Heinali - Kyiv Eternal (2023) Hi Res

"...Lovingly echoing the sounds of a city which, despite the odds, still stands tall." Electronic Sound

On 24 February 2022, the world shuddered as Russia launched a full-scale of invasion of Ukraine. They called it a special military operation. To everyone else it looked like war.

While the two countries have been at war since 2014, that Russian tanks could just roll into Europe, that their missiles could wreak untold damage, was unthinkable. To those living in the cities that came under attack it was utterly horrfiying.

But cities like Kyiv are so much more than a trophy capture the Russians hoped for. No matter what they threw at it, the Ukrainian capital would not be broken.

As the first anniversary of the invasion approaches, Kyiv-based electronic music artist Oleh Shpudeiko, who records as Heinali, is set to release ‘Kyiv Eternal’, his tribute to the city he loves.

“I’ve spent 37 years of my life in Kyiv,” says Oleh. “It has become an inseparable part of my identity.”

Particularly affecting was the Battle Of Kyiv, a five-week onslaught early on in the war that saw Russian troops try - and ultimately fail - to lay siege to historic capital.

“After the Battle of Kyiv was over, many Kyivites noticed this strange feeling,” recalls Oleh. “It was as if the city was alive, breathing. We wanted to hug it, to protect every inch of it from harm. I didn’t know how to do it back then. It took time and distance to figure it out, but ‘Kyiv Eternal’ is my hug.”

The album’s aetwork builds on this idea by featuring a photograph of a monument to 16th century Ukrainian political, military and civic leader Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, which has been wrapped up to protect it from the Russian bombs.

“It’s one of the many statues, sculptures, and monuments in the city that were wrapped up and protected with sandbags from the invasion,” explains Oleh. “In a way, it is a metaphor for hugging the city and keeping it from harm.”

The tracks on ‘Kyiv Eternal’ feature fragments of field recordings made in specific locations around the city, along with accompanying ambient loops taken from Oleh’s archives and recorded over the past 10 years.

From the bright shimmer of ‘Stantsiia Maidan Nezalezhnosti’ (the main square in the centre of Kyiv) and the crackles and sound splinters of ‘Borshchahivka At Night’ (a neighbourhood to the south-west of the city) to the hopeful bird-song and glitchy keys of ‘Botanichnyi Sad’ (recorded in one of Kyiv’s two botanical gardens), the album is a beautiful tribute to a city that refuses to fall.

The centrepiece of the record is the epic eight-minute ‘Night Walk’ with its rich, distorted Rhodes-like refrain channelling the energy of nighttime streets in a war zone. It gives way to the stunning title track whose rich swell and powerful soaring chords rise with the sound of hope.

“They are hymns to Kyiv, they are personal, intimate, and fleeting,” says Oleh. “‘Kyiv Eternal’ is a farewell to this place in time and space to which none of us will ever be able to return. It is a place that will only exist in our memories.”