Koloah: «You have to be a romantic to create something cool»

— How often have you performed abroad this year?

— Not much at all, I mostly played in Ukraine.Also I didn’t have any dance releases and mixes that an artist needs for great promo. I signed a contract with a Dutch booking agency Meanwhile in October. Performing in Copenhagen is my first booking through them. I think there will be more soon.

In general, I hope for the festival season: I want to do more live shows, because my music is more suitable for festivals than for clubs.

— Don’t you feel cramped in Ukraine?

— I’ve been actively playing since 2009, and not much has changed globally here: 30 new clubs haven’t opened, the same crowd goes to the clubs as 10 years ago, just some younger guys have been added to it. So, I can say that in some way I feel cramped despite the fact that Kyiv is pleasing and surprising.

Dmytro Avksentiev and his cat Misha | Photo by Anton Orekhov, specially for DTF Magazine

— How does that affect you?

— It’s both a hindrance and a help. I want to do something new all the time. For example, I have a Voin Oruwu live on a techno stage at one Brave! Factory, I play as Koloah on the next one, and then I play on the ambient scene with an experimental program. I’m trying to constantly change and experiment in existing environments.

— What has driven you for so many years? You make music, lead three different projects, write music for movies, commercials, other artists.

— I like variety, and that’s probably why I got into advertising. Every new project is a challenge. You don’t have two ads in a row that are the same, you do a new track every week, new music, you work with a new style. And I almost never say no. «Can you do funk?» — «Yes, I can». «Can you do a song with a guitar?» — «No problem». I like these challenges: they make me learn, and that’s important to me.

— Do you consider yourself a successful artist?

— To a certain extent, yes, I do, especially in Ukrainian reality. I have a performance schedule, I have a place of power where I can write music.

However, there are a number of uncomfortable factors, one of which is the payment of royalties. This is something that is practically absent in Ukraine. Not the most stable political situation also makes a lot of worries, as well as insufficient support of the cultural sector compared to Europe. And also different forces interfere with the work of clubs from time to time.

Am I successful? I think I am successful on a local level. But I am not yet successful on a global level. And I would like to think on such a scale.

— Then it begs the question: why are you still in Kyiv instead of going to, excuse me, Berlin?

— I am constantly drawn to home. Before, I didn’t understand what my home was, whether it was my apartment, my studio, my surroundings or my city. I’m not sure that the studio would be my home even if I moved it to another city.

I’m cool in Kyiv. I want to be a part of this city. The last ten years have been a period of formation of our new culture, no matter how pathetic it may sound. It’s a period of formation of film, music, art and media art.

I like influencing processes, being an active participant in them. And yes, attention to yourself is intoxicating: you feel needed, constantly involved in interesting projects.

— Isn’t it fear of competition?

— Not at all, I have confidence in myself. I have a lot of experience and a big case of projects. Plus I have my own sound, and that will always be my hallmark. In addition, my music is different, with different contexts, so my music will be relevant regardless of the scene.

— Perhaps there are only a handful of Ukrainian artists touring the world. Vanya Samokrutnyk founded the Odessa label «System» and he noticed that many foreign artists want to perform in Kyiv, but few foreign promoters want to bring Kyiv djs and producers to their parties. And in principle, our artists are practically unknown on the world stage. What’s the reason for it, in your opinion?

— Everybody likes to come here and hang out: it’s cool here, there’s cool people here, there’s crazy parties not spoiled by wild commercialism. Of course, a lot of people want to see it, to come here, because the buzz for an artist is to play a set in Kyiv and get the kind of feedback that our audience gives.

Bringing our people to our place is another matter. Every promoter thinks about how to make money. He’d rather bring someone famous for the tenth time than bring a dude from Ukraine who nobody knows there.

Although the situation changes every year. We can mention the residents of Closer, who play abroad quite often. And we also have a large group of experimental artists, who also need to travel outside of Ukraine.

— Why have some Ukrainian artists (but a few) managed to break out and actively play around the world and others have not?

— I think one of the key reasons is having an agent. This story is especially successful if the artist manages to get into foreign agencies.

A lot of foreign audiences are coming to parties in Kyiv now, including promoters who are listening to our guys and calling them in and it’s also starting to pay off.

— What is the situation with booking agencies in Ukraine? Is there an established system in the market?

— It’s there on some basic levels. It is the cool work of an agent that helps an unknown person become an artist with a name. An artist is an artist, and an artist needs a manager. The agent’s job is to promote, to negotiate the publication of the mix on a cool platform, for example, to get a performance at a festival, and so on.

— For me, we sometimes romanticize our scene too much, we constantly talk about some kind of flourishing. And it’s strange, considering that in fact there are no specialized media in the country, no journalists…

— We have nothing but artists, a community, and a few cool clubs.

— Do you feel like that’s holding you back in some way? I know that you don’t have a PR guy, you do everything yourself, you write to our editorial office about the release of the album yourself.

— It’s not a problem for me, because I like doing it myself. But it’s a problem for the stage.

You can’t talk about a full-fledged scene when there are three of the four wheels in the car, namely the music, the clubs and the community. We have no one to write about this music globally, there are no specialized media platforms, no booking agents and managers, no promotion, no PR in the electronic sphere.

— Let’s move on to the album. You released Millennium Sun in November. How do you know if your album is ready for release? And what was it like with the last release?

— My albums are mostly compiled. I gather all my work, tracks into a playlist in a certain order, then I change places, throw some away, listen to all of them, bring something back, change places again, listen… It takes a lot of time. Sometimes it takes too long! Then I write the text. The text and the cover are the most important for me, because they are the first thing that gets the listener’s attention.

I very rarely sit down and write an album on purpose. There were only a few times, like when we did the release with Dennis Adu. I had a hard time at that time, I had something to say, and I wanted to capture my emotions. So we wrote three tracks in two weeks, which are still very strong.

I assembled Millennium Sun from new and old works that matched each other in sound and mood. There was even a track written in 2015. I made a new arrangement for it, keeping the original sound.

— When did you realize you had the Millennium Sun concept?

— It happened in 2019. But it was in a slightly different form and a little bit about something else. Then the lion’s share of the tracks just fucked off — and a new wave began. I had a concept of the future, which had already arrived, and the covid time made its adjustments, a different shade was added.

I immediately released the album through Hyperbloid Recods after it was put together. This is my 4th or 5th release on this label.

Then we started working on the cover art. The artwork was originally done by GSM Garden, who collaborated with Arca, for example. He’s a top artist, but he and I didn’t understand each other.

— Why?

— I always have a huge list of requirements for the cover. I put together a moodboard, I write out the concepts, down to the colors… I prepare such a document that you just take it and do it. But he did it his way, because it was a collaboration. It hit me, and a row started, but the label didn’t interfere for a while. But then they wrote to me: either we’re looking for a compromise with the artist, or the release will be postponed. We ended up rescheduling the release

I got my own designer, but that didn’t work out either. I ended up going to my friend Vova Morrow, and he did the cover for Millennium Sun, which came out with the album. I couldn’t make the release before Brave! Factory because of these delays, where the album was presented live.

Photo caption: The cover of the album Millennium Sun, released in November 2021. Cover by Vova Morrow

But actually, I always have hell when it comes to the cover.I have a clear visual solution in my head in such cases, and I want the music and the picture to match each other.

— The album was followed by your collaboration with Riot Division. You showed an audiovisual show at the Planetarium in addition to the collection. Did you initially see the Millennium Sun also in this manifestation? Because Voin Oruwu’s previous album, Inertia, was also visual.

— Inertia was shown on Kyrylivska Street and I originally wrote it as an audio-visual album and music with visuals. I had a direction, but I didn’t have a clear vision of the visual part of the program in Millennium Sun. There were directions of what it could be. And the Blck Box team did everything in a very cool and professional way.

Photo caption: Audio-visual show WAVEFORM — a collaboration between Koloah and Riot Division. Photo — Blck Box

Check the dystopian audiovisual project by Voin Oruwu and Simon Kounowski

— The project at the Planetarium and on Kyrylivska Street is not about clubs or festivals. Would you say that you are interested in working with gallery and near-gallery spaces?

— Yes. I feel comfortable in this and have been doing similar projects since 2016. Inertia is the biggest and most ambitious project, which, unfortunately, was the worst of all for some reason. We showed it at the Biennale of Digital Art in Kyiv in autumn for the second time in a year.It seems to me that this project can continue to live and travel around the world in galleries and exhibition spaces even without me.

— Is the audience ready for something like this?

— I think the audience is ready. At the same time, there is the problem of a lack of venues. I don’t really understand where this could be shown. Can it be in the PinchukArtCentre? I don’t know, I don’t think so. There are some guys from the Biennale, who have a good space, but not many people know about it. But in general, we don’t have places for this kind of project.