Flaty is an electronic musician, record producer, and audiovisual artist whose work can be described as sonic architecture. Operating at the intersection of club music, street culture, and experimental sound practices, his projects often focus on exploring sonic forms and discovering new metaphors.
Over more than 15 years of musical activity, Flaty has produced an extensive series of solo projects—including OCUROB, Dada Ques, AEM Rhythm-Cascade, and Wrong Water—as well as numerous collaborative studio albums, such as FFAA, SERWED, Square Fauna and others.
Flaty channels his explorations at the crossroads of sound, technology, and visual arts into live audiovisual performances via ANWO STUDIO / ANWO RECORDS, a platform he founded in 2017. He also dedicates significant focus to developing the contemporary independent music scene, working closely as an A&R, record producer, and curator with the GOST ZVUK label.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
1: distant realm outer
2: have no answers feels they are
3: nature science crate digging
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
The fact that a door to a new universe can emerge out of thin air still holds a magical, inexplicably magnetic nature for me. The journey of searching, of giving form and materializing what didn’t exist before— that is the very miracle where I find meaning and inspiration.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Since early childhood, I was into visual arts, and during that stage, music was always there. You could say it was an extra dimension, an environment where my imagination could gain maximum speed. Around the age of 17, my interest began shifting toward sound; it happened gradually and organically. At first, I got into DJing and collecting records. My childhood friend Fama87 was already heavily into producing his own music at the time, and he also showed an interest in the craft of DJing. We started spending a lot of time together trying to mix records, and I learned production from him. Around 2007, I started trying to make my own music, and I’m still there.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
1 — David Sylvian + Holger Czukay – Plight & Premonition
2 – Laurie Anderson – Big Science
3 – Gray – Shades Of… Anthology
4 – The Necks – Sex
5 – Brainticket – Celestial Ocean
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Usually, when I travel, my first and most powerful impression is the light—every city has its own. In some places, the sky is low and very dense; in others, it’s the exact opposite—very high and transparent. Berlin stuck with me for its cement-gray light.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
The shore of the Gulf of Finland in my hometown.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Music is just one of many forms of creative expression. Perhaps I would work with wood or invent something.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
Mikhail Chekalin – “Between Spring and Autumn by Stealth”
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Madlib
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
There have been many great shows, but perhaps one of the recent performances at the GOST ZVUK showcase at the TON-Center (Moscow) was quite memorable. We finally managed to pull off a long-held idea for a laser AV show, projecting my sketches onto a 30-meter dome during the performance.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
I think technology plays a massive role in my work; it’s like having new paints on a palette. New paints bring new shades to the mood, new methods of building structures, and so on.
11. Please tell us more about how your new album TRICITI came about.
The idea for this project came about a very long time ago, but I just couldn’t achieve the necessary level of plasticity in the rhythm. For many years, I worked with generative polyrhythmic structures, but I couldn’t quite capture the feeling of controlled chaos. It’s a fine line that perhaps only I can hear—something subjective, probably. It’s the feeling of chaos, yet not a single sound or accent is out of place. Everything seems disordered, but in reality, it follows a rule of order. It’s danceable, yet the intense flow practically paralyzes you instead.
