- [on his group 'Kontraband' and the cover of their recording 'Mnemosyne'] It depicts a collective-farm worker in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, half-destroyed by a bomb or shell - the kind of thing I remember seeing as a boy in Russia. I keep looking for these connections between the past and the present. We're almost like a progressive village band. They had a certain sound, and I'm trying to build on that and go beyond.
- As a kid in Moscow, I'd sit in the back of the car making up songs about nearly everything - street lamps, potatoes, friends. I never studied composition formally, and had maybe a couple of dozen lessons before I got to college. My dad, who's a composer himself and has been well-regarded in Russia for decades, was adamant I should finish a bachelor's degree on an instrument - the viola.
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