Hi Tyoma, great to speak with you! How are you?
Hey! You know, this year I decide to answer on this question: Fucking Awesome! It doesn’t matter what is going with you, it’s just different grades of awesomeness!
How was your year? What were your highlights?
This year was pretty busy – I started it with opening of Epizode festival, then spend winter on my Asian tour and kitesurfing on the different spots. Festival summer started from traditional Sonar OFF, Gamma, Signal and few more Russian festivals, few gigs in Berlin. Of course, «Haze» release with remixes from maestro Matthew Herbert, and my friends youANDme, Pixelord was a huge highlight, but the main one – is behind of all that – studio work. Finally I moved my studio to 90% to analog hardware, and right now I 90% happy with all setup!
What are your plans for the cold winter ahead?
Usually my winter is pretty warm – almost 8 years I’m going to Asia for kitesurfing, looking inside myself to find new music ideas. This year – plans are the same – open Epizode 2 MainStage on 31st of December with Carl Cox, Eric Powell and Sacha Muki. Then few Asian gigs – and again: catching the wind at kitespots!
We love the new EP! Tell us a bit about your Live On Mars label. What was the inspiration behind it?
You know, it’s always hard to tell – what exactly was inspiration behind the track, or EP. All the background, people and situations around me – everything inspire to write music. For me it’s kind of third language – with music I’m telling the world what you can’t tell with the words. I could tell that idea of «Bipolar» was to show, that «Bipolar» is not only «disorder», it’s more about humanity itself – everything have two sides (at least 🙂 – so I tried to show it with forthcoming EP. It’s 4 tracks – which are polar to each other on one side, and every track is polar musically inside: synths + trombones, live drums + crazy digital fx’s. And polyrhythmic structure on top of that.
Were you always musical growing up? What inspired you to make electronic music?
For me musical growing is to work with different people, musicians, video artists, mixing engineers, social art artists. Every year I involve more and more people in my recordings. people on a stage: me, my friend and stage-partner Uri Gincel, plus 13 classical musicians with classical instruments. For me it’s a great pleasure to share my ideas and get reaction from interesting people. Regarding electronic music – I think it’s time to remove «electronic» word from this classification. It’s just music ) For me it’s a biggest pleasure to play full live – it’s 15
You have a very unique style! Where do you take your influences from?
From everywhere! It’s not interesting answer, but it’s true! Of course I have some most inspiring things, like listening strange records I found at Discogs or at different vinyl-shops, or – playing kind of synth-jams with my friends. But honestly – I just live with the music in all my aspects of life.
Your last endeavour was taken up by Matthew Herbert for the remix? How did that come about?
I’m a big fan of Matthew. And in one moment I realise that «Haze» is the one, I’m not to shy to show him. So I just wrote him, send the track with simple question – what do you think about? He likes it and agrees, that it will be interesting to put his vision of «Haze» to a record. And it was not enough of his one vision – he made two remixes with different point of view on original.
Your playing at Epizode in Vietnam in January. That looks crazy. What’s the vibe like over there?
As I mentioned before – it will be my second time at Epizode. It’s unbelievable venue at the sea shore, with great art-objects, people and, of course, best sunsets. I’m super happy, that I am a part of organisation of this event. This time for me it will be at least 3 sets: one at the opening night, second – morning set, and third one – is special sunset set which I always preparing whole year: it’s not just 4×4, it’s a mixture of tracks which touches me. And it’s a storytelling set. Really hard to explain this vibes, which always born on this sets.
How did growing up in Moscow affect your sound and your career?
I think I can’t answer on this one, because I don’t know – how it would be in another country or city. I could just imagine, that in big city like Moscow it’s easy to find musical friends, or find rare instruments – but on other side you need to live fast, and sometimes it not so easy to spend a lot of time just for music. I’m a happy one – I never worked in office from 9am to 6pm and I have few projects which solves my basic needs, so I can spend so many time for music how much I want.
What’s the scene like over there now?
It’s really sad, that for this moment Russian government cancels a lot of electronic music events. Don’t know exact reasons, could only imagine it. And, when you reading news like “German government decides to spend 1 million Euro to support club scene” it looks like news from another reality 🙂 But on the other hand – the real rave culture was born on government restrictions, and I see – how it’s growing right now in Moscow – a lot of communities with uncommercial ideas growing really fast. A lot of artists from Russia became really interesting for international audience.
What’s yo
ur studio set up like to produce the music you make?
The wall of synths from 80’s connected to table of guitar pedals from 90’s. All in the web of wires from my modular system 🙂 As I mentioned before – for me studio work and creation process is important in a same way as live shows. It’s all connected. I think that’s why I love all the analog stuff from 80’s – because it’s not just click-record-release – it’s a search: inside myself, inside the soul of instruments with bunch of small “errors” etc. My favourite ones, that helps me in this search is Juno 6, Mono/Poly, RE501 and Rhodes.
Bipolar EP is out now! Grab it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bipolar-Tyoma/dp/B077FG9JMC
