Image via Bad Zu/FaceBook
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Club music has always been a global proposition. Attempting to map its stylistic contours results in all sorts of dizzying leaps: Detroit to Berlin, Durban to London, Rio de Janeiro to Miami, Moscow to Michigan. Electronic-music duo Bad Zu—a.k.a. DJ-producer Philipp Alexandrov and drummer Alexander Malyshev—understand this. The project started from a place of friendship. The pair—one a club-music DJ, the other a punk drummer—both worked in Moscow’s underground music scene, each focused on their own projects. With Bad Zu, they joined forces: two veterans of their respective styles, joined by a preference for sheer weight above all else. The duo rocketed through Moscow’s underground circuit, matching its appetite for gritted-teeth dance music with equally hefty rhythms. Their music was centered around sheer energy; anything else was beside the point.
Bad Zu started as a purely live act, but it wasn’t long before they started thinking wider: they began looking across the globe, wrapping barbed wire around high-energy rhythms from umpteen club-music traditions. Their music crosses stylistic lines with glee, creating a veritable kaleidoscope of pitch-black dancefloor psychedelia. Their first LP, 2018’s Zupreme, borrowed heavily from Durban’s gqom scene—an icy kind of minimalism, all kicks and snares and black holes—and fused it with the bone-crunching approach of Moscow’s local rave styles. It is both spare and weighty, each drum landing like a miniature meteorite.
Since then, the duo’s ambitions, and stylistic range, have only scaled up. What started as an opportunity for a drummer and a DJ to play together has turned into a full-fledged live act, with an everything-goes approach to their improvisation and songwriting. In their music, they look towards big-tent rave artists and hyper-local club scenes the world over, pulling from styles as varied as hard drum, two-step, reggaetón, and industrial techno. Their latest LP, titled Bad Luck, is their boldest record yet. At its core, you’ll find the same apocalyptic minimalism that has always fueled their work, but it’s a bit different this time around: louder, meaner, gnarlier.
The record is built upon context collapse, with styles blurred together until they shift into something that feels radically new. Air-raid sirens wail over drone-metal guitars and drum programming ripped from Belo Horizonte’s airwaves; cragged dubstep rhythms provide a foundation for world’s-end ambience; gunfire and traditional folk musics crash into each other; “The Ha Dance” gets cast into a vat of grime. This is what “world music,” especially in the context of club tracks, sounds like now. It’s the sound of timelines melting into each other, turning into a mélange of histories and sounds and styles sounding like so many YouTube clips playing at once. The record is claustrophobic and near-uniformly dark, to be sure: Bad Luck is informed by the traumas of the past few years. But it’s joyous, too, in its own way. It’s a celebration of skull-cracking dancefloor styles, an effort to keep ravers moving even as the rest of the world keeps falling apart.
In advance of the release of Bad Luck, we got a chance to connect with Bad Zu, digging into the group’s origins, their connections to global club music, the challenges of integrating live percussion into their sound, and drumming in a time of state collapse.
(This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.)
I first heard about you through 2018’s Zupreme; five years later, you’re back with your third LP.
Philipp Alexandrov: It’s so nice that someone knows that LP! We are both sure that it’s a hidden treasure of the Russian underground, but we’re not known outside of that community. This was a pretty big surprise for me, that somebody knows Zupreme.
At that point, I was pretty deep into gqom and what was coming out of Durban. I heard what that record was doing and I was like, “Okay, this is a new spin on that.”
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah. It’s a new gqom.
Philipp Alexandrov: That’s one of the things I’m most proud about in our project: mixing gqom with Russian dark rave. I think we have some real bangers in that style; “MSCW GQOM” is one of the best tracks we’ve made together. And we have some more gqom tracks on the upcoming LP. I love to experiment with gqom, mixing it with hard rave, jungle, and witch house.
Tell me about witch house.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think it’s been the most popular genre in Russia for years. We started our own witch house movement, around the time when SALEM started. If you dig into Russian rave history, the biggest things happened around witch house: projects like Summer of Haze. We are all from one big witch house community; it all started from that, man. That’s why, when I first listened to gqom, I immediately came up with the idea to mix it with dark rave and trance.
Let’s zoom out a bit. What first drew the two of you to club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: How we met and found ourselves?
Alexander Malyshev: It’s quite a story. Throwback to 2008.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
At that point, I was pretty deep into gqom and what was coming out of Durban. I heard what that record was doing and I was like, “Okay, this is a new spin on that.”
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah. It’s a new gqom.
Philipp Alexandrov: That’s one of the things I’m most proud about in our project: mixing gqom with Russian dark rave. I think we have some real bangers in that style; “MSCW GQOM” is one of the best tracks we’ve made together. And we have some more gqom tracks on the upcoming LP. I love to experiment with gqom, mixing it with hard rave, jungle, and witch house.
Tell me about witch house.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think it’s been the most popular genre in Russia for years. We started our own witch house movement, around the time when SALEM started. If you dig into Russian rave history, the biggest things happened around witch house: projects like Summer of Haze. We are all from one big witch house community; it all started from that, man. That’s why, when I first listened to gqom, I immediately came up with the idea to mix it with dark rave and trance.
Let’s zoom out a bit. What first drew the two of you to club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: How we met and found ourselves?
Alexander Malyshev: It’s quite a story. Throwback to 2008.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: That’s one of the things I’m most proud about in our project: mixing gqom with Russian dark rave. I think we have some real bangers in that style; “MSCW GQOM” is one of the best tracks we’ve made together. And we have some more gqom tracks on the upcoming LP. I love to experiment with gqom, mixing it with hard rave, jungle, and witch house.
Tell me about witch house.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think it’s been the most popular genre in Russia for years. We started our own witch house movement, around the time when SALEM started. If you dig into Russian rave history, the biggest things happened around witch house: projects like Summer of Haze. We are all from one big witch house community; it all started from that, man. That’s why, when I first listened to gqom, I immediately came up with the idea to mix it with dark rave and trance.
Let’s zoom out a bit. What first drew the two of you to club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: How we met and found ourselves?
Alexander Malyshev: It’s quite a story. Throwback to 2008.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think it’s been the most popular genre in Russia for years. We started our own witch house movement, around the time when SALEM started. If you dig into Russian rave history, the biggest things happened around witch house: projects like Summer of Haze. We are all from one big witch house community; it all started from that, man. That’s why, when I first listened to gqom, I immediately came up with the idea to mix it with dark rave and trance.
Let’s zoom out a bit. What first drew the two of you to club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: How we met and found ourselves?
Alexander Malyshev: It’s quite a story. Throwback to 2008.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: How we met and found ourselves?
Alexander Malyshev: It’s quite a story. Throwback to 2008.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: We met maybe 15 or 16 years ago, yeah?
Alexander Malyshev: [laughs] Time flies.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 15 years. Yeah, it all started from our friendship. We were working on different projects, but in the same studio—for years! We were just friends. Sasha was playing with hardcore bands.
Alexander Malyshev: I was a more rock-oriented metal drummer at that time.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: I was trying to make trip-hop. I was starting to open up the world of electronic music for myself; I started out in a rock band. I’m 36, and I started playing when I was 14, obviously, like everyone. [laughs] obviously, like everyone. When I turned 21, I tried out electronic music. So I think the story of Bad Zu started with our last studio. I worked in advertising for years—like, ten years, or maybe more, and I got kind of big. I became a creative head in one of the biggest Russian agencies. During that year, I started to build my own studio, just to forget about office life and to focus on music. And Sasha supported me in that time, just being with me—
Alexander Malyshev: In the process of setting up and building that studio. We put a lot of work into it, and a lot of time.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: It took a year! When it was finished, Sasha took his drums to the studio, but for the next few months, we’d just hang out. We were just chilling, and I was like, “Oh, f*ck, I’m trying to make original electronic music, but I’m missing something.” And Sasha was like, “Oh, man, I am so good at drums, but I don’t have any band to play with.” We spent like months in that kind of conversation before one day I said, “Man, I’m a DJ, and you’re a drummer. So why have we never tried to play together?” We played a few times in the studio, just improvising. A good thing about mixing live drums and bass music is that there’s actually a lot of space in good bass music.
Alexander Malyshev: It was a project called Mad Scissors, then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, Mad Scissors! You’ll never find any records of this, though, because we never recorded anything. At that time, we were trying to find an interesting sound. I’d been looking for that for almost 10 years. In 2013, I realized that the music I liked and the music I produced had nothing in common; they were quite different from each other.
Of course, it all started with parties and raves; we started hanging out on the Russian rave scene. And, eventually, I came back to him, saying, “Why have we never performed together? Don’t give a f*ck about the sound—just focus on the performance and energy.”
Alexander Malyshev: It was a club show with drums. At that time, we started to play a DJ set with live drums at Moscow’s raves. I think this was 2016 or so.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, 2015 or 2016. And, man, the idea blew [up] immediately! We became a popular underground band really fast; in weeks, in months. In 2015, we realized that we were playing every week, every two weeks.
Alexander Malyshev: The scene was growing a lot then.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, the Russian rave scene was really big. And it was growing from year to year, because brands and foreign people were involved; many, many, many people were involved. So it wasn’t too hard for us to grow. It was 2017 when I realized we should try to record something together. Sasha was playing live shows with me, but he wasn’t taking part in recording things or making new Bad Zu tunes. That was for the same reason: we were still mostly friends.
Alexander Malyshev: We were still just having a good time together. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Maybe too good. [laughs]
So that’s how we came to the idea of Zupreme. There, we focused on the minimalistic sound of steel drums, mixing them with hard bass from rave genres. And we recorded fast: “HOUSE OF ZU” was recorded in one hour, and after two hours of post-production, it was done. Finished. And that’s it. “THSNDS” took even less time, maybe two hours. “MSKVBD” took about three hours. The idea was so clear that we were able to move quickly. After three or four months, it was basically done. That’s when we realized that we were a band, not a duo of a drummer and a DJ.
Did you notice your dynamic shift when you took your live energy to the studio?
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: It was even more effective than before, because we realized that we are a really functional duo. If you have 50% on each side, when you combine it, you have 200%. It was exponential growth. It actually led us to play more shows, because we produced more music and got more recognition.
Philipp Alexandrov: It was really hard, too, because we didn’t know who we were. Because like, yeah, as a DJ, you’re having fun playing tunes. And then you want to make your show better, and you’ve invited a drummer; now you’re a duo of a drummer and a DJ, and you’re starting to get solo gigs: “Bad Zu” on top of the flyers. And it looks like a band, but you’re still functionally doing a DJ set.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
I really love DJing, man. If we weren’t working together, I would keep doing it, because it helped me overcome depression in 2013. I really appreciate DJing as an art form. But Sasha wanted more. One day, he came to me and said, “I want to move further with this idea. I want to make our music hybrid: make it both live and electronic.” The problem, of course, is that that’s a lot of work.
Alexander Malyshev: I had no idea how to do that. You can probably name all the people in the world who are doing this on one hand. It’s really a rare situation, where you play live drums with electronic samples and electronic music. There’s Pendulum, with KJ Sawka, but that’s another story.
Philipp Alexandrov: In 2020, we were kind of stuck, because the pandemic started a few months after the release of our second LP. That’s where the name of our upcoming LP, Bad Luck, comes from. So we said, “how should we spend this time?” We didn’t want to make another big LP right after the second one, because we’d done a few shows and then there was a global lockdown. So Sasha came and said, “I want to make more material, and make it more improvisable.”
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: At that time, we were bound to play exactly what’s in the set. I played my drums precisely where the kicks and snares and [hi-]hats were, trying to duplicate things. We tried to move away from that, to get some freedom to make our live show have a bit more improvisation within the structure of our music.
Philipp Alexandrov: If you’re in the know about this—about playing both live and electronic drums—there are two good ways of doing it. The first is Prodigy style, where you’re glued to the electronic samples, so you don’t turn anything in the mix off, but you cut the low-end off of your drums. If you watch Prodigy shows and pay attention to how the drummer is playing, you’ll hear that it’s just overdubbing every part of the sample. That’s how you do it on the big stages, because even—especially!—if you’re Prodigy, you don’t want any f*cking risk on your stage. That’s how it works. The second way is much more complex, and that’s how Pendulum and Destroid play. So we emailed KJ Sawka.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: He’s a monster drummer. He’s doing amazing things.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah. We said to ourselves, “what bands are doing this well?” What bands are mixing live drumming and electronics and—and this is important—making them sound good? We agreed that Pendulum was doing both. So we sent him an email, and he said, “that’s not a problem, guys.” So for a very affordable price, he taught us some stuff. He twisted my world.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: That hour was packed with information. He told us everything: setting up MIDI controllers, mixing, sidechaining. It was a really amazing lesson.
Philipp Alexandrov: And after that, it was months and months of pure hell. We were constructing the project, experimenting, trying it, sending it back to the sound engineer, trying it again and again. We were inviting our sound engineer to every show to make corrections to the project. That was a huge amount of work, and I’m so f*cking proud of it now. Our last show was in Minsk, and I was proud of us for every single minute of the show. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about self confidence. It was about—
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: About executing a job well done.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Feeling like a professional.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Earlier, you mentioned the idea of building something you could improvise around. Can you dig into how that impacted your songwriting process? Was it a matter of making things more minimal, or about separating the programmed drums from the live drums, or something else entirely?
Philipp Alexandrov: It was everything you mentioned and much more. The first thing was that we produced everything together. If you don’t want conflict between live and electronic drums on stage, then you should agree on the composition beforehand. Sasha started out thinking like a rock drummer; he was really focused on the live drum set as the final goal in his art. This changed his vision of how a drummer can work. Normally, there’s a conflict between a live kick and an electronic kick, so we got rid of the live kick; we don’t have one on stage. We cut everything that’s unnecessary. Before, we’d try to glue his live drumming to my productions, and we’d only focus on making it sound clear and crisp afterwards. Now, if we don’t need something in the composition, we cut it. I don’t think the new LP is too minimalistic, but every sound has a meaning.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: Yeah—there are no unnecessary sounds, no unnecessary parts. We’re trying to follow Occam’s blade. Before, I’d duplicate everything; now, I just play everything I need live, and I have more space to play how I feel in the moment. It’s the same for Phil’s parts: he has his parts on a controller that he can improvise with, and we’ve started to incorporate an AutoTune voice over some tracks. It’s become more of a real live show rather than a DJ set. It’s more of an interactive process.
I have a background in jazz, and I’m hearing something similar: how you twist and play with an established base.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: Do you play?
Yeah—I play piano, and I have a background in percussion as well.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: Oh, that’s great. I actually graduated from a jazz college. I was a metal drummer and then shifted towards jazz.
For most people in the Russian music industry, they’ve got a background in rock. It may be a sound engineer, or a drummer, or a producer, or a guitarist—doesn’t matter. It’s very rare that they didn’t play in a rock band. I think that’s because it’s popular among the young people, or maybe because there’s—I don’t know how to say it in English—you have a low barrier to enter that world. With jazz, you have to know harmonies, complex rhythmic structures, the history of jazz, and how artists changed styles. When you play punk rock, it’s three chords and you can play.
On earlier records of yours, there were a lot of explicitly minimal global club sounds—I’m mostly thinking about gqom here. But with the new one, I’m hearing baile funk, I’m hearing gqom, I’m hearing hard drum, I’m hearing ballroom. It feels to me like a conscious broadening, and it feels like a mirror image of what’s happening in London—think of radio DJs who go really deep into hard drum and UK funky and gqom. But here, you’re refracting that through the Russian rave styles. What’s your relationship with global club music?
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Great question. To put it simply, we don’t know. Bad Zu was always about exploring influences; it was about exploring music where the sub-bass was in the center of the composition. Let’s talk about dark genres and explore them! Let’s try to make some fresh stuff—that’s it. And that’s why you see so many influences. We started when people were still mad about being on the web. It became easy to find influences; you don’t need to travel to Jamaica to be influenced by this music now. That was the main idea of the project—exploring what it means to make the biggest banger for the rave stage. That’s the question we’re trying to answer, every time. In 2018, it was so easy—we just went down from the studio to the trash yard, found the biggest petrol barrels we could, made a few records, put the sub-bass on them, and that’s it. In 2023, we spent three years on sound engineering. Almost every sound you can hear on the new LP was handcrafted. It was all about making the biggest bangers we could.
Alexander Malyshev: Also, the influence just came from listening to music that we really liked. Phil found a lot of music from his DJ sets, and we absorbed that music and its rhythms. Those rhythms come out naturally when you record. It’s not pure, though; it’s kind of a mixture. You get influenced by the music you hear, and then you translate it, almost subconsciously.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: This is the main way I come up with new ideas. I’m just listening to a huge amount of tunes, man. When I’m not producing music, I’m thinking about it; I’m trying to figure it out. One of my favorite exercises is to take a popular tune I hate and work to understand it until I know it in my bones. To bring it back to our latest LP—and you mentioned this earlier—it’s not just about global club music, but it’s also about the UK, which is a huge influence on the LP. I’m really into UK club music; it’s really fresh right now.
In 2019, it was African music that influenced me most; now, it’s much wider. It’s Caribbean music, it’s baile, it’s garage, it’s two-step, it’s dubstep. The main fear of mine is that our music might sound like a mosaic. I’m pretty sure that we can tell that Bad Zu has something of its own—its own recognizable sound. If you hear witch house mixed with gqom, and right after that, you hear crazy garage mixed with something crazier, it’s Bad Zu.
So—who are you listening to right now? What are your reference points?
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Let Sasha tell first, because I don’t even know what he’s listening to now!
Alexander Malyshev: I’m listening to a lot of stuff, but I’m bad with names. Right now, I’m digging into the UK’s new jazz scene—the Yussef Dayes trio. There’s also a band called SAULT, and a band called The Comet Is Coming. For this period, though, I was really oriented on live music.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
The Comet Is Coming makes a lot of sense—their music is very busy and very percussion-forward.
Alexander Malyshev: There’s a lot of improvisation, too. They’re breaking all the rules, and it’s really exciting for me. It’s a breath of fresh air. Man, when I hear their saxophonist—it’s like Coltrane on LSD and speed at the same time. [laughs] But the live performances are different—in one concert of theirs that I watched, they did a tuba instead of a bass guitar. When he was doing that bassline, it was crazy. [puffs cheeks]
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: I left Russia nine months ago; I live in Granada now. And that affected things: I started listening to music for myself again. I jumped too deep into music—I mean, this is my main job. I produce for brands; I’m making audio jingles, and sound design, and I’m working on a few projects. So there were a few years where I didn’t listen to music for myself. When I worked out, I’d listen to audiobooks because I wanted to have some free time away from work. The amount of fear, stress, and uncertainty in my life has brought music back for me, though.
Surprisingly, I have few producers where I can say, “this is my favorite music.” The first one, who you can hear on the album, is Blaze. This is the kind of music you’ll never hear in Russia; it’s just too fluffy. But I remember talking with my father about jazz music—he passed away about fifteen years ago. I didn’t understand his passion for jazz; I was into punk rock, obviously. I asked him, “Why do you listen to this?” And he said, “Man, it’s so peaceful. It brings peace to my life.” And now I get it; Blaze’s music makes my mind clear. I hear a soulmate in Blaze’s music; I hear someone who passed through some really hard things in their life.
The second name, for me, is Burial. It’s something more than music for me. When I listen to Burial, sometimes, I perceive a map or a place in his music; it’s bigger than songs or tunes.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s so meditative; it’s like listening to a mantra.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think you can hear that on the album, too. I’m obsessed with how he answers the main question, of what good music means? Does it mean to make a banger? Not always. Does it mean to touch someone personally? Not always. There are so many ambient producers in the world, but there is only one Burial, and that’s bigger than music to me.
The main source of tension in my life is that I’m a refugee now. Sometimes I just need the Russian voice. So, I started listening to Russian gangster rap. I’m not sure how to translate the name of the band—it’s Рыночные отношения.
Alexander Malyshev: It’s “Market Relations.” It’s really deep underground stuff, real gangster rap. All the members were selling drugs and racketeering.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: I didn’t listen to that stuff much in Moscow, but when you spend time in a city where nobody understands you and nobody will understand your jokes, because nobody spent their lives in Moscow—man, it gives me a personal touch on another level. It’s even more personal than Burial. It’s like coming back to the kitchen in your childhood.
I’m listening a lot to hear what people are listening to now. Sometimes I don’t want to do that, but you should know every big release. The last thing that amazed me was Rosalía. The latest album is great, and I’m a fan of the first one, too. The big thing about that one is that they’re producing like they respect their audience. They make their production really simple, but it’s really fresh, too. If you came up with these kinds of beats in Russia, people might say it’s too experimental, or even that it’s too modern. Every release of hers is moving the industry forward. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in electronic music, and every time I listen to her, I think, “Wow, this is a masterpiece.” It’s so minimal and full of emotions at the same time. They’re not working with much—mostly just her voice—but the freshness is two steps ahead of my own productions.
Do you want to move in a similarly experimental direction?
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: You can’t escape it. I think you can already hear that I’m influenced by reggaetón; I was influenced by it before I moved to Spain, but now it’s on another level. The funny thing is, the local people hate it. But I’m amazed by it; I’m obsessed with how honest it is. In Russian, there are so many ways to say “I want to have sex with you.” You can say a thousand words and miss the meaning, and reggaetón is to the point.
Alexander Malyshev: Reggaetón is already having sex with you!
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Philipp Alexandrov: Exactly—do you want it or not? But Rosalia is much more than reggaetón. Reggaetón is really fresh and modern. It’s much more than just one beat.
Alexander Malyshev: [starts beatboxing]
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Circling back to the recording process: how did COVID impact your headspace when recording this record? What was your relationship to live performance, given you’re predominantly a live group?
Philipp Alexandrov: The last few years were about expanding our horizons in terms of planning: how far can you look into the future? Before COVID, we were sure everything would be amazing—just get the job done, keep working, make funky tunes, practice the drums, and everything will be alright. Then COVID showed us that everything is in God’s hands. You can’t choose shit, man.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Of course we had plans! We had just finished our first tour in China; we were talking about Australia; and we were performing in Europe a lot. Funnily enough, we’ve never had a Russian tour. As you mentioned, the first thing we focused on was the live show; we’re a live show band first. And then, with COVID, we were separated for months. That’s the story of our third LP; it started from an EP that we wanted to release a few years ago. It was supposed to be released several times—in 2021, in 2022. And now it’s out.
Of course, it was a big punch of depression for us. It was like that for all musicians in the world, though. We were depressed; we were trying to avoid this; we’d open Instagram, and we’d see the same shit. People were so f*cking pissed off about the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what your plan was. It doesn’t matter how much you fought to reach this point in your story; COVID made it all vanish. F*ck dance music—people are dying! Grow up!
Alexander Malyshev: At this point, though, it’s almost like there’s no COVID at all, especially in Russia and its nearby countries.
Philipp Alexandrov: They just canceled it!
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: Now we have other things to concentrate on; COVID is not one of them. [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: People are still dying from it. It can’t just disappear. One day, you couldn’t go to the underground without a mask. We wore masks everywhere—to clubs, on taxis. There were cops who would stop you if you didn’t have a mask. But after a few days, riots started in Moscow, and they canceled that rule. They swapped it around. You can’t go underground if you’re wearing a mask; you’ll get arrested. They busted me for it! I asked, “what about the flu? What about COVID?” Nobody answered. Of course we were depressed, man. Everyone was.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
I’m lucky, because I make music for my job. My rave life isn’t the thing that brings me money. I know a huge number of people who were connected to the live circuit, who were 100% dependent on making money from shows. If you don’t have shows, you have no money. Europe tried to compensate for it, to lessen that impact. Russia still doesn’t recognize the club as an important part of city life, so we didn’t have any support. So the two of us were very lucky to have other work; Sasha teaches drums, and I have my advertising work. So we were just waiting—it looks so fluffy from that point of view, where COVID seems to be the worst thing in our lives. We are locked down, we can’t go home, et cetera. Now we can perform, but so f*cking what?
Of course it was f*cking hard. We’d already made it. We had 50 or 60 live shows in 2019; in 2020, 2021, 2022, we had 10 shows; in 2023, we have no shows at all. Coming back to the LP, the main thing I’m proud of is the maturity of the material. If you’re trying to find good things in shit, this is the good thing about COVID—it gave us time to bring our music to the next level. This is a major album, and I really want to play more shows around it.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Philipp Alexandrov: Who knows? We live in different countries now. We’re trying to act as adults now, because we are.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: We are? [laughs]
Philipp Alexandrov: Both of us have families. [laughs] So we’re discussing the things every week, and we try to craft our plans accordingly. The most important thing is that we don’t lose connection, that we keep working. I have a huge amount of new material, and we have a few things we’ve composed together even now.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: We’re trying to work together. I’ll record something and send it to Phil, and then he’ll produce something and we’ll discuss that. It’s harder to plan for the long term now. In Moscow, I play with a lot of Russian bands and artists; it offers me stability and income. But it can vanish instantly—there’s that incident with private military groups that we had recently.
Philipp Alexandrov: Yeah, on Friday.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
Alexander Malyshev: We had a military riot in the country, and by the end of the day, it vanished, just like this. [snaps] “There’s no riots, guys, just keep chilling. Keep living.” Things are unpredictable, but we are trying our best.
Philipp Alexandrov: I think this is a good point to come back to the thing that united us. It’s just fun, man. The music that we’re doing is unique, especially in the Russian market. No bands are doing this kind of music on our level, and we’re enjoying it. That’s the main thing that I’m afraid to lose. Things become more and more clear with every level of this shit: back in the day, we’d work all day in the studio, and things were pretty easy. Now, you’re stressed, and you don’t have much time, and I have a son who’s four months old. Things are really clear: you ask yourself every day, what’s most important to you? Bad Zu is still on top. It’s family, friends, and the music that I make.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.
We’re definitely not done: we have a ton of shit loaded. We’re going to take a pause after the LP, trying to find a good place to release some new music. I’m trying my best to find my way back to Russia one day and play shows again in my country. This is still my dream, to play for my people. In any case, there are so many amazing people there, and nothing can change that for me. No wars, no bastards in the government, will keep me from thinking that my people are the best, and this is the place I should play. So, that’s the plan for now. We have an upcoming LP, and we’re focused on that. Beyond that, who knows?
Alexander Malyshev: God knows.