About

I loved music for as long as I remember. Every single day in my life. I listened to it since my early childhood and never made any difference between styles and genres trying everything that sounded interesting for my ears. It could be almost everything from ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and Uncle Peco's Crambo to ‘Star Wars’ and James Bond movies soundtracks. But back then I couldn’t ever imagine that music would be such a great part of my life in future. I was much impressed with cool guys from action movies. And at the top of the list were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio from ‘The Karate Kid’. Maybe I would be more into music if I saw Ralph Macchio in ‘Crossroads’ first. But I didn’t know anything about ‘Crossroad’ at that time and Ralph totally rocked in ‘The Karate Kid’. So I wanted to be a kung-fu champion and spent most of time in jumping and fighting with the air. On the other hand my mum and dad thought I had a gift for painting and even tried to send me to a local art school. Oh boy, that was soooo boring. No one knew anything about ninjas, apaches and dinosaurs. What could be less interesting than painting kettles and pots? So the world of fine arts lost a huge talent. However the world of martial arts also didn’t gain much. I got a guitar and everything else was forgotten.

Though my parents bought me my first guitar they never really supported me in music. It was not something they were into so it looked for them like nothing but an amusement. Moreover my dad said that music business sucked. Many times I tried to explain him that music business wasn’t equal to the music but didn’t succeed. As for me, every business always looked (and still does) the same and it didn’t really matter what kind of business it was.

The streets and guys from local bands learned me everything concerning rock ‘n’ roll while professors from Prokofiev’s Music School taught me to love and understand classics. That was really exciting to play classical concerts in the afternoon and to freak out in front of a rock club audience in the evening. My first big band was Moscow alternative rock quintet Citi. They were great guys. Together we had a lot of fun making noise in local night clubs. It was a time of pure mosh and rock ‘n’ roll that gave me a lot of experience. I learned many things about playing live, making good show, moving with the groove and staying honest onstage. On the other hand I learned a lot about music theory and harmony in the Music School. Meantime I read every book concerning orchestration, instrumentation and composition that I could find. And the main things I learned were to listen as much as you can, to listen as attentively as it gets and to practice hard. I followed these rules and a couple years later tried my forces in scoring some low-budget radio spectacles. Although my home studio resources weren’t good enough, the music happened to be nice.

Somewhere in 2002 after the break-up of Citi the idea of Mechanical Poet came about. There were three good things that I wanted to merge into something united and special: beautiful symphonic soundtracks, solid rock sound and curly gothic comics. This is how ‘Handmade Essence’ and ‘Woodland Prattlers’ were born. At first it was only an experimental studio project, which later became a fulltime rock band. We tried heavy riffs, big symphonic orchestra, chamber orchestra, electronics and mixed it all in any possible proportions. There were no borders for anything but good melodies and deep atmosphere. Meantime I got an offer from Akella to write a music score for their upcoming game called ‘Swashbucklers’. That supposed to be a funny strategic arcade game with atmosphere of old spaghetti westerns. I didn’t make anything like that before so it seemed pretty appealing. Moreover there were a lot of various missions and different locations etc. A whole lot of place to have splurge. Thus my long time collaboration with game developers began. In the parallel universe lived (and still does) Mechanical Poet and some other rock projects that would make a lot of noise in future.

And the story is still goes on and a lot of new chapters is to be written...