Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
46 M PS E . O R G school and got admitted to the physics department of the Moscow State University, specifically the acoustics department where Lev Termen (inventor of the theremin) had worked. He passed away just two years before I matriculated. At the same time, I continued with my music, leaning back toward synthesizers and noise experimental music which I recorded using several tape recorders. I was fortunate to meet a very talented individual, Yan Nikitin. He designed astounding soundscapes and penned very unusual lyrics. As computers and sound cards with samplers emerged and a more accessible second- hand equipment market developed, Yan and I recorded our first album using a PC with Cakewalk in 1996. Yan was the primary creative force while I added my elements and handled recording and mixing. During my university days, I met some intriguing individuals—a film director, Sasha Slavin, who began as a sound designer and his wife Natasha Slavina, a costume designer. This led me to contemplate experimenting with sound in conjunction with imagery. In both music and literature, I was always more drawn to works that evoked vivid visual images, like the books of William S. Burroughs or tracks by Coil, Current 93, Psychic TV, The Legendary Pink Dots, etc. This interest naturally extended to films by David Lynch, Kenneth Anger, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Greenaway, and David Cronenberg. I felt this realm was much broader than just music, constrained by stylistic boundaries and standard timbre sets. After graduating from the university in 2000, I started working at Mosfilm. (Wavelength note: Mosfilm is the largest film studio in Russia.) My mother arranged a meeting for me with the director through her contacts. I mentioned that I had some skills in sound editing on the computer and expressed my interest in any work at the Mosfilm Tonstudio. At that time, Mosfilm Tonstudio was equipped with AKAI DD8/16, so my expertise in sound editing on a PC came in handy. Gradually, I moved to the sound library department to oversee the digitization of sounds and music stored on tapes. Sound editors who came to the library sometimes couldn't find the sounds they needed, so I began to record and create basic sound designs at their request. This was often quite similar to what I was doing in my music. By 2004, Tonstudio began using Pro Tools more extensively. The director entrusted me with developing a program for searching, listening, and selecting sounds coupled with morphological search features based on MS SQL. Previously, sound catalogues were in the form of large books categorized by sound types. During Soviet times, all sound designers were on the Tonstudio's payroll and at the end of each film, they submitted new field recordings to the library department. In the new "commercial" era, no one wanted to share, causing the sound library to become outdated. Foreign commercial sound libraries were purchased, descriptions were translated into Russian, and they were added to the shared database. To supplement the library with original sounds, I began experimenting with recordings of different staff and 5.0 ambience recordings. At that time, multi- channel recorders like Fostex PD6 and Deva were just emerging. I had a setup with a portable Decca tree—it was very cumbersome and inconvenient. However, my initial recordings became very popular among sound editors and I started getting invitations to work on films, handling complex scenes that were time-consuming for other sound designers. It's worth noting that the transition from tape to digital coincided with the 1990s crisis in Russia when filmmaking had virtually ceased. Therefore, when returning to work in the 2000s, Recording 5.0 seashore ambience at Black Sea coast for Mosfilm Tonstudio sound library department. Left to right: Pavel Doreuli and boom operator Igor Ushankov. 2005. Photo by Sergey Karpenko.