Veeka Nazarova: What do we know about Post-Soviet music? Not much, only a handful of musicians from Russia/Ukraine/Belarus that we accidentally stumble upon on Spotify or YouTube, that’s probably it. I tried looking up ‘best Russian bands’ or ‘best Ukrainian bands’ on Google, and it’s just not coming up with anything interesting. I felt like the only way to find out was to switch to my Russian Fb (called VK-Vkontakte) and try finding something on there.

However, it was definitely not an easy task! My investigation continued by going on Instagram and flicking through some of my musician friends’ profiles, searching for some interesting acts from the Motherland that they follow. I felt like I was being a special agent from KGB trying to gather all the precious information about these mysterious musicians and bands that I found. 

Being of a Russian descent, I always wanted to re-connect with my country and discover the Post-Soviet music scene. So in this article I would like to introduce that mysterious European world to Australia or whoever is reading this in English. Being musician myself got me very excited talking to other musicians from the Motherland, so in this series I’ve gathered five musical projects of my taste from Russia and Ukraine and asked them a few questions about their music, as simple as that!

It was an absolute pleasure interviewing all these talented people and hopefully they will find their fans here, amongst Trouble Juice followers!


Introducing Rosemary Loves A Blackberry

Rosemary Loves a Blackberry is the solo project of Diana Burkot - electronic artist, drummer, contemporary dancer, and a member of the legendary collective Pussy Riot. She’s performed in a number of different projects over the past years, but most recently, after beginning to make beats on her own, she’s turned her focus to her own solo material. Diana is also very passionate about contemporary dance (something she always incorporates into her music videos), which makes the project a uniquely conceptual art experience, along with the mesmerising beats and melodies of her songs.

There is truly something hypnotic about Rosemary Loves a Blackberry music - something very dark but yet at the same time incredibly soft, melodic and hypnotising. In this interviewm Diana gets into the depth of her creative process and talks about her life as an artist in Moscow, Russia.

VN: I only just discovered your music and since I didn’t really know of any good Russian musicians before I started doing this project, you totally caught my attention! I love your sound created with a bit of goth aesthetics and catchy beats, as well as mesmerising choreography presented in all your videos. After reading a few articles about you, I found out you played in many bands in the past and Rosemary Loves a Blackberry is actually your first solo project! I also learnt you’ve had music released on the Netherlands label Smikkelbaard. Could you please tell us how was your experience working with an international music label?

DB: Oh thanks! Actually I released my first album lp<3 on a British music label Anti-Ghost Moon Ray. This label was created by Gazelle Twin and from what I know, she initially started it purely to release her own music. However, later on she made a few fundraiser compilations and I asked me if I wanted to participate - that's how it all started. I chose my track ‘Pay or Play’ - all the money raised from this compilation was sent to immigrants who live in temporally housings, stuck in limbo. I believe people who live there have it very bad, the living conditions are horrifying and I wanted to help somehow, so it felt good doing something for the ones who are in need right now. So yeah, this label Anti-Ghost Moon Ray is not very known and I think it was perfect for me to start with it and I’m truly thankful to be featured there. However, it’s time to move on! 

My second album was in fact released on a Netherland label and it was very unexpected. So the story goes, I was a guest at this showcase festival (Ment) and got introduced to an English music journalist Richard Foster. He writes for The Guardian and we started chatting about this and that (I don’t really remember cause I was quite drunk haha) but anyway, he got very interested in my music and we stayed in touch after he went back to England and in the end Richard organised for me to be contacted by Smikkelbaard cause they really liked my tunes as well. So yeah, my second album Snowflake was suddenly released on that label and I was very happy with everything they did for me! We are actually currently talking about releasing more music in the future. 

Oh and I’ve also been released on Detroit Underground, just remembered 🙂. However, my last album was released on  a Moscow music label Svet i Teni (Light and Shadows). Recently I was asked by a label GIVE/TAKE to collaborate, however, I’m still thinking about it. I am super interested in working with all sorts of different people from different countries, open to offers, although I think I’m still in search for my ‘ideal’ label. I guess just going with the flow for now. In the future I would love to find a label that would be 100% my vibe and I would feel super comfortable there, where I would stay for a long time. 

From what I gathered, you just released your third album called weirdberry. How does it differ from the previous albums and how long did it take you to complete weirdberry? Also, would you mind telling us about the mood of the new songs?

The new album weirdberry was mainly written in the time of isolation. I’ve had a few sketches that I was working on at the time and had to finish some bits and pieces on it, and at the same time there are songs that were completely written from scratch and within a very short amount of time. It was indeed very hard work!

I had to cancel all my gigs and tours, as we all did. Everything just suddenly froze and not gonna lie - at some point I felt really upset. All my dreams about playing summer festivals and touring for months crashed, I guess what can we do! I’m glad the virus didn’t mutate enough for us to become zombies and we are not trying to eat each other right now :). If it was an apocalypse and we were all zombies - nobody would need music and I can’t do anything else but music 😀. So in other words, I decided to lock myself at home and write an album. Moreover, it was kind of perfect timing as I could never find time to focus on my own project. At the time I had been doing a lot of different projects, as well as the main one Riot Days with Pussy Riot, where I’m playing music and helping with production. All these non-stop projects completely burned me out by the end of 2019 so it was sort of nice in a way to finally slow down and focus on my own music.

After a few weeks of doing nothing I disciplined myself and started intensely focusing on putting together weirdberry. I was singing for ten hours with my vocal teacher trying to perfect my vocal techniques. I’m not lying, I was so into completing this album I was only distracted by food and sleep. I’m a very grounded person and my approach is very simple - if I wanna achieve something, I just do it, even if I don’t feel like doing it. I push myself a lot until I reach the result and yeah I work fucking hard!

Tell us when you started playing music and doing choreography, as well as art? how are all these passions reflected in your every day life?

I’ve been playing music for more than 15 years. I sung and played in bands, played keyboard and drums - in fact, specialising in drumming. So I’ve always gravitated towards playing drums in bands. One time, my main band Fanny Kaplan suddenly broke up and everyone decided to go their own ways, which was quite a shock to me. I really believed in that band, as well as some other projects I was in. I really thought some of them had a lot of potential, however, sometimes it was just not meant to be. So my ideology is just to make as much music as I can cause who knows, maybe I will die tomorrow? Doing solo project is very reassuring and I don’t need to rely on anyone to finish the songs. If I believe in myself, I believe there is tomorrow. 

I also graduated from a School of Modern Art of Rodchenko (famous Russian constructivist artist). It taught me how to concentrate my thoughts on things I love doing and put it in the contemporary context. There I’ve learnt how to showcase my music and how to present myself as an artist from a visual point of view. After studying there I can film and montage my own videos, as well as focus on ideas for my conceptual dancing, as opposed to the technical aspects of it. 

Speaking of conceptual dancing! I think I still have a long way to go and grow. I only just started gathering myself to go and enrol into proper dancing courses and gymnastics. But as I said, at the moment I’m only concentrating on expression, it’s easier to feel the energy and give it back through my body. I feel very fulfilled after experiencing a certain tension and release in my body after performing a conceptual dance.

I noticed that some of your albums have been released on vinyl. What do you think about vinyl in general? Here in Melbourne, records are in high demand - it’s super popular and almost everyone has a massive collection. Could you quickly tell us how it is going with vinyl production in Russia? Is it popular at all?

I love vinyl and so far I only released my Wait A Minute album on wax. No doubt, I would love to put all of my music on vinyl, however, it’s definitely a lot of work and I don’t want to do it all myself. I like to concentrate on making music and the organisational side of making vinyl really bores me. I know, we all have to do it ourselves at some point and take initiative, but I’m not really into that haha. I think they really respect vinyl here in Moscow, just like anywhere else in the world! It’s a very wonderful tradition, I really love it. Here we have a very cool shop called DIG, I always buy my records there, they are super nice people. And of course, there are many many other good record stores in Moscow. We also have tapes very in trend at the moment. I adore people from GO TAPE collective, and always order my tapes from them, they are doing an amazing job at producing good quality cassettes. I think it’s the only place in Russia that makes tapes on a large scale.

Do you think you are more of a studio artist or still prefer playing shows and being an experimental musician? Also, who is playing in your live band and how often do you guys get together to practice?

I love everything, from locking myself in a home studio and work for hours to playing a crazy amount of gigs. I love practising my vocals, so obsessed. In the past I always thought about my voice as a very secondary instrument, but now I decided to really focus on improving my vocals. You can even hear it on my last album - my voice is no more a background noise, it’s a proper instrument and I’ve improved it a lot. I think I wanna concentrate on emphasising my vocals more in the future, it’s something that I really wanna do and it feels right. I’ve never thought about my voice as an instrument and never challenged myself with vocals, so that’s why I wanna focus on it so much.

Absolutely, I love experimenting with the sounds in my music, in fact, always experimenting, everything is a one big instrument! BUT! I can not imagine myself without performing, it’s such a huge part of being me. For instance, in the second half of 2019 I was constantly playing shows, non-stop, and to be honest, thought it was only gonna get busier… haha.

When it comes to live shows it’s just me and my sound person Pavel Eremeev. I still haven’t found a band that I’m comfortable playing my songs with. I hope I will one day! 

I’ve also got this question… What do you think about your music influences, do you reckon you have a little bit of the 90’s dance music influences going on? I’m just very curious :). Also, what modern artists are you listening to at the moment?

My music contains a lot, which in some ways fulfils all the modern ‘standards’ of 2020. I am very passionate about synthesisers, and even though most of my synths have been done digitally, I still appreciate that analog sound and you can certainly hear the imitation of it on my albums. ARP, fat bass - I think all of this gives music a ‘vintage’ vibe, I guess. 

I’ve been revisiting Bjork recently and realised my new album has a lot of similarities to her 1995 album Post. I love melodies, tones and harmonies and it all is very important to me, although nowadays it’s considered very old fashioned in electronic pop music haha! Unfortunately, melodic music is dying out really fast but I still I love to play with all the different melodies and harmonies in my songs. I’ve also been doing this thing recently where I can try working together with 2-3 different instruments essentially playing the same melody but in different octaves. Trying to go for a very orchestra vibe, so yeah, as I said before, constantly experimenting with different approaches from different decades. 

In my iPod I currently have FKA twigs, Sevdaliza and some old music, aka Nouvelle and Stina Nordenstam. 

Okay, this is the last question for today - could you please tell us about your future plans and what are your predictions for 2021!? I hope 2020 hasn’t screwed it up for you much.

Pandemic VERY much so ruined a lot of my plans for 2020 :(.  To tell you the truth, I had 4-5 European festivals scheduled for this year. There were supposed to be heaps of gigs, tours and many many other things I was meant to participate in. I had a lot of hopes for this year, but what can we do! Now it’s the best time for self-grow and self-care. As I mentioned before, I plan to continue learning the techniques of contemporary choreography, as well as intensely practicing my vocals. I also want to work on some new material and completely dedicate my time to music! 

I’ve almost finished making two new videos, and I’ve got a couple of new singles coming up soon!  Oh and I forgot to mention, at the same time I am working on this huge art project which is called With Blood and Later. This is a musical and visual play which consist of a lot of chapters. I’m working on it in collaboration with Ekaterina Frolova. We have been working hard on this project for almost three years and I cannot wait until the world can finally see it! It’s a very important project to me and I really wanna finish all the production by the end of 2020. I believe Russia is going to have a second wave of pandemic in October so I think I’ll just lock myself up again and continue working on my stuff.