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Отвечал Е.гор

} When did the electronic/dance scene in Minsk get started?

I guess we should rather talk about the scene in the whole country
rather than in Minsk only, beacuse for the couple of artists that live
outside of Minsk, the capital is still the only place to play live and
almost the only place where their CDs can be bought. And if we limit
ourselves to Minsk, we do not mention Randomajestiq, who is, in fact,
one of the most interesting artists here.

Then I’m not sure when it all started first, beacuse there were
atleast 2 waves of belarussian electronica.
There was one wave back in 1996–1997 or so,
with artists like Autism (lives in NY now and runs a label there,
[ >>> ] ), -Ed (signed with Segment,
[ >>> ] ), h.h.t.p. ( [ >>> ] ) and
some others.
I do not know much about what happened then, though some artists from
that crew play at our events from time to time.

Then it was all paused for almost 5 years, and for «our generation» of
artists the first live gigs were in 2002, so for the majority of the
current players, the scene is just 2 years old.

} How big is the scene there?

The biggest of the events that we organized, the monthly System Of
Electronic Madness, had 20 local live acts playing in one of the
nights, which is still not everyone that we had playing at our events
at once, a couple of acts did not participate in that one.

This year there is a contest for computer-based music, for which I’m
among the jury, there are already 80+ acts participating, though they
are not known to anyone.

If we count acts that are more or less active and requested and had
atleast one gig a quarter during the last year, it will be about 15
acts.

} Do you think the scene has a distinct style of its own?

Yes, I guess there are quite big and interesting things in IDM that
comes from Belarus (Koordinate of Wonders, Randomajestiq, I/dex,
h.h.t.p., Autism) and belarussian Drum’N’Bass (T-Trider, Walder,
Sidewalk, Subway, Temax). Both groups of projects have something
unique in their style that can distinguish them from what is made in
the rest of the world.

} Have any artists broken out internationally?

There is this act Ambassador 21, which is quite requested outside of
the country, they had a tour or 2 all over the Europe already, they
playdigital hardcore or something like that.

Then there is this live techno act, Energun 22 (recently renamed to
Energun as one of the members left). Not sure how big they are
internationally, but they do have several vinyl releases in Europe and
they are surely known on all the ex-USSR territory.

But the thing with these 2 acts is that they are not really a part of
the scene. They are doing their thing alone and have spent really many
years making music. And they are not really preoccupied with local
succes. I guess Ambassador 21 had only one live show within the
country. Atleast there were no other shows I know of.

The rest of stories, which do have something to do with the artists
that are a part of the scene may seem not that thrilling.

Randomajestiq had tracks I guess on each electronic (not dance)
label in the former USSR already and countless
releases on netlabels all over the world.

Us with Dreamlin, we had a track in pre-OST to some Holliwood movie
that never came out, several tracks in OSTs to independent movies all
over the wold (from Taiwan to Canada), and we topped the charts at
ampcast.com for a month. And I also had a couple of gigs in Russia,
making me the only artist from our crew playing outside of the country
to date.

Synthetic Dreams were quite big at MP3.com, not that big as PPK of course,
but had over 30K downloads anyway.

Then all the scene, we had a chillout compilation released in Moscow
this winter. It sold more than 2 thousand all over the ex-USSR and in
Europe already. There have been people from Sakhalin (a russian island
close to Japan) coming to my ICQ saying that the compilation was
great.

Not that much for now, but we are working on improving it.

} Where do you see the scene going?

The last 2 years was about building the scene and getting the local
electronic heads to listen to Belarussian music along with the music
in the rest of the world. What we are about to do now, is expansion.
Not only to the rest of the wold, but also to the local listeners that
are normally not that much into such kind of music.