The new album by Odesa-based electronic musician Polje is titled ‘Incomplete’ and consists of nine main tracks and two Bandcamp-exclusive bonus tracks. Created in the ambient genre, the LP will be released on the artist’s own label, Liky Pid Nohamy, on November 21
According to Polje, ‘Incomplete’ began as an exploration of ‘music for compilations’, while its title ‘conveys fragmentation, incompleteness, and layering’.
‘Unfortunately, situations where friends reach out asking for a track for a charity compilation happen far too often, so you always need to have something ready or be able to create something quickly, — Polje explains. — For me, the solution was to rethink my approach to the components of a musical work, treating them as samples or ‘sonic layers’. An example of such a sound layer might be a recorded sample that is long and flexible enough to be easily reused and repeatedly deformed beyond recognition. Once formed, these layers are laid out together: they either coexist or, conversely, occupy the entire available space. They can also migrate between tracks and releases’.
The artist also sought to convey this sense of layering in the cover artwork for ‘Incomplete’: it was created by blending three photographs that ‘intertwine and overlap, losing fragments of themselves in the process’, Polje explains.
Polje says: ‘These photographs symbolize different layers of meaning: the view from the window of my former home represents something lyrical and personal, reflected in the music. The woman against the backdrop of the sea (artist Sana Shahmuradova) is a form of self-reflection on my creative path, as this image has often appeared on the covers of my various releases. The burned trash container is a continuation of the eco-renaissance theme introduced by artist Dasha Chechushkova in 2020 — an attempt to assess its current state’.
The album includes both tracks that Polje had previously integrated into other mixes and compilation projects, as well as new compositions.
About Polje
Polje is a project by Odesa-based electronic musician Viktor Konstantynov. Since 2015, he has been collaborating with Worn Pop.
He has performed at events such as Схеmа. Daytime events in Kyiv, the Shameless/Limitless collective in Berlin, as well as the ODS (Odesa) and ATOM festivals, and collaborations with the band Easter. In 2019, the musician released the EP ‘Khudozhnyk na pleneri’.
In May 2022, Polje released his debut LP ‘Kombinezon’ on the Odesa-based label Systema. The release includes nine tracks written between 2021 and 2022. We previously covered the album in more detail in our article.
About the Liky Pid Nohamy label
Polje launched the label Liky Pid Nohamy in the autumn of 2022. He describes Liky Pid Nohamy as a multi-genre music label from Odesa that ‘focuses on the intermediate results of auditory research and the aesthetics of peripheral creative practices’. As examples of the latter, he cites the assembly of notebooks, memos, directories, routes, herbaria, collages, essays, and sketches created during the process of working on a musical piece.
According to Polje, the idea of launching his own label had been developing for a long time and became especially acute after the start of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
‘I have some experience collaborating with other labels — both Ukrainian and international, albeit smaller ones (the Kyiv-based Worn Pop and Germany’s Konglomerat. — DTF Magazine’s note), — Polje told DTF Magazine. — In such collaborations, you inevitably become tied to other people — their time management and their sense of responsibility. At a certain point, I realized that I had sufficiently mastered the full cycle of music production, and my professional background in IT gave me a solid understanding of management and planning. The drive for independence can be defined as a goal. And ultimately, there’s a desire to make cool things and collaborate with talented people’.
The name ‘Liky Pid Nohamy’ refers to the book of the same title by Yurii Lypa, a Ukrainian publicist, poet, and prominent figure of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
‘During the first month and a half of the full-scale war, I lived in a house in central Odesa where, in 1917–1918, figures of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Ivan and Yurii Lypa, once resided. One day I visited my friend Volodymyr Chyhrynets (Vichnyj Gandzh) and told him about this historical fact. He replied that he had recently come across Yurii Lypa’s book ‘Liky Pid Nohamy’ (Medicines Under Your Feet) online. As you can see, I really liked the title, and after that everything somehow came together on its own’, the musician recalls.
