Vlad Zarichnyuk is hardly a newbie on the Ukrainian scene. Kostopil-born lo-fi producer played in a number of original groups (The Pleroma, Night Dew Call, Kelbas), founded his own label “Dobryi Bober” (“The Good Beaver”) and… is barely known even to local critics because of his almost ideological devotion to underground movement.

He even lives his life in a “bedroom pop way”, releasing songs on hand-painted cassettes with few copies run, doing all the recordings/rehearsals in the kitchen or bedroom, and never playing live outside his house. However, it did not prevent him from recording genuinely landmark stuff.

The newest project “Peredmova”, which is, maybe, a little bit more public, launched a new phase in Vlad’s creativity. Music has changed too – now it’s a cleaner, carefully composed and well-designed blend of dreamy surf, twee pop, delicate shoegaze and relaxed sunny trip-hop. Here one can find many similarities with early Beach Fossils – Peredmova could easily be some another resident of Captured Tracks.

They’re also probably one of the most modern-looking and american-sounding Ukrainian bands as of today. Being an entirely western phenomenon, Peredmova simultaneously represents the purest Ukrainianity – with all its traditional baroquity and anfractuosity, visible through the ages in folk art, classic Ukrainian literature, cossack-era painting and architectural forms.

Clever use of phonetics helped the language to reach its full melodic potential and thus enrich the songs themselves – not an easy thing to do. Such instances can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and in this case “Абетка” is a clear successor of “Shuma”, last year’s outstanding Tik Tu debut.

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Stream “Абетка” on Spotify.