Ukraine is rarely in the orbit of Western progressive rock musicians, for several reasons. There is a vibrant local rock music scene there, but there is also a thriving folk music tradition going back hundreds if not thousands of years. Patriotic Ukrainian rockers often eagerly explore the wealth of the nation’s folk music heritage; nonetheless, the resulting creative output hardly ever sparkles the curiosity of Western audiences.
It should be said that old Ukrainian folk tunes sound very unusual to an unprepared listener. The lyrics deal with themes of myths, local lore and even paganism, but, perhaps, most of them are poignant, if wistful, love songs. However, the music itself is based on unusual harmonies, challenging odd time signatures and often has a haunting, exotic, well-nigh primeval feel to it.
So, when an occasional demo wriggles its way to some prolific Western musician, there is a fair chance that it will draw serious attention. This is exactly how it happened when Ukrainian folk band “Astarta” passed their demo over to no other than bassist and composer Colin Edwin himself (Porcupine Tree, Ex-Wise Heads, Metallic Taste of Blood, Random Noise Generator) after the Ex-Wise Heads gig in Kiev, Ukraine in early 2012.
The chance acquaintance rapidly molded into fruitful collaboration, with Edwin composing backing tracks for the female folk vocals and subsequently arriving at Kiev for rehearsals and some promo video shooting.
On May 23, 2012 the first release saw the light of day, a two-track EP, featuring the revisited Ukrainian folk songs “Kalina” (“The Guelder Tree”) and “Vesnyanochka” (“The Spring Song”) with the lyrics sung in Russian and Ukrainian.
On his subsequent return in early July 2013 Edwin was accompanied by American guitar virtuoso, Boston-based composer and producer Jon Durant, with whom he had collaborated on several albums previously. The Astarta/Edwin project had by then developed into a fully fledged band, with Durant acting as the guest musician, contributing guitar solos to the tracks, having offered to contribute to the new music.
On July 7, following two days of prolific rehearsing at a suburban Kiev studio, the musicians played a set list of 12 songs at the 10th annual ‘Kraina Mriy’ (‘The Country of Dreams’) folk music festival in Kiev. Having witnessed the actual shaping of the songs (most of which if not all are known to nearly every Ukrainian from childhood on) at the studio I’ll say it’s nothing short of awesome how the musicians coming from different countries and musical backgrounds jelled so quickly and nicely together. The centuries-old music got more vibe, raw progressive rock energy, with Durant's trademark "cloud guitar" textures and fiery solos and Edwin’s tasteful fretless bass weaving their way into the once tender, once husky and soaring vocals of Julia and Inna, interspersed with keyboardist and leader Eduard Prystupa’s mellow lines and backing vocals.
Drummer Bogdan Kerychok and folk flutist Dmytro Syvokon’ added both stamina and their own original sounding to the songs.
Each song had been drilled down to a T before the stage day. The early sound check went down without a glitch, despite the muggy air, the early glaring sun and anticipation.
On stage, Astarta/Edwin/Durant radiated powerful energy all through the almost hour-long bill time.
The concert kicked off later than scheduled due to an unexpected downpour, which, luckily, was soon to cease to a light drizzle and then stop.
There were twelve pieces in the set list, some of them, such as ‘Kalina’, had been already premiered at the April gig at a small club in downtown Kiev.
The East and the West added their musical best to the melting pot of the songs. The open-air audience, many of them young Ukrainians, greeted each song with enthusiastic response and some couples even danced along, unable to resist the sheer vibe of the music.
Hopefully, the full-length debut album and more live performances will follow soon. It is not only my opinion that this exotic combination of prog rock and folk music may enjoy significant success with some foreign audiences.
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Below is a short interview I did with Colin Edwin and Jon Durant during an impromptu coffee break in the rehearsal studio.
DO: How did you get to know each other?
Colin Edwin: We met a couple of years ago. We just kept in touch via the miracle of modern technology and I ended up playing on Jon’s fifth or… sixth album?
Jon Durant: Sixth album, actually, “Dance of the Shadow Planets”. That session ended up having Colin come over to America. And for never having worked together we very quickly realised that there is a really strong musical connection shared and decided we definitely wanted to do more work together. Then Colin had several other projects that he was involved in, that brought you here, [such as] Ex-Wise Heads.
CE: Yeah. What happened [was] I came to play in Kiev with my duo Ex-Wise Heads with Geoff Leigh and I met Edward [Eduard Prystupa, founder, leader and producer of Astarta]. I didn’t know the first thing about him and he said to me: “I’d like to do some work with you, collaborate with you”. He doesn’t really speak English, so I didn’t know what to expect. Then he just ended up sending me some vocal tracks, with no information. It’s all in Ukrainian, it’s like another planet…But I got really knocked out with the sound of the voices, I thought it worked really really well, so I decided to work on the tracks to just see if I could make sense of it to myself, as much as anything else and it’s all really grown from there.
DO: Jon, and how did you get involved with Ukrainian folk music?JD: Well, as Colin was getting involved, I think he posted one of the songs online and I said “that sounds really interesting. If you have any interest in having me play on it, I’d be happy to”. And he said: “Oh, yeah, that sounds interesting. Here’s a track I’m working on, I’ve no idea where it’s gonna go”. And I had the same response as Colin with the voices, I thought they were something magical. I really enjoyed the process. So, one song kind of turned into two... The whole effort sort of bloomed from there.
CE: Well, for me, actually, what’s very important in life is that the very small things that you can get introduced to or the people that you meet in a chance experience can often change or develop things in the ways that you would never have expected. I mean…Ukraine wasn’t in my orbit, for somewhere I’d wanted to visit or go to or see or anything, but, having been introduced to the music by Edward, I’m very happy too to follow that path.
DO: Ok, can you describe Ukrainian folk songs with three adjectives?CE: Obviously, it’s not gonna mean the same thing to people who are used to it, but for me some of it is very haunting, it has a humour, and it’s mysterious, much more mysterious for me that the local listeners.
JD: I would add colourful, flowing…You know, it’s very much that melodies flow like a river. And it definitely is atmospheric, which actually lends itself to what I do with the cloud guitars, things that kind of hang over the edge a little bit. They’re not right on the buoy line, they kind of hang in the air a bit.
DO: Describe Inna and Julia’s [Astarta’s female vocalists Julia Malyarenko and Inna Sharkova] voices with three adjectives.
CE: I think we’ve covered this, it’s the same question [laughs]. I mean, you know, it’s quite compelling, I mean, I’ve listened to some Eastern European folk music before, but not in a big way. And the more I’ve listened to it, the more I’ve enjoyed it. Although I listened to a lot of music from other countries, outsiders of the rock music norm, mostly it’s been African music and Middle Eastern music. And it’s interesting that, in actual fact, there are things about Ukraine that are just as foreign. You know, to me as an English person, as a European, we all have a European root in the same countries, but it’s quite different. There’s obvious differences that we bring into the music that’s brought us together.
JD: I would add one adjective to their voices specifically, which is soulful. In a way that, you know, you think of Aretha Franklin as soulful, but it’s a totally different kind of soulful, but it is deep and there’s really a lot of emotion there.
CE: So, they are very well-matched as a team. They complement each other really really well. They are very complete vocals.
DO: And now a question, which is half tongue-in-cheek, half-serious: How does one marry Eastern folk music with Western rock music? Give us a recipe!
CE: Hopefully, that’s what we’re doing. Each track that I’ve worked on hasn’t necessarily been the case that I understood it the first few times I listened to it. So I’ve tried taking aspects of it I could understand and I’d try and make something out of that. And one thing I have learned playing bass is that, basically, if you can make it groove, you can put anything together. So, I kind of have that at the back of my mind.
I like to think that it would be accessible to people who don’t speak or understand Ukrainian. I’ve played it to a few friends of mine and they all say it is amazing. It has quite everything you want out of music – it’s got atmosphere, it’s got emotion, a lot of vibe and it’s got groove.
JD: The biggest thing for me has always been that there are no hard and set rules about making music. So, the biggest thing is to trust ourselves, to create something that really complements the voices, but as a whole comes as vibey, western rhythmic rock music. It is actually quite surprising as well that when we began exploring things, I certainly wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. I’m pretty sure Colin was in the same place, but I think it has really worked out incredibly well.
I would like to say a big thank you to Colin and Jon for the interview and Igor Romanov for the photographs.
Dmitry Oliferowicz
