my hometown of Kiev. Right now I am preparing for a big solo performance scheduled for the first half of December, whilst also listening to the recordings of Takuya Kuroda and Jpegmafia.
Firstly, before we get into your new music, where and at what age did your musical journey begin?
It started at the age of 11, when I was lying in my parent’s room and for the first time I heard a CD with a compilation of trance music, bought at one of the pop-up markets. There were several places to get pirated music, even before the time of dial-up modems, torrents, etc. The only way to get music was to go to the market and ask what new records there were. This was the moment I fell in love with music and realised that my life would be connected with it in some way. How exactly – I had absolutely no idea, because there were no prerequisites: no one in my family was a musician, I had no musical education or access to any musical base. I just knew that I wanted to connect my life with music. I then went digging into the releases of Sonic Records, Kontor Music, KLF Communications, R&S and React. Before creating Cape Cod, I had played for about 7 years with a mathcore/punk rock band on bass guitar.
So you’ve just released your second album “Echoes.” How long has the album been in the making?
Almost two years. Roughly half the time was spent creating the songs for the album and recording vocals, the rest of the time was spent working in the studio and ironing out the smaller details. I am an absolute perfectionist and sometimes found myself reaching a dead end as the album was as perfect as it was going to be, in my eyes. We calculated every millisecond so that the listener would not hear the transitions between tracks, thus turning the album into one continuous piece of music.
The tracks are all excitedly diverse, is there a story behind this album?
There are several layers to the album. The first of them is devoted to ‘information noise’ (infoglut) but at the same time, the album could be considered as part of that ‘information noise’ as it consists of a variety of musical styles. If you dive into it completely from beginning to end, it is possible to distance yourself from external information noise and news flow. Understandably, in this day and age, listening to an album continuously from start to finish can seem like quite a laborious task (laughs). On the day of the album’s release, we partnered with 14 various locations around the city where the album was played from morning to evening and everyone who wanted to listen to it could come and leave their feedback about the release on paper. The second layer of the album is devoted to love, while the third is representative of emotional echoes and echoes from my past.
Talk to us a bit more about some the of the vocalists you’ve worked with on the album and how those connections came about?
The internet (laughs). I assembled a base of vocalists, all varying in timbre, dynamics and pitch. When I finished writing a song, I would select several variants of vocalists and send them a letter with my request. I received declines but did not give up and after multiple exchanges with singers worldwide, I had 9 songs with vocalists from the States, England and Ireland. The experience was incredibly interesting and although most of the vocal samples were not what I was expecting, they ended up sounding better than I could have imagined.
You hail from Kiev, Ukraine. Tell us a bit more about the music scene there…
I am a fourth-generation Kyiv resident, therefore everything that happens in the city is important to me – socially, culturally etc. This is where the idea for my label Kiev House was born, the main reason for which was to harness the Kiev sound. For me, it is the spirit of the city and its mood that I wanted to mirror in a musical context rather than identification within a particular style. I wanted Kiev to gradually identify itself, to be as distinctive as possible and not to become the second Berlin or Tokyo.
Are there some other great electronic producers emerging from the Ukraine that we should be on the look out for?
Absolutely – you should keep an eye out for all of the musicians who participated in the “Kiev 000-003” podcasts (https://soundcloud.com/kievhouse/sets/rrndwkccyytx) – each of them has their own trademark sound and their own thought process behind the music but they are all interconnected, they all go to the same parties, communicate and share creative ideas – Koloah (aka Voin Oruwu, Tropical Echobird), Youngg P, zolaa., Pahatam, Konakov, Ivan Vasiliev, fozz, SKAN, Lumitecc, Inlandschft and others.
Where are you performing currently?
Most of my performances are happening in the Ukraine at the moment.
Talk us through your live set up…
Almost a year went into the creation and set up of the live shows – who performs what parts, what tools to use etc, so that it would be interesting and engaging to watch. I also experimented with musical dynamics and visuals. Now, during my live set up, I play bass guitar, keyboards and drums, alongside my close friend and guitar player of Straytones (Artem).
Can we expect a tour in the near future?
Gradually working on it, watch this space.
And finally, what are some of your plans for 2019?
I will start thinking through the concept for my third album, as well as going tour and making a new music video. The first video from the album was created back in 2017…
