Mike Lazarev - Gradiscence (2026)

Born in Ukraine, living in UK, this ambient producer with the looks of a hermit and the music sensibility of a poet made some more magic and enchanted it onto a short EP entitled Gradiscence.  His unhurried piano-based soundscapes create this kind of atmosphere that is as cozy as it is beautiful.

Not everything he makes gets to me, but this year's EP is another release after 2023's Sacred Tonalities that touched my spiritual side. There is something in the quality of those key sounds accompanied by next to nothing else that strikes me throughout the album. Every one of them feels like a finger touch on my spine, bringing an overwhelming feeling of warm if nostalgic embrace. The minimalism of the compositions really brings the piano sounds out so that they can charm the audience freely. Still, my favourite part of the EP is the one where the piano finally gives up and submerges into the moody, omnipresent electronic drone. Love it.

Gradiscence costs 6 EUR (5 GBP).

Check: Gradiscent

Country: Ukraine/UK

Genre: piano soundscape

Label: Bigo and Twigetti

Mike Lazarev - Sacred Tonalities (2023)

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Mike Lazarev - Sacred Tonalities (2023)

The Ukraine-born artist Mike Lazarev has released his first album through Past Inside the Present and at least 5th in general recently. Sacred Tonalities is meant to evoke a "meditative state of mind. Like the ocean. Like breathing" and it definitely succeeds.

This mesmerizing album is a wave of sound layers that overlap each other, creating one deep whole that can easily swallow the listener into its abysses. Its soft and calm drones feel as if they could as easily burst into a sonic chaos but they just don't feel like it at the moment. It was created to create a safe space for self-reflecting moments and it sure is this way, I just recognize more grandeur and more overwhelming potential here. It's clearly just like the ocean. 

Sacred Tonalities costs 7 USD.

Check: Tonality Number One

Country: Ukraine/UK

Genre: droney soundscape

Label: Past Inside the Present

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Mindless Paradise - Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz (2022)

Usually when a band combines traditional post-rock music with electronica, I have big expectations and I'm very glad when they are confirmed by the music itself. The Ukrainian outfit Mindless Paradise is a good example here: a band I hadn't heard about before, after a series of EPs, released their debut LP and Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz is definitely a something worth checking out.

No wonder that the band presents very modern, electronica-infused take on the genre as it is led by Fatum Black, an Ukrainian producer and soundtrack composer. But the music here is not overwhelmed by either the guitar nor the electronic side; I feel like it is perfectly balanced and creates a blend that meets expectation of a broad range of fans. It is fast and loud, can be overwhelming with its heavy sounds, especially when guitars take over and create this kind of black blizzard that can be felt on the listener's shoulders.

And it's also not a surprise. The track titles show that the ongoing war had been something that influenced the music here and these vibes: the adrenaline-fueled energy, the heaviness, the darkness, but also hints of hope, definitely mirror what is currently in minds and hearts of people in Ukraine.

Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz costs 6 USD.

Check: The Light Gets Brighter

Country: Ukraine

Genre: electronic post-rock

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Todaynovember - Spirit (2022)

Aleksandr Ivanov from Kyiv makes his music alone as Todaynovember. And it's one of the reasons why it is so impressive as it's one person creating the most atmospheric and epic kind of post-rock music. Spirit is a perfect example of how inspiring and uplifting this music can be.

This post-rock "with synthesizers and ambient sound and instruments" surely feels like taken from some intense movie scenes. No wonder that Ivanov calls himself both a musician and a composer. There is a high level of bombastic music here that is conveyed with orchestral-sounding strings and drums that accompany more traditional guitars and electronica sounds. The album surely feels as if it was created in the most monumental cathedral building. This music has this particular effect on the audience: while listening to this album you really want to go out and do things, you get the feeling that everything is possible and a huge amount of hope. Perhaps this is what we really need right now.

Spirit costs 7 USD.

Check: Spirit 

Country: Ukraine

Genre: atmospheric post-rock

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Somali Yacht Club - The Space (2022)

After Sun and The Sea, there comes The Space. The third album by the Ukrainian post-metal/stoner rock big names makes an amazing and very heavy experience. It is also pretty amazing that it could get released at all.

The band's modus operandi is to explore the "boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy". Their music is build on the stoner-like heavy guitar sound with its relatively slow pace and thick atmosphere. This creates a literal sea of noise with drums being the waves on the surface and the vocals the wind traveling over. There's such a clear nostalgic vibes here, the vocals sound tearful at some places, the music deep and mesmerizingly noisy. Especially when the vocals turn more towards choral chanting in Echo of Direction. Powerful stuff.

I find the album even more significant as it was released while the band's country is literally on fire and the bombs are falling down around their homes. The album is a sign that there's still place for art in hell and it is also used for good cause as the band is going "to donate all profits made in 2022 (till the end of the year) to various charities to help Ukraine and Ukrainians now". 

The Space costs 9.99 USD.

Somali Yacht Club - The Sea (2018)

Check: Silver

Country: Ukraine

Genre: stoner post-metal

Label: Season of Mist

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WatchCamp July-August'21 with Arctic Bay, dER & Murat Ertel, Martes Niebla, Paul Good & Kirsty Wood, Teletape

Arctic Bay - Someone, Somewhere

A new post-rock band from the Eastern Europe, the Kyiv-based artists play some traditional post-rock with a hint of heavier music. This is their first single ever and it's very, very promising. The single costs 1 USD.

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dER feat. Murat Ertel - 64​/​B

dER is Herman Taşçıoğlu from Turkey, who joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Murat Ertel and together they presented this long soundscape filled almost exclusively with electric guitar sounds. There's depth, there's calm, I like it. The track costs whatever you want to pay.

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Martes Niebla - Helsinki I

The Sevilla-based dreamy music band released an EP back in 2018 but there was no LP follow-up. Now, as they showed some new singles, including this one released by El Genio Equivocado, one can hope for more dream pop content from their side. The song costs 1 EUR.

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Paul Good and Kirsty Wood - No Regrets

Good and Wood are a highly artistic duo from London, their website shows their visual and video art as well as impressive performances. The new act comprises of drone-y ambient pop with calm and  warm spoken word vocals released by Tremolo Projects and mesmerizing companion video. The two tracks cost 0.5 GBP.

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Teletape - Стрела

The "Moscow dreamers" make some fun-and-joy indie pop music with a touch of ethereal atmosphere, especially in the form of the airy (but also lively) vocals. This is another single they produced and perhaps it's time for something longer. The song costs 3 USD.

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Dronny Darko & Ajna - Radioactive Immersion (2021)

Dronny Darko a.k.a. Oleg Puzan is an artist from Ukraine (and the owner of one of the best musical nicknames out there) while Anja comes from New York. They both create very dark and kind of uncomfortable ambient music that can be admired on their album Radioactive Immersion.

The ambient here is called "dark and rusty", it certainly has very, very industrial vibes - with sounds that resemble those of an abandoned factory (or at least I would imagine they do). It is undoubtedly dark as well, creating this unnerving feeling of something lurking in the shadows, the feeling of constant danger. They put it together by creating a story told by the ambient sounds and by the description of the album: "Your headlamp sweeps the tunnel walls. Roots and moss stretch their tendrils out of the darkness in strange geometric patterns, mutated and fueled by water from the abandoned cooling chambers".

It sounds like something taken from Roadside Picnic or perhaps Annihilation. It is basically a chapter from a book or a quest from a video game if you will. But written with beautiful (and terrifying) ambient sounds.

Radioactive Immersion costs 7 USD.

Check: Uranium 235

Country: Ukraine/New York, US

Genre: industrial ambient

Label: Cryo Chamber

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KAUAN - Ice Fleet (2021)

Led by Anton Belov, KAUAN, a post-metal/post-rock band from the East, have made music for well over a decade now, having debuted back in 2007, and made some serious stirr with an album Sorni Nai six years ago. They are back now with another phenomenal release, based on a true and eerie story, Ice Fleet. 

I was so sure this is a Finnish/Estonian band, after all, those languages are so difficult to master and the music's atmosphere is appropriate, but no, "KAUAN are from Russia, sing in Finnish, and are based in Ukraine, but their music is universally stirring". Which is helpful as the album is meant to tell the real story of ghost ships found in the Arctic and it's "based on real letters, articles and events. The album is separated into seven narrative chapters carefully described with an included libretto". If you want to get more into it, the band offers a series of FB posts that shed some light on this mystery, as well as, and it's not a joke, "a 40-page tabletop RPG adventure" that "will be available in print together with limited LP and CD versions of the album". Cool.

But coming back to music, the album offers the most frozen post-metal-in-spirit post-rock experience you can imagine. The heavy and overwhelming composition are at the same time blackgaze-like smooth and captivating to reflect the Arctic conditions, the temperature, the blizzards. Every sound here has its weight, not only the heavy guitars but also piano keys that resound in the blank spaces of Maanpako like sharp stars that announce disasters (or overwhelming post-metal screams in this case).

Ice Fleet costs 8 USD.

Check: Taistelu

Country: Russia/Ukraine

Genre: dark post-rock

Label: Artoffact Records

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Nug - Alter Ego (2020) EN

The Ukrainian band with a name taken from the Cthulhu myths, Nug, make this year's debutantes when it comes to long plays. Their Alter Ego was released back in August and inspired me with dark and striking post-metal.

The band offer dense, guitar backgrounds that make it almost impossible for anything to show through. Sometimes they sound very doom metal-like, sometimes like inspired by other sub-genres but most importantly, there's a lot of heavy and dark post-metal in them, the one that crushes with the weight more likely than tearing apart with aggression. But it's quite the opposite with the husky, screaming vocals that in songs such as Psyche brings awe with the direct influence on the audience.

Together they make this unique combination that doesn't do everything to be the fastest music in the world but rather focuses on the atmosphere generation on one hand and casting violent notes with the accuracy and power of an express train on the other. What's more, and this is something I love, they like using bits of sudden silence which, for example in Eleven turns out to be even more striking than the loudest of guitars. Perfect from start to finish.

Alter Ego costs 7.99 USD.

Check: Eleven

Country: Ukraine

Genre: darkened post-metal

Label: Willowtip Records

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Больше Леса - пространство между нами (2019) EN

A wide range of inspirations (from The Doors and Slowdive up to nadja) in case of the Ukrainians of Больше Леса ("more forests", such an important message these days) resulted in an extremely solid psychedelia. You can taste it on the last year's Christmas Eve's album called пространство между нами ("the space between us").

As the title suggest, the album is "about the period of fluctuations, about the spaces between us." This coldness is reflected in the post-punk vocals and compositions of songs such as чтобы понять, что я сплю that are based pn the line of bass and appearing here and there guitars. On the other hand, there's always some guitar-rich psychedelia in the surprisingly melodic and catchy секрет. 

PS. The logo's tree hides the band's name written in the Cyrillic alphabet, how cool is that?

пространство между нами costs 8 USD.

Check: пропасть

Country: Ukraine

Genre: psychedelic post-punk

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Incoma - Far Away from Us (2019) EN

The Uzhorod-based Ukrainian Incoma releases their music for five years already but it's not super systematic. When they came back with a single in 2016 nothing happened until now. And they should show their music more frequently as the new EP Away from Us is really good

Diverse and very guitar-filled, sometimes heavier than usual post-rock from the East Europe makes a good impression. And there's also a beautiful cover art that instantly brings this good but also melancholic mood. However, the music here is more light and melodic, this guitar pleasure with clear elements of sublime approach to art.

Perhaps I look too closely here, but the title written in upper case makes it possible to be read also as a comment to the geopolitical situation of Ukraine with "US" at the end instead of "Us".

Far Away from Us costs 7 USD.

Check: Glow

Country: Ukraine

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Purl & protoU - Sub Life (2019) EN

Sub Life is an album created thanks to the joined forces of Ludvig Cimbrelius, Swedish ambient artist known as Purl and Ukrainian drone musician Sasha Puzan creating music as protoU. Released by the irreplaceable DRONARIVM, the album brings fantastic and deeply melancholic experience.

It's filled with electronic music mixed with delicate, neoclassical piano sounds and angelically airy backing vocals. The lei motif's here the nature that exists around us and that is audible in the samples sounding like splattering waves or subtle blows of the wind. As the label states, the album "grows out of a blend of nature inducted ambiances as the artists conduct an emotional exploration of the natural world" and you can definitely feel it.

Sub Life costs 6 EUR.

Check: Sacred Fluids

Country: Sweden/Ukraine

Genre: neoclassical electronics

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defector - день, когда мы покинули землю (2019) EN

Defector is a Ukrainian collective playing space inspired instrumental post-rock. However, those inspirations go beyond convention and influence the instrumenta music ranging from drones to massive post-metal. 

The band, at least partly, come from Dombas, no wonder there is a lot of war-inspired pictures on the artists' social media accounts. But as far as the themes they touch, there are more universal topics like space (the title "The Day When We Left Earth"), melancholy (лекарство от меланхолии, meaning  "The Cure for Melancholy"), or the inner state of a human being.

But the most important thing is music. Defector create some impressively massive guitar post-rock which in its grandeur and heaviness reminds of the Japanese MONO, which smoothly transforms into droning, filled with unsettling ambient (опустошение) or one supported by some neoclassical elements (снова утонул). A diverse and well-done album.

день, когда мы покинули землю costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: суицид шугейзера

Country: Russia

Genre: drone post-rock

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Egor Grushin - Ritorno (2018) EN

An Ukrainian pianist and composer, Egor Grushin, has released his new album. Ritorno comprises of six compositions referring to "six steps from the past to the future", that, according to this mythology, are required to "defeat the remains of the Old and get ready for the Future". 

To his musical journey, Grushin invited a handful of great guests, including, and this is the most important information, Oleksyi Sakevych, widely known as Endless Melancholy, who played synths in tracks Run and Chimeras. Besides him, you can hear both strings (sounding awesome in Chronos and Rise) and guitars. just sit and receive the music with all your senses.

Ritorno can be your for whatever you pay.

Check: Rise

Country: Ukraine

Genre: true neoclassical

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Mainlight - Daydream EP (2018) EN

Mainlight are from Ukraine and on their debut EP, they show some very impressive and professional shoegaze. Daydream is a feast for anyone loving atmospheric guitar music drowned in airy mood.

The thing that catches most of attention is the super airy vocal that together with clear but not overwhelming guitars gives what we like in shoegaze most. Their music has this 90s' classics vibe but at the same time, the guitar layer may be more likely compared to some heavier stuff (like for example the one from their compatriots from Somali Yacht Club) multiplying the contrast against the delicate vocal.

The most impressive work on the album is Your Eyes, a track that takes it time to develop, but when it does, its finish i very cool and very loud, same as in the album's last Cold Star. Mainlight's music makes a real bomb sprinkled with some airy nostalgia, nothing much to say.

"Daydream" can be yours for whatever you want to pay.

Check: Your Eyes

Country: Ukraine

Genre: gęsty shoegaze

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Somali Yacht Club - The Sea (2018) EN

Somali Yacht Club is already a very well-known example of the more stone rock face of post-rock. The Lviv-based Ukrainians come back with their new album and new tour around Europe. and, more importantly, their form leaves nothing to wish for.

"The Sea" is a collection of long guitar compositions and every one of them has its own weight. Dense and smooth guitar backgrounds are met with heavy metal riffs and nobody should be surprised that they manage to combine the gloomy mood of post-rock and dusty paths of stoner rock so well. It's also really interesting in the text layer, as in the opening "Vero" in which the well over 10 minutes of music has only two lines of lyrics and it sounds absolutely great.

The next track, "Religion of Man" is probably the best one on the album. The guitar music here goes right up to the climax and the lyrics talking about passing by and the difficult quest to accept it fits perfectly to the band's heavy sound. And this is probably the most important track of the album since its title and the cover art go together with the message of "Religion of Man".

"The Sea" costs 7 USD.

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Sventoyar - E T H N I X (2017) EN

For me, folk metal makes perfect music to dance during the concerts to but I rarely listen to it under different circumstances. The Ukrainian Sventoyar is an exception here, perhaps because on the new album "E T H N I X" they sound sometimes more like folk post-metal that makes me all excited.

As you'd expect from folk metal, Sventoyar uses a lot of folk instruments (like Belorussian cymbals and Ukrainian domra) and the whole folk lore (check out how well the musicians look in pictures!). What's interesting is that together with traditionally blonde Slavic vocalist, there's also male deep, almost throat vocal too. Fits the heavy music perfectly.

And it is based on heavy guitars well cooperating with energetic vocals and delicate sound of cymbals. Sometimes the guitarist doesn't resist temptation and goes with a rock riff ("Goatsbusters")  but usually it is more about creating huge backgrounds. As for me, I'm mostly excited about the songs where they are accompanied by mesmerizing vocals driving the audience into musical trance (as in "Zhnika" or "Utitsa").

"E T H N I X" costs 9 USD.

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Drawing The Endless Shore - Drama (2017) EN

Sergey Lunev, known also as The Best Pessimist, comes back with new album, this time coming also back to Drawing The Endless Shore. This project shows his second face, this less of ambient-post-rock and more of trip-hop freedom and idm's love for beats.

Still though, it's difficult to call "Drama" an album without a unique atmosphere. It's enough to listen to the piano keys background in "Negative" or really moody middle part of "Archetype" to get some of it. On the other hand, there's just enough of electronic "obstacles", backgrounds and various beats creating the trip-hop structure that are made with live (or half-live) drums.

There's also some of the ambient, autumn-melancholic atmosphere that crawls from under the shiny  electronics' spotlights from time to time, especially in my favourite "The Caretaker". Nevertheless, it's one of the most dance-able propositions on my blog this year. Until tomorrow.

"Drama" is available for pay-what-you-want.

The Best Pessimist - The Half-World (2015)

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Ether Drianne - Distant Lights (2017) EN

Dark like blocks of flats in an ocean of smog seen from a distance, this is what the post-rock from Kiev sounds like, perfect for this dark time of the autumn to winter transformation. Two artists known as  Bonheur and L.C. know how to evoke sadness in the audience.

They say that their music is "a mix of melancholy, noise, darkness, tenderness and dreams". Interestingly enough, their first track is made mostly for keys and paralyzing sadness (especially when a female voice emerges out of nowhere at the end). Guitars and noise join somehow late, from "Leaving" but also they don't outnoise this nightmarish atmosphere which has a colour of coal dust that makes your eyes wet.

The sample with the female voice that sounds like a personification of sadness appears also in "Leaving" and is accompanied by guitars that play both atmospheric and fast post-rock. But there is always quite a doze of melancholia there. Its peak reaches in "We Fade Away" where the artists engaged tear-jerking keys.

"Distant Lights" costs whatever you want to pay.

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Endless Melancholy - Radiant (2017) EN

Endless Melancholy, or in other words Ukrainian artist Oleksyi Sakevych, has been mentioned on this blog so many times already, recently due to his collaboration with musicformessier, that needs no introduction anymore. What is needed though is to put his recent album on and listen deeply to this extraordinary music.

"Radiant" combines neoclassical music with incapacitating electronics. Sakevych has those unique skills to extract the heart-breaking, melancholic sound out of this concoction. It's best, as I hear it, in "We Were Born From The Shooting Star" (by the way, a title seemingly very poetical but also very probable scientifically), a track that gradually develops into the almost danceable "Satellites" and finally the cloudy and peaceful "Yet Another Reason To Be Still" that end the album.

"Radiant" is available for pay what you want.

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