He’s a deejay, producer and musician: Ivan Moskalenko has stood at the forefront of Kyiv club culture, repeatedly represented Ukrainian art abroad and, on the whole, remains one of the city’s foremost guides when it comes to alternative music and art.
art.
“I combine these professions and all are connected by music,” Moskalenko said.
Resting at a table alongside bookshelves at the Stoned Baboon restaurant/bookstore, Moskalenko (a.k.a. DJ Derbastler) feels perfectly at ease in this cozy, hip little spot, which he often frequents both to relax and to play his music on its stage.
“I loved music while I was still in school. I collected music and played it for my friends,” he said.
Quite soon, his hobby of collecting CDs and cassette tapes led to playing at school discos, Moskalenko recalled, sipping on a half liter glass of cool Stella Artois (Hr 14).
But it wasn’t his own love for music alone that encouraged his musical talents. The alternative music scene was emerging in the 1990s, and it captivated Moskalenko. He found himself brimming with innovative ideas and energy. He started playing bass in a band called Radiodelo, where he and his two bandmates sampled movie soundtracks and dialogue, mixing the sounds with funk, hip-hop and other flavors into one original sound.
In 1993, Moskalenko joined another original musical project called Foa Hoka, in which he still plays. He plays bass and keyboards, programs beat boxes and produces or arranges his own original sounds. The band’s musical style, Moskalenko said, could be defined as “hypno-lyric minimal lounge, with elements of experimental electronic.”
Around that time, fate seemingly brought him together with the progressive Vitaly Ulitsky, now head of the USP advertising agency. For Moskalenko, it was a great chance to interact with other creative people like himself. Creative energy flowed.
“Artists, musicians and, quite simply, interesting people who needed a breakthrough [in terms of media exposure] assembled around Vitaly,” Moskalenko said. “By the mid-1990s, it resulted in the creation of Torba Entertainment – a company that organized club parties, which is at the root of Kyiv’s club scene today.”
“I started out as a producer in the project and got involved as a deejay mainly interested in techno and house [music],” Moskalenko said.
An aftershock of the Russian financial crisis forced Torba to disband in 1998, leaving Moskalenko to work alone as a musician and deejay. It turned out well.
“The deejay work has allowed me to participate in many activities,” Moskalenko reflected as he received his order of layered shrimp salad (Hr 35) and blinchiki with mushrooms (Hr 14).
Indeed, Moskalenko’s deejay work has allowed him to take part in art projects at the Center for Contemporary Art and serve as musical consultant to various TV programs. He regularly participates in the Sezony Mody fashion festival, providing cutting-edge music for shows by Kyiv designers including Lilia Poustovit, with whom he’s worked for many years.
In 1996, Moskalenko and Poustovit both presented at an art event called “Children of the Sun” that took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. Both contributed to the massive project.
“It was a great event,” Moskalenko recalled. “A non-stop 48-hour party at the huge Expo Center pavilion involving deejays and artists from all over the world, including me and Lilia, who showed her collection,” he added.
Shortly after, Moskalenko took part in “Rebel Minds,” a mobile gallery that toured around major European cities and gathered undiscovered avant-garde artists, musicians and deejays under its wing. Moskalenko took part in Berlin, playing Soviet easy-listening music and techno in clubs and bars around the city.
But Moskalenko’s freshest memories are of representing Ukraine at the international Venice Biennale Art Exhibition this past summer. The presentation took place at a private airport hangar: he spun music, artists Kyryl Protsenko and Ilya Chichkan showed their video installation art – a compilation of extracts of old Ukrainian newsreel footage – and gypsy punk/folk band Gogol Bordello performed on stage.
“We can say without false modesty that it was the best-attended event at the Biennale,” Moskalenko said. “People forced their way inside, and instead of closing at 2 a.m. as scheduled, the show lasted until dawn.”
In 1998, Moskalenko and Protsenko created the Radio Eurasia project to unite audio and visual art. The three previous collaborations under the Radio Eurasia banner could only be experienced at exhibitions in Ukraine or abroad, but the fourth part presented at the Venice Biennale might go beyond mere exhibitions and be released as an album by Thermos Records – a company recently created by Moskalenko, Protsenko and businessman Oleksandr Skrypka.
“Thermos Records is the first multimedia label in Ukraine, a structure that releases not only music, but also art created by modern technologies,” Moskalenko said. “With computers becoming more common in every home, you can combine music and media, and electronic components with live ones.”
The label’s first release was an electronic music compilation called “Music for Space Lorry Drivers,” compiled by Moskalenko and including “cosmic” tracks by bands The Rhythmless, Foa Hoka and D. Riba. It is soon to be reissued with supplemental video clips.
Another project involves Gogol Bordello, whose first Kyiv concert this June was arranged by Thermos.
“We’re now preparing a special Ukrainian release by Gogol Bordello, which was recorded at the Angel Sound studio and which contains completely new material – folk and gypsy songs performed by [lead singer] Eugene Hutz. [The sound] will be ‘gypsy non-stop’, with songs mixing one into another,” Moskalenko remarked.
Though engaged in future projects with Thermos and working on new material with Foa Hoka, Moskalenko doesn’t only look forward.
“I’d like to revive Radiodelo,” he said. “I’ve got an idea to release that old material with new numbers.”
Now, as DJ Derbastler, Moskalenko is engaged in the “Big Chill” tour sponsored by a tobacco company. It will be a “mobile” chill-out party that has deejays traveling to clubs throughout Ukraine, playing chill-out music in different clubs every week. But, from December onward, DJ Derbastler has promised to play in Kyiv much more often.
So what can audiences expect when DJ Derbastler plays?
In his eight years deejaying, Moskalenko has played a range of music that involves almost everything.
“I like playing rare grooves, good house [music], techno, funk, new jazz and reggae, hip-hop and ethnic music with groovy foundations,” Moskalenko said. “Lately, I like to play in the so-called ‘English manner’ – jumping from style to style, my audience jumping with me.”
“As for the audience,” he said, “I like to play for people who are open, ready to listen to the music, who are perceptive and get into the party spirit.”
Stoned Baboon
39 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho, 234-1503.
Open Mon.-Wed. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to
11 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. from 8 a.m. until the last customer.
