The last episode of our series made in collaboration with 20ft Radio explores music trends post-Maidan and being “a rhizomatic thing” during wartime.

Why do we need labels nowadays, especially in Ukraine? Especially when the manufacturer pulps most of your vinyl debut release before it’s even left the factory? A good question, answered in part by the guests in the final Memory Leaks episode: Acid Jordan and Tofudj, from the “horizontally structured and ever-morphing” Pepe Gaffe collective in Kyiv. 

Pep Gaffe release adventurous electronic music (but not only). They once stated they were “a collective of enthusiasts who are bound to devote their lives to the grand idea of developing a music community and aspire to create a platform for sterling interaction between artists and cultural operators.” According to Acid Jordan and Tofudj, the text was “a hoax, an in-joke, and we hated it. But it all came true.”

Being music enthusiasts, producers, event curators and friends from way-back in Poltava, Acid Jordan and Tofudj are possibly the best guides you can find to the left-field sounds of contemporary Ukrainian music, and the pitfalls many currently encounter in just doing their thing. The pair talk of pulling off live events with war as a constant backdrop, and if alternative music organisations could be more decentralised, or is Kyiv still the magnet? Other topics include feeling isolated, and niche labels as “culture vortexes”, as well as the general, post-Maidan trends in alternative Ukrainian music. 

In the latest instalment of our collaboration with Kyiv’s 20ft Radio we hear tales of taxi drivers horrified by music, “Baroque pop”, paying tribute to Twiggy Pop, and ask what is an Independent label, in Ukraine

The fifth Memory Leaks episode is a trip to the south of Ukraine in the 2000s and 2010s. We talk to Dmytro Vekov, a man with a “penchant for pseudonyms” and someone who admits to “keeping teenagers awake after midnight”, listening to their radios. Dmytro is host of the cult radio show Atmosphere and founder of the Cardiowave record label. Atmosphere has been on air every Thursday at midnight for more than twenty years, and played a vital role in helping younger Ukrainians find obscure or marginal music before the internet took hold. 

‘Imagine, a taxi ride just after midnight in Odesa in the late 90s. Just after a hit like Macarena has finished, and suddenly the sounds of Einstürzende Neubauten, Swans, or Coil start to screech through the speakers. The tired taxi driver stops and whispers to his passengers in horror: “I’m not going anywhere, anymore.”’.

Dmytro’s other enterprise, the Cardiowave label, emerged, like many underground cultural phenomena, out of chance meetings with like-minded people (including, it seems, lots of Cure and Cocteau Twins fans). Cardiowave is Dmytro’s name for the “chamber folk, or Baroque pop” trend in the 2000s, driven by the successful band Flëur, though, as Dmytro says, “clearly, it doesn’t explain very much at all”. The band and label began to influence Odesa’s local music scene during the following decade, with its penchant for “poetic, grotesque, sombre and ethereal” sounds and forms. We also learn of the late Maria Navrotskaya, from Twiggy Pop.

This is the story of how a small Ukrainian label evolved away from expectations of Ukrainian music as being all about folk music. The fourth episode of the Memory Leaks sees us stepping back into the Ukraine of the 2000s to take a closer look at the phenomenon of small indie labels and how the underground developed in unexpected ways. Our guest is Serhii Dubrowskii aka Dubmasta. Dubrovsky is a selector, producer, designer and journalist. Born in Chernihiv, he now lives in Kyiv. After starting out with various noise and hardcore bands in the 90s, Dubrovsky became a major driving force for the VzyalSoundSystem AKA VS AKA ВЗЯЛ project, one of the first electronic dub groups in Ukraine.

Serhii has been a key figure in Ukrainian urban independent music for decades, and SKP Records, the label he co-founded, is still active and well-known among connoisseurs. This year SKP celebrates its 25th year, so we look back to where everything began – in his bedroom.

Dubmasta’s wonderful tales are essentially of creative barter: from compiling cassettes of “crazy noise punk and atonal drone”, and making and exchanging CDs at parties and with contacts – sometimes for food – in the early 2000s, to building a network of like-minded artists and collaborations around the world. Along the way, we hear tales of the development of Ukrainian dub and dubstep, denim-clad cinemas, working with Genesis P-Orridge, burning tyres for fun and how the many changes in musical formats have shaped the underground. “We do not need to build a factory to make tapes!” says Dubmasta. And remember: “Russian music always sounded appalling. No-one brought Russian stuff in their DJ cases.”

Note there are silences in the broadcast.

This podcast is produced by Kyiv’s 20ft Radio and the New Voices Ukraine project is supported by the British Council and Ukrainian Institute.

In the third episode of Memory Leaks, we’re moving deeper into the 1990s and the evolution of underground sound from rock to electronic. Our guide this time is Oleksii Dehtiar aka Maket, the frontman of the cult band Ivanov Down, one of the most uncompromising acts of the 1990s Kyiv scene. Oleksii will break down Ivanov Down’s many incarnations, reminisce about the first Ukrainian raves and share his views on the music-making technologies of today.

The second episode of Memory Leaks is dedicated to the Kharkiv-based phenomenon of the Novaya Scena (New Scene). Novaya Scena was an arts community and music production centre that was managed by Serhii Miasoedov. Accompanied by Serhii and Oleksander Klochkov – a music enthusiast, and caretaker of the Novaya Scena archives – we dig into Ukrainian avant-rock and esoteric folk of the 1990s.

20ft Radio is an independent broadcasting station founded in December 2016 by a team of music enthusiasts. Since that time the station has been broadcasting from a port transport container, currently located in a small garden of a former brewery in Podil distinct, Kyiv.

20ft Radio’s contribution to Альтернативи: New Voices Ukraine is a joint project called Memory Leaks: The Story of Ukrainian Indie, Underground & Beyond. This series will highlight the compelling history of the Ukrainian independent music scene through the concept of memory as an elusive, yet valuable source of knowledge.

In the first podcast from Kiev’s 20ft Radio we’re taken deep into the otherworldly folk sounds of the Ukrainian underground of the late 80s and early 90s. New Voices Ukraine is a collaboration between The Quietus, 20ft Radio, Neformat, the Ukrainian Institute and the British Council.

In an interview with Andrii Strakhov, member of the avant-folk band  Верба Хльос (Verba Hlios), we explore the early days of Ukrainian independent music, focusing on Цукор Біла Смерть (Sugar White Death), Олександр Юрченко (Oleksandr Yurchenko), and the avant-garde scene in Kyiv and its surroundings in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

20ft Radio is an independent broadcasting station founded in December 2016 by a team of music enthusiasts. Since that time the station has been broadcasting from a port transport container, currently located in a small garden of a former brewery in Podil distinct, Kyiv.

The radio station normally showcases the local Ukrainian electronic scene – DJs, selectors and live performers, but also takes care to engage with independent artists and other independent radio stations from all over the world, to represent the entire spectrum and diversity of electronic, and other, music. 

Following the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, 20ft Radio ran an international project Grains of Peace. The aim was to bring international attention to the ongoing war, fundraise, and create a special media channel that would play a therapeutic role. The station involved more than fifty artists from Ukraine and from around the world and streamed these shows over seventeen radio stations. 

20ft Radio’s contribution to Альтернативи: New voices Ukraine is a joint project called Memory Leaks: The Story of Ukrainian Indie, Underground and Beyond. This is a podcast series (and a longread article) that will highlight the compelling history of the Ukrainian independent music scene through the concept of memory as an elusive, yet valuable source of knowledge. 

Memory Leaks… explores the scene’s development and establishment, tracing the ways in which the bedroom avant-garde of the early 90s transformed into the electronic cross-genre experiments of today.

Nuts And Bolts Podcast is back with the first episode of Season #4, where host Jessica Sligter interviews composer, sound artist, and researcher Cathy van Eck (1979 Belgium/Netherlands), whose work combines elements from performance art, electronic music, and visual arts. 

Cathy teaches at the Department for Sound Arts of the University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland. In 2017 her seminal book Between Air and Electricity was published, detailing how musicians have explored how to transform microphones and loudspeakers from “inaudible” technology into genuinely new musical instruments. 

This episode was edited and mixed by Jessica Sligter. Made possible with the support of Norsk Kulturfond. 

Go to https://nutsandbolts.space for information about all Nuts And Bolts’ activity, such as tutorial videos and workshops, and to become a member of Nuts And Bolts association.

© Nuts And Bolts 2021

The final episode of Season 3 features Nuts & Bolts founder herself, Jessica Sligter. Sligter is a performer, composer and producer based in Berlin, whose practice lies at the meeting point of various experimental expressions, in a ‘noir,’conceptual space. Exploring conflict and border-crossing both in her music and text, Sligter has been touring and releasing under the radar for years.

Among her releases are the critically acclaimed Polycrisis:yes! and A Sense Of Growth, and her compositions for ensemble include Movements 1, Two Figures for Oslo14 ensemble, and Dark Passenger in collaboration with Jenny Hval.

This episode has been edited and engineered by Jessica Sligter, and was made possible with the support of Norwegian Culture Fund and NOPA. 
Support Nuts And Bolts by becoming their patron on patreon.com/nutsandbolts, and check out the Nuts And Bolts gear-tutorial videos on our Youtube channel, get there via our Instagram page @nutsandboltspodcast

Our special guest for this episode is Nadah el Shazly, Cairo-based producer, composer and performer. Her work both radically reinvents the popular music of her homeland from the early 20th century and explores new sonic and harmonic frontiers. She released her critically acclaimed debut album Ahwar in November 2017 via Nawa Recordings. We met Nadah in her studio and talked about amongst others synths, creative process, beat making and sound manipulation. 

Nuts And Bolts is hosted, recorded and engineered by Jessica Sligter, with editing by Julia Reidy. PR videos by Sligter and Liz Kosack. This episode was made possible with the support of Norwegian Culture Fund and NOPA.
Support Nuts And Bolts by becoming their patron on patreon.com/nutsandbolts, and check out the Nuts And Bolts gear-tutorial videos, get there via our Instagram page @nutsandboltspodcast

For this new episode, we’re thrilled to meet Jana Winderen, researcher and artist (Goldsmiths, university of London) with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology from the university of Oslo.

Jana focuses her work around audio environments and ecosystems which are hard for humans to access, both physically and aurally. We will discuss her practice, and the environmental stakes it holds (underwater noise pollution) as well as technical topics (hydrophone, portable pre-amps, ultrasound, recording techniques).

Nuts And Bolts is hosted, recorded and engineered by Jessica Sligter, with editing by Julia Reidy. This episode was made possible with the support of Norwegian Culture Fund and Komponistforeningen.

Check out the Nuts And Bolts gear-tutorial videos, get there via our Instagram page @nutsandboltspodcast