Igor Osypov - Motherland?2K14

Igor Osypov is an artist standing at a complex crossroads where different worlds intersect. As a Ukrainian exiled in Berlin, unable to return home, he is obliged to negotiate different cultural and political identities, and as a forward-looking contemporary musician he chooses to negotiate the different genres of jazz, rock, electronica and other less easily defined traditions. Motherland?2K14 is his response: an extraordinary project exploring identity and belonging.

Using his own electronically realized sketches as a base, Osypov took a band of his favorite musicians into the studio - Uli Kempendorff on tenor sax, trumpeter Dima Bondarev and Povel Widestrand on keys, underpinned by drummer extraordinaire Fabian Rösch - and expanded the sonic palette to include collaborators from across the world - saxophonist Logan Richardson, Petter Eldh on double bass, Bodek Janke on tabla and percussion, and beatmaker/producer Ludwig Wandinger. Simultaneously he called on the international community of his fellow exiled Berlin artists to ask them the question: “Where do you go when you cannot go home?” Audio fragments of the resulting interviews, in multiple languages, are interwoven with the music to create a uniquely powerful, viscerally moving statement.

In each of the ten tunes, the interview voices interweave with the horns, led by Bondarev’s alternately soaring and tender trumpet, joining in chorus over the raw energy of Osypov’s bass guitar and Rösch’s ever-shifting drum patterns. Then they are layered with electronic effects, creating pieces that have an alt-rock conciseness and power, opening out to reveal shifting complexities underneath the group textures, drawing the listener ever deeper in.