‘Camp3’ was created by artist-soldiers of the Third Assault Brigade during ‘Music Camp’. Over the course of three days, they produced six tracks together with Ukrainian musicians GRABAR, Badwor7h, Yuvi, Hyphen Dash, Zheka Kurgan, and Sasha Chemerov
While working on the project, the organizers sought to emphasize the need to unite civilian and military society.
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About the participants
Both soldiers with a musical background and those who were self-taught or wanted to learn how to make music took part in ‘Music Camp’:
‘Monka’ is an FPV drone pilot who, before the full-scale invasion, graduated from the Kyiv R. M. Glière Institute of Music as a professional bandura player.
‘Blast’ is a communications unit commander, a graduate of the Prague Conservatory with a degree in piano, who previously worked as a sound engineer at music festivals.
‘Pushok’ is the bassist and songwriter of the band Dity Inzheneriv.
‘Monhol’ is a 45-year-old soldier who fulfilled a long-held dream by recording his first track during Music Camp.
‘Bodias’ and ‘Fizyk’ specialize in drone repair and are self-taught multi-instrumentalists.
‘For me, it was critically important to do everything possible to make this project happen. It’s generally hard to imagine something like this in the army, but it has already happened, and we want this experience to be scaled to other units. We are here to live, and we are defending not only borders but the very right of Ukrainian culture to exist, — Oleh Grabar, co-organizer and serviceman of the Unmanned Systems Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade, says. — I know very well how difficult it is to make space for creativity in a combat zone, but I also know how it helps transform lived experience not into trauma, but into works of art’.
The release will be accompanied by a documentary film about the making of the album, which explores how ‘culture and war exist side by side and intertwine within the same space’.
About other music projects of the Third Assault Brigade
In the fall of 2024, the Third Assault Brigade presented the project ‘EPOCH’, which brought together Ukrainian musicians and directors. They recorded a compilation album, with each track accompanied by a music video.
Tracks for ‘EPOCH’ were recorded by Hate Speech, DK Energetyk, 229, PVNCH, Renie Cares, Prokliatyi ***, Zwyntar, and Proroky. The project also involved a group of talented directors, including Illia Dutsyk, Sasha Tuz, Anton Satanovskyi, Vadym Piniahin, Mariia Ozirna, Kateryna Lemeshynska, the directing duo LAMPERFECT (Mariia Horuleva and Ivan Vyzhlietsov), and Yevhen Lesnevskyi.
In a comment to DTF Magazine, the team said that the idea for ‘EPOCH’ emerged within the brigade when ‘they saw how many people were willing to dedicate their creativity to the cause and realized that it could be shaped into a large and meaningful project’. You can read more about it in our article.
