'... a ravishing audioscape of the Ukrainian capital...'
THE NEW YORK TIMES
'...a rather beautiful piece...'
THE GUARDIAN
'...a journal of endangered memories and a talisman against loss; above all, it’s a testament to survival'
PITCHFORK
'...the first definitive album about the war...'
A CLOSER LISTEN
After the battle of Kyiv, I and my friends who remained or returned to the city, noticed a strange feeling, as if Kyiv was a living, breathing being. And we wanted to comfort it, hug it, shelter it from harm. I could not figure out how to do it at that time, although I had lived in this city for thirty-seven years. It took time and distance. This album is my hug.
Kyiv Eternal consists of field recordings of places and routes in Kyiv that I captured over the past ten years before the full-scale Russian invasion. The course of the 14th tram, Borshchagivka district at night, Silpo supermarket on Podil, landscape alley in 2013, pre-New Year's second hand on Shulyavka, birds of the botanical garden, shuttle bus criers whom we recorded for the Rare Birds project with Alexey Shmurak, and others. These recordings are combined with ambient loops taken from my music archive of the same period. It's a forced sidestep from my core practice connected to Early Music. These are anthems and serenades for Kyiv, though personal, intimate and ephemeral. This is a farewell to my (and our) past, a place in time and space to which there is no return, which will exist only in our memory.
KYIV ETERNAL is now available from Injazero Records.
Oleh Shpudeiko is a music composer and sound artist who records as Heinali. He specialises in electronic music and modular synthesis, taking inspiration from Early music and medieval polyphony.
Oleh writes music for games, films, choreography performances, creates sound art installations and performs live shows.
Amongst his works is award-winning music for the video game BOUND by Plastic/Sony Santa Monica, the 2020 album MADRIGALS shortlisted for the Shevchenko National Prize, and compositions and sound art installations commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) and The Museum of Odesa Modern Art (MSIO).
He has a long history of live performances, including appearances at venues and festivals such as NEXT in Bratislava, Unsound in Krakow; Berlin’s Berliner Dom, in collaboration with the Alter Ratio vocal ensemble; Kyiv’s Plivka and Mystetskyi Arsenal and Ukraine’s Next Sound festival.