ITW Novel 23:

Q1: Can you first tell some info about yourself? What's your work, what you do for living? How did you get involved into music...? Some basic bio about you...
A1: I live in Moscow, and at present time I work as system administrator of computer networks and video systems in a TV company. Unfortunately my work takes away a lot of time, but I try to spend all my free time to several creative passions. Music is one of them. I was involved to music a long time ago, when I was a schoolboy. It happened when I heard music by Depeche Mode. A much time passed since then, but I still like their music very much. I listened to all sorts music later on and found that I like melodies, harmonies or noise soundscapes created by soul and full of romance of course :) When I decided to try myself in own music creation, I applied all my energies to realization of my favorite musical elements. I think that it's a nice feeling when your own music reflects your life perception. The creation of music gives me somewhat important for the whole living. It's nice when my music pleases to people, may be their lifes become a little joyful too. I'm glad that the music is my hobby, and I hope that it's never become a kind of work.

Q2: What's going on with the electronic music in Moscow nowadays? What are the most important russian electronic artists and labels that you'd mention?
A2: I can't say that the electronic music in Moscow lives a full life, but at the same time I can't say that the electronic scene is absolutely frozen here. There are many musicians making infrequent concerts from time to time and the small quantity of listeners visiting these shows. On the whole life of electronic music is very uncoordinated here , and haven't get enough attention from people.
I suppose that the most important russian electronic artist was Solar X undoubtedly. He was really most popular and progressive musician. Unfortunately he lives in London now, and the russian listeners can't see his present creations in full range. At present time our experimental electronic scene hasn't stars, I don't mean PPK for example, because they seems to me a temporary event and their music is highly commercial.

Q3: You like to release and promote electronic music with melodies and harmonies on your Shaped Harmonics label. Do you see melody as an inevitable part of the music? And please tell something more about the label work.
A3: Yeah, I see that melody is an inevitable part of the music, because that element is the most long-living. We can see so fast musical technologies has been developed in last years. The sound fashion changes quickly, and it bring us new rhythms, styles, etc. And only melodies remains immutable. I think that musician gives more long life to his songs, when he put in melody to them.
Unfortunately label work is complex and joyless, because I collide with many problems permanently. Where to find money for releases, how to persuade distributors to work with us, how recompense costs for releases, where to find time and forces for numerous visits of post offices, when several distributors will pay finally, how to do presentation and small promotion of scheduled release, how to explain to musicians that this music can't bring big money, and many and many others. Sometimes I want to leave off this business, releasing of music in nowadays is "causa mortis" :) But it's just interesting to deliver this music to real listeners.

Q4: Let's talk more about the melody. I find it hard to define what's melody, it's very abstract thing. A friend once explained me that melody is a mixture of other musical elements, like rhythm, tempo and harmony. What do you think about this? How do you define melody?
A4:I think that melody is ingredient of music. But if rhythm seems to me like seasoning in a salad, then melody is an important component of musical salad. May be this comparison is strange, but it illustrates my conception of music very good.

Q5: What do you think about music without melody, impovisational music, or some extreme sound experiments? Do you appreciate those kinds of music?
A5:Both the salads and the musical pieces are without meat and melody. At the same time there are many vegetarians and connoisseurs of extreme sound. It's a splendid fact of real alternative. But here is one moment what pushes to alternative, I have in view ideology. Man can to listen to extreme sound because he found own persuasions for it. I have such persuasions too, and noise or electro acoustic music can be interesting for me as scientific effort. But anyway I suppose that natural way, when I like music because my soul caught melody, is better than my mind want sound experiments.

Q6: What you think of EU? Can it be said that they are one of the best bands that in some way present the essence of the spirit of the contemporary russian electronic music?
A6: I don't like their music very much, because they produce many songs, but only one of a ten can be able for listening in my taste. Besides they just made a good self promotion. As regards the spirit of russian electronic music, he lives somewhere in years 1960-70, when Eduard Artemiev and others created owns best pieces. The modern russian electronica still haven't own face, if england or germany electronica still have such faces for examples.

Q7: What's Novel 23? What it means?? Does it have something in common with your real name: Roman = book = novel...? :-) Why 23?
A7: Yes, you absolutely right :) I used a play up words between russian and english languages. 23 is a magic number with various interpretation as we all know, but I just started to create music when I was 23 year old.