Afterlife is a musical journey through fantastical stories, soundscapes and the pulse of a new beginning.
Conceiving the afterlife as something unfolding now, the album afterlife is responding to the military invasion of Ukraine with semi-fictional narratives, cinematic soundscapes, bass grooves and poems, string orchestras and broken beats. Afterlife is a practice of grieving and new beginnings, life after the latest moment of personal and collective history. The album embraces an uneasy place as the dawn of the fantastical.
Accompanied by allied musicians of various genres, ILYICH embarks on this journey and explores its multidimensional map. The album invites the audience to join forces by listening, dancing and redreaming the world as a world after war.
About the album:
Calling the Cosmos:
What is the response-ability of the artists and musicians in a historically critical moment? Many things have broken since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the initial occupation of Satelite Island, the artist’s birthplace. It is impossible to fully share a story of another war among so many others, and it is impossible not to share it. Informed by tragedy afterlife figures joyful ways of sounding a life after a breaking point. Embracing chaotic fractures as pathways of music the record summons a cosmos of the post-war future into the present.
Genrefluidity:
What is not music? The infiniteness of music goes far beyond the rigid limitations of state borders, self-righteous identities, stubborn egos, specific skills and instruments. Embracing transmigration to dream a boundless world inspired by difference, otherness and contradiction the album's afterlife creates a sonic playground. Here, the narratives of struggle and resolution, mingle with soundscapes and field recordings and take turns with jazz, fusion, pop, electronic music and instrumental interludes.
Sonic Playground:
On his musical journey, ILYICH travels in alliance with musicians and artists from Earth and many other worlds. Collaborators on the album include multi-instrumentalist Takuya Nakamura (JP/USA), drummer Ziggy Zeitgeist (AU/DE), artist and singer Hani Mojtahedy (KRI/DE), artists and actresses Susanne Sachsse (DE) and Olivia Lucy Phillip (UK/US), improvised jazz band Move 78 (UK/DE) and musicians currently displaced from Ukraine, multi-instrumentalist Oleksandr Cherno, singer Oleksandra Kazakova and sound engineers Viktor Kurando and Eugene Don.
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"At the Door" invites you to shed all heaviness in the realm of celestial choirs, ethereal shimmers, and rays of light pouring through the trumpet. Featuring renowned jazz artist Takuya Nakamura, ILYICH unveils a timeless portal, a cosmic route, a shortcut to the heart.
Some of the most special encounters and places await behind unsightly entries, small cracks in walls, and breaks in fences. "At the Door" serves as an entry point into a place like this: a cosmic chapel, a cinematic journey, a place of letting go.
The single is the first from ILYICH’s upcoming album “afterlife”, a response to the war in Ukraine.
At the Door is the first single and simultaneously the first track of the upcoming album "Afterlife" by the otherworldly musician from Kherson. Wrestling with the aftermath of the military invasion of Ukraine, At the Door is a sonic reflection on the responsibilities of the musicians and artists in the moments of overpowering collapses and great intensity. At the Door invites the listener to drown in sound and yet to find a way through, to release everything that does not serve you, and to keep on moving after the breaking point.
The ear of the storm:
Improvised in New York in May 2023 for the first time with a trumpet, the track emerges while the city is being covered with thick red smoke from the burning forests in Canada. Meanwhile, at the same time, the destruction of the Kakhovkas Water Dam in Ukraine, on the other side of the world, puts vast territories, including the artist's hometown, under several meters of water.
Finding oneself between these two extremes, "At the Door" invites us to perceive the madness of these apocalyptic moments through the ear of the storm—a calm sonic region at the center of great intensity.
Flying together:
Going through intense moments in life is at its best done in great company. Traveling and performing with their project ILYICH and Grounded Outer Space People around the world, collaborating and sharing musical ideas are at the core of ILYICH's music. How can we listen and hear life's messages together?
"At the Door" unfolds through conversations with the composer and multi-instrumentalist Takuya Nakamura, known for his live jungle and D&B sets on The Lot Radio, his solo work, and collaborations with Jojo Mayer, CocoRosie, and Wu-Tang Clan. Joined by the melodic narratives and the sound of the "Music cyborg with the heart," "At the Door" reaffirms that there is no way to bypass the challenges of life but to move through them with music, piloting and navigating together with your fellow travelers.
Tuning:
At the Door invites you to tune in with the infinite depth of life, to listen introspectively, to move and sync with constant changes, reminding yourself that behind any density and heaviness lies the light spaciousness of the cosmos, just here, underneath any apparent contradictions.
credits
from afterlife,
track released November 2, 2023
Recorded by ILYICH and Takuya Nakamura
Composed ILYICH and Takuya Nakamura
Arranged ILYICH
Synth, Keys, Sound Design - ILYICH
Trumpet - Takuya Nakamura
Mixing - Viktor Kurando
Mastering - Eugene "Diggidon" Don
Artwork photography - Anton Kats
Photo Retouching - Igor Kritskiy
ILYICH is a musician and storyteller reincarnated in Kherson, Ukraine.
Augmenting music
performances with performance art ILYICH plays live and pilots full sound of electronic music through soul and jazz. Embedded into a fusion of six-string bass and djing with synthesisers, drum machines, string orchestras, and choirs ILYICH tells stories inspired by struggle and resolution....more
