Secret Atelier: “We write music to celebrate everyday life with all its complexities, wonders and joys”

Ilya: I was supposed to become a programmer, but the love of music won out. As a student, he wrote songs and made arrangements for them. By the way, we even recorded a song from this period for our first album – “Start it up”.

Sveta: And at first I studied as an art critic, I was engaged in contemporary art. Then she studied marketing and worked in advertising. Everything was wrong. I didn’t feel happy and at some point I completely exhausted myself. To get out of the “crisis”, I started to study singing. I met Olga Oleinikova in a gospel choir, and she told me that it would be great for me to be on stage and make music, “but that’s not all”. So I decided to start participating in pop-jazz vocal contests and I took first place. The moment I was offered a promotion in the office, I realized I had to quit and pursue my dream. I took a risk and I did not fail. In the same year, Ilya and I finished our first album, and I took part in the Voice show. I only became truly happy when I found my life’s work.

Ilya: We were introduced to Sveta by a common musician colleague, we started talking about music and realized that our tastes coincided in many ways. Once Sveta showed me a demo of her song, I offered to change the harmony a bit and do an arrangement. It turned out cool, and the track was immediately picked up by New York label King Street Sounds, where my brother and I had previously released music.

Sveta: The project started surprisingly easily: we just did one song in one session! I really liked how my voice sounded in a new context for me at that time – the context of dance music. And we decided to try to write more songs together. We still can’t stop.

Ilya: Each song starts differently: sometimes I have a whole chorus or a verse, all that remains is to recall the melody and complete the structure of the song. Sometimes Sveta comes up with her own idea, and we polish it. And sometimes we get together at the studio and from scratch we create a song “in the mood” or for the task. For example, when we miss a certain piece, so that the dramaturgy of the album is more interesting and complete.

Sveta: By the way, an interesting fact: they don’t believe us that we write music ourselves in a small home studio. When the first album was released, several experts in the music market told me that they did not believe that it was not a production project, and that we ourselves had invented and recorded everything by ourselves. In the meantime, our music plays in the playlists of fashion establishments and stores around the world, songs are bought for movies. I feel like we kind of have to do a live stream from the studio when we write another song to dispel any doubts! (Laughs.)

Ilya: Hmm, with modern trends, we are “on you”. We write for our own pleasure in the way that seems right and beautiful to us. It might not seem mainstream right now, but we enjoy the music we make.

Sveta: By the way, to the question “how we started writing music together”. During the work, it turned out that we had similar views on life and work. We want to bring the best of ourselves to the world, to make someone happier, more confident, to help them through a difficult time. We do it with the means that helped us when we grew up. This is probably why our melodies and sounds, in general, do not always correspond to modern trends.

Ilya: Actually, it turns out that we write music for people of our generation. Who remembers MTV, how they rewrote tapes, records, exchanged pirated records on the network, who listened to their parents’ records on the player. That’s probably why we always have such a warm and friendly atmosphere during our concerts, even a little nostalgic. We, the people on stage and the audience in the room, feel and understand each other very well, we have a coordinate system: we remember life well in the 90s, we know the value of life and our achievements, we appreciate every minute, loved ones.

Sveta: On June 14 we are playing a concert at the “16 Tons” club! I’m really looking forward to it: we’ll be playing songs from the first albums and new material in Russian with an expanded line-up of Moscow’s top musicians. Let’s dance, smile, dream! As always during our concerts.

Ilya: The concert is an important part of our creative work, actually. We often play songs that haven’t been released yet, and new arrangement ideas come up after the shows. On June 14, we will play new material, then bring it to the ideal in order to release our Russian-language album in the fall.

The Secret Atelier concert will take place on June 14 at 8:00 p.m. at the 16 Tons club in Krasnaya Presnya. Tickets On line.