This interview is a rare picture of Moscow’s electronic music subculture and features Evgeniy Fadeev (Flaty) and Yana Kedrina (Kedr Livanskiy) as protagonists. The two, already present in the Russian electronic scene, came together in 2016 to give birth to the Kosaya Gora project and then made their debut to the public with the album Kosogor in March 2023, a project entirely created inside a mobile studio travelling in the remotest Russian corners. The result is a fragmented sound portrait of a landscape characterized by multiple styles and influences but, at the same time, wants to remain free of any sort of cataloguing.
How did you meet and why did you decide to work together?
Flaty – We met around 2016 in the cult venue of Moscow’s underground music of the 10s called NII: Nauka I Iskusstvo (Science and Art). That time a large company of artists and musicians hung out there. Yana and I were in different companies but we soon became friends because of our common interest in music. Many people found friends there thanks to this particular scenario. It was always something progressive and unpredictable playing there. It was interesting to just drop in and get into a very interesting program. The creation process was always in full swing around so many guys made jams and improvised live. Therefore, our first attempts at working together were very organic in this environment.
Kedr – I really liked Flaty’s music, and I wanted to make a couple of joint tracks with him for my solo project Kedr Livanskiy, but in the end we made about 15 songs in some 7 days. It was a musical match, magic, it turned out to be very easy and pleasant for us to work together. Our first joint work created as co-producers is the Kedr Livanskiy album Your Need.
The beginning of the track is that feeling where a certain story is born.
It begins to shine through, you follow this sense and it begins to gain mass and grow.
It’s like you’re just looking for missing details, sounds, words.
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Do you remember the exact moment when this project was born?
Kedr – We were in quarantine. At that time we worked a lot on music, looking for new forms for ourselves. A series of sketches appeared, in which we clearly felt the beginning of a new musical line. At the beginning, the sound was more electronic, then during this period it began to appear different. At that time I started playing the guitar a lot and somehow it naturally migrated to our music, expanding its genre boundaries, and we realized that it was time to fulfill our dream of a band where you can play together folk and psychedelic music. I wanted to interact with live timbres.
We know that you spend time engaging in jam sessions. Is this album a way to recount your jams or is it the starting point of a new artistic path?
Flaty – The sound of Kosaya Gora is definitely a new road. In the first album we only felt it like that but a clearer form is yet to come: it is still worth remembering how to perform the material live. But for sure KOSOGOR is a world on its own.
Kedr – Jamming, for us, is the most natural form of communication.
At what moment does one of your tracks begin? Could you explain what is a finished work according to you?
Kedr – The beginning of the track is that feeling where a certain story is born. It begins to shine through, you follow this sense and it begins to gain mass and grow. It’s like you’re just looking for missing details, sounds, words. As if the track has always existed, but then you lose it, and try to remember and reproduce it. When the track is over, it’s the same intuitive feeling, everything that you add to the song is superfluous, you just know it. A sure sign that it’s time to wrap up.
What is the feeling of melancholy for you? Would you know how to represent it with images?
Kedr – We know how to convey it musically better than in pictures. Melancholy is probably my leitmotif, many Kosaya Gora songs are very much saturated with it. I think it is the central emotion of the album and the central emotion of my life: it is difficult for me to describe it in words. If you listen to the songs from the album you will understand what it is.
In your album there is a kind of conflict between what is the rural environment and the city.
Kedr – Rather than a conflict is a paradox. Yes, we are children of our time, strange creatures, 100% city dwellers with smartphones on one side and this strong connection with the earth, roots and ancestors on the other. Some kind of ancient memory sits in us, it seems to me a thousand years old. Nature speaks to me and I feel its power. Folklore is close to me, and not only Russian, but the whole world’s. The spirit of the city and the spirit of nature are two elements, and I cannot and do not want to choose between one of them.
Flaty – It doesn’t seem to me that there is a conflict between these environments in the album. There are a lot of contrasts around us all our life. The consonance of the fast life of a big city and the measured withering in the outskirts of half-abandoned villages is a standard picture there.
We are children of our time, strange creatures, 100% city dwellers with smartphones on one side and this strong connection with the earth,
roots and ancestors on the other.
Some kind of ancient memory sits in us, it seems to me a thousand years old. Nature speaks to me and I feel its power. Folklore is close to me, and not only Russian, but the whole world’s. The spirit of the city and the spirit of nature are two elements, and I cannot and do not want to choose between one of them.
A few months after its release, is there anything you would like to change within your album? With today’s awareness, are the stylistic choices you have made still right?
Kedr – Of course, I would not change anything, but we are moving forward, and we will express all our current visions in our next works. We already see our sound differently, but everything is alive in the moment. What was then is left then, and we will do something new now. There are no frames and categories in which we will pack ourselves, we want to be very different, but, most importantly, honest in the moment. It’s great that in Kosaya Gora we don’t think in the future, but only in the present. Maybe this is our last album, or maybe it’s one of ten.
The genre of your music has been labeled in the most diverse ways, for us at Ouvert it would be Neo Folk, but for you who are the authors, how would you define it?
Flaty – I don’t like the idea of tagging music with genres, especially since it will definitely change in the next works. But ok, let it be diy-trip-hop-psychedelic-folk.
