Gianmarco Del Re (Editor)
система | system Pbk 567 pp

Ukrainian Field Notes was initiated by film maker Gianmarco Del Re, who became interested in Ukrainian experimental music after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, but started researching the country’s diverse scenes more intensively after the Russian invasion in February 2022. His interviews with Ukrainian musicians took a diaristic day by day approach and were initially published on the website A Closer Listen. Some questions raised pragmatic concerns like how Westerners can support the Ukrainian war effort, while others focused on how artists manage their creative process in times of conflict.

The project is still ongoing, but 170 interviews from the first year of the war have been compiled into this single tome. A sister compilation featuring some of the artists involved has also been released by c  cTeMa | system. Including over 80 tracks running to almost eight hours, the compilation follows the chronological order of the interviews. Recorded after 24 February 2022, the overall sensation of the music is sombre reflection.

Although the tracklist is dominated by instrumental electronic compositions, other genres and moods also make an appearance. They range from the thundering drums and protracted metal dirge of Nonsun (“Days Of Thunder Bring New Wisdom”), through the melancholy dark jazz of Whaler (“Zrada”), to sorrowful field recordings. Documenting squawking birds on a winter day, Myroslav Protsan’s “Ravens On The Cemetery” suggests the harsh emptiness of grief.

The combined reading and listening experience brings to the surface emotions from the first days of the war: a sickening disbelief in the unfolding events. In the early stages of the conflict many interviewees couldn’t make or listen to music. Their energies instead focused on survival, fundraising and volunteering. Del Re equates war to another recent trauma, that of the global pandemic, and asks how the artists lived during that time. “There is a big difference between lockdown and war,” replies Hanna Svirska. “During lockdown you knew that you would survive by staying at home. War gives you no guarantees.”

About 50 pages into the book, the interviews expand. Gianmarco’s questions become more involved and better researched. Further insights are gained into the experience of displaced artists (across Europe and within Ukraine) as well as the country’s different music scenes. SA Tweeman, for example, the co-founder of queer rave VESELKA, is asked to reflect on the development of Ukraine’s LGBTQIA+ club scene and whether electronic music has a role to play in the current situation.

Each artist is also tasked with recommending a book or film that will give readers a better understanding of Ukrainian culture. Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass (2018), Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and the Ukraïner media platform are recommended simultaneously by several different people. Later conversations consider misconceptions about the conflict. “The West thinks that we are at war with people who have human concepts, values and orientations,” say the indie five-piece Latexfauna. “In fact, we are fighting against a completely inhumane, misanthropic system that is endless in its bloodlust.”

Although it makes for emotionally charged reading, Ukrainian Field Notes is an important document with a practical purpose. All proceeds from its sales go to fund the Musicians Defend Ukraine charity.
Almost two years into this war, the book’s publication is all the more vital.

Ilia Rogatchevski
Originally published by The Wire, December 2023