Born in Sevastopol; his family moved to Perm when he was four. Since the age of 17, he's been writing and performing songs in English language. Musician, leader of the band VOSMOY.
Quotes
- Music is an impulse accumulated in noosphere that you somehow catch. It seems, all music in the worlds exists already, you are just transcribing it.
- Perm is winter. I love winter, I love Perm.
- My English has Russian skeleton anyway.
- I am busy searching and experimenting so I don't worry.
My story
At the age of 17, I started making up songs and performing them. Following family tradition, I entered law faculty but then felt sorry to waste time on something that was not worth for me. I needed to justify my very existing, define myself in this world somehow, and I was lucky to show a disposition to music.
The same time I became Anton Vosmoy. Why? I am still not sure. I guess, 17-year-old Anton Petrov had some kind of an idea about it. I don't rule out that at some point I will say 'enough' and will take another pseudonym or lose one at all. I just don't know when and why it will happen. I don't feel myself tied up to a name.
Guitar is a universal instrument. It is easier to play it when you don't really know how to play it properly. Also, it succumbs easier to deconstruction, thus inability becomes a sound principle.
At first, English in my songs was a kind of masking, then it became a method. I couldn't find an easy and light manner of writing songs in Russian. But it worked out with English. Although, it is still not quite the English language — I write Russian songs with Russian consciousness but translate it. The most surprising thing is that when I was performing in the USA and singing songs in Russian, I felt better connection with Americans than when I was singing in English.
Almost immediately after I wrote first songs I started performing; at that time I had only five tunes. I was singing at bars, at parties of some acquaintances...It was a mess of different people around, university, brother's company, these or those clubbish sets. It was very alive. As soon as I wasn't very gregarious person, I watched it with interest, observed.
Somewhere around that time, 2010, I met my band. Almost immediately we moved to Moscow. At that point it made sense: it was more difficult to organize a concert staying in the province, word was getting around in a completely different way and speed than today. I stayed in Moscow for three years, and then I came back.
It is difficult to diagnose difference in Perm then and now. When I was leaving, I wasn't interested in the place, for various reasons I couldn't feel well here. Like Chekhov's young ladies I wanted to go 'to Moscow, to Moscow'. While I was away from Perm, I've seen a lot, reorganized myself, and then I felt urge to go back and stay for a while. Now I feel absolutely fine here. It's a completely different microclimate here, one I never felt before. I see beauty of this place I haven't mentioned before, for some ignorance of mine. In spite of six months long winter, I feel great in Perm.
You can be however tired but when you enter the stage and start speeding up your engine, when it is genuine, audience does the same, and any tiredness and reluctance vanishes in a special kind of trance. It seems, I started writing music for this trance feeling.
I organize my life in a way not to earn my living with my music. Not transferring art to the area of moneymaking, keeping it away from market philosophy so that it won't get deformed.
We sound different from what was eight years ago. Professional growth and goals diversity influence the way you make music out of your head. Everything became more convoluted, stopped being as naïve and easy as before. Although, I can't say that I started with some romantic stories and dropped it along the way. It is all the same today, I just find slightly different things romantic now.
Before I was going with the flow. Now I can distinguish my goal more clearly and move towards it. I want to make improvising my automatic mode so that music will exist here and now, and stop writing songs at last.