The AbyShoMzk label has opened pre-orders for ‘Best Urban Technical Noises’, a vinyl release by the Kyiv-based band Ivanov Down. The record will be released in a limited edition of 200 copies. The release is scheduled for January 20, 2026, and will be the first installment in the ‘Bulo. Ukrainian Tape Archives’ series — ‘a new project’ launched by AbyShoMzk
‘Best Urban Technical Noises’ is a 1991 LP, recorded by Ivanov Down on analog tape in the basement of Kyiv’s House of Scientists, with sound engineer Valerii Papchenko, who also collaborated with Cukor — Bila Smert. The album is often described as Ukraine’s first attempt to create urban music of ‘total alienation — without folklore, masks, or compromises’.
‘A legend of the Ukrainian underground, a band ahead of its time, and an album that became the first pulse of Ukrainian noise and industrial — long before these words became familiar. Every sound here is a fragment of early-90s reality. An honest and raw wave — a volatile mix of electric current, city concrete, the noise of time, and young fury. First time on vinyl. Restored from the original master tape. Noise preserved. Truth preserved’, — this is how publisher Ihor Shamych and the AbyShoMzk team describe the vinyl release of ‘Best Urban Technical Noises’.
The recording of the band’s first album was made possible thanks to Serhii Deviatkin, who found the funding for it — 500 rubles.
‘Deviatkin was our manager, even though we never called him that, — Ivanov Down frontman Oleksii ‘Maket’ Dehtiar recalled in an interview with Amnesia. — For me, he was a kindred spirit. A Doctor of Chemical Sciences, he worked with titanium alloys. More specifically, not just alloys, but processes where molecules are pressed together, forcing atoms to form a crystal lattice — something like that. Once, he gave me an experimental sample that was harder than a diamond. I ran it across a beer bottle, and it scratched it like butter’.
In August 2024, Dehtiar was featured in the third episode of the podcast Memory Leaks: The Story of Ukrainian Indie, Underground and Beyond — a collaborative project by 20ft Radio, Neformat, and the British online magazine The Quietus.
The podcast host Olena Pohonchenkova, the creator of bubblegum zine — a print zine and Telegram channel dedicated to the independent music scene — spoke with Dehtiar about the evolution of Ivanov Down, the first Ukrainian raves, and contemporary music-making technologies.
