By Lizzy Wiegers
*This interview is older and was in our Issue 67 magazine.
Ukrainian techno duo ARTBAT brings their new label UPPERGROUND to the electronic music world. With a tour of the United States already completed and a tour of South America on the way, this label is a perfect way to bring even more of their internationally known emotive sound to their fans. For ARTBAT, the pandemic gave them the time and space to focus on their music. You can expect any future tracks from them will be filled with life.
The name UPPERGROUND comes from how the artists want to be viewed. Neither underground nor commercial, they consistently put out high-quality tracks that can resonate with a wide audience. Their first single under the new label is called “Flame,” a part trance part techno track that is sure to light up the audience.
It’s been a very exciting path, full of surprises, amazing shows, and amazing people. We couldn’t be more thankful for this. A wild ride you can say.
Club culture in Ukraine really is something special, particularly in Kiev. You can say the clubs seem a bit more dirty and underground, but when you enter it’s full of amazing, well-dressed people. For us it resembles our music, keeping an “underground” exterior, and a clean well-defined core.
Our music presents our love of music and passion for dance. It also conveys our togetherness and our emotions.
The plugins we use include Arturia, u-he, diva, FabFiler, Waves, and many others.
To be honest it’s from day to day different. What is important for us is to have a natural and honest understanding. One day one of us is coming up with the idea and the other one is creating something around it. The next day it can be exactly the other way around. For sure, it’s important to openly discuss everything with each other. That’s the way forward and it’s pure fun.
One of our favorite brands is Off White, so it would be amazing to collaborate with them. Virgil Abloh is absolutely outstanding. We love his work.
We are big fans of FIFA. We are actually very passionate about it so it would be a dream to create our team there and for our music to be played in the background. Our dream would become reality. But of course, it would be amazing as well to be synced for a movie or other video games. We keep on pitching and who knows, maybe FIFA will take it on.
The best part about being able to tour as a duo is that you always have your best friend, you’re not on your own, and you’re in good company. For us, we always have fun discussing ideas, helping each other to be in a good mood (in general), and we also have many more ideas that can be created and tried out instantly.
Working with a variety of different labels allowed us to create the vision for our own label. It allowed us to see how we want to do ours by seeing how others run theirs.
Our record “Upperground” (Diynamic) was really the breakthrough for us, so we thought that since it marked a very important point in our career, it should mark the next one too. We couldn’t have found a better name to kick off this new chapter.
We definitely don’t define music like that. Our label is a place for good music from good artists. It’s a platform rather than a label that you can put in a drawer.
Well, not only can we release our own music, market it, and present it exactly the way we want to, but it also gives us the opportunity to release other artists and present those artists to our fans.
We picked “Flames” as the first track to represent UPPERGROUND because it’s the idea of being reborn. It’s a dramatic track with a lot of emotions resembling freedom and lifting off to the next stage.
You’ll have to wait for further announcements. But we can tell you there are some real undiscovered talents. There are no criteria really. The artist just has to convince us with their strengths.
We are just about to launch the label so we don’t think that we can give experienced advice just yet, however, we can say that there is no need to rush things. Check out everything in a deep, detailed, and critical way (the same goes with your emotional experience).
We would 100% love to collaborate with Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) and The Weeknd.
It’s all about the music and loyalty of our fans. We don’t really have a specific marketing strategy for the pandemic.
That’s a very difficult question to answer. It’s asking why would you go and see yourself, and that can only bring a very self-centered answer. We would invite anyone to come and watch us play and hope to bring good energy to them.
You won’t have to wait long for that. Let’s see if we can surprise one or another.
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