Part 1

Name: Andrey Sirotkin
Occupation: Producer, DJ
Nationality: Ukrainian
Recent release: Andrey Sirotkin's new full-length album Welcome To Vyrii is out via Vyrii.
Topic I rarely get to talk about: My biggest passion is music and sound, technology, science, culture and the history of music. I spend most of my free timeon these topics. And that led to me to discover and define an amazing visual aesthetic – art deco, art nouveau, vintage comic book graphic styles, black and white photography, retro cars design.
In this areas I’m just a consumer - I watch and enjoy … and surround myself with such things here and there to inspire myself. With this inspiration I get into studio and make music. I try to implement it in the cover images for my releases as well.

If you enjoyed this Andrey Sirotkin interview and would like to find out more about his music, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.



Many musicians I am talking to at the moment feel somewhat disillusioned about the impact, meaning, and value of their work. Feel free to vent some of your own frustrations and/or disappointments.

For the last 5 years mostly, for me, electronic music has been divided between marketing machine giants and DIY indie artists. Those giants appear as role models to newcomers, so they treat DJing like a business – money first, then comes music as a tool.

As a result, instead of diving into the unknown and exploring something new, we get tracks that sound the same and mostly are copies of copies.

It seems like artists care more about themselves than about music and culture… and of course for me as indie artist, I compete in the media space with those marketing machines.

If possible, tell me something that you recently experienced (or a thought that you had) that might give hope to other creatives.

For the last 3 years I've opened to myself small, closed communities. They look cozy and exclude people who don’t care or don’t want to contribute. And most importantly – music takes the spotlight. It feels like I found my tribe.

If, for a moment, we forget about streaming numbers, target audiences, social media followers, and sales - why are you drawn to sound and music as a creator and listener? What is it that you give and receive through it?

I’m into music because music is the most impotant thing in my life. It helped me keep my head above water during the hardest times in my life. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine I switched my relationship with it from imaginary voyages into the unknown to a sort of a therapy where I release what I experience via music.

As a listener to music, I listen to lots of different genres and styles besides electronic – pop, punk, hardcore, classical, jazz, rock, folk, trip-hop, acid jazz and so on. But I can’t listen to those other genres for a long time because they don´t give me the same vibe and emotions, the vibe electronic music has.

I love to be surprised by the creativity of artists.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine to your work, please, and how music and sound accompany you through it.

My average day looks like this:

I start my day with morning hugs with my family. Then comes my morning cup (or two) of coffee and I listen to tracks or sketches I worked on the day before. I take notes and plan what to work on next and when.

Then it's time for my daily tasks – as money won’t earn itself. I pick vinyl records according to my mood to play in the background to warm up my digging appetite or I just start to listen to new music right away. I try to listen to at least 10 new tracks every day. Seems like an easy task but doing it for many days and even moons in a row is challenging as there can be no music I feel connected with for days. Anyway it´s an inspiring process where I can note down ideas for further usage.

When I finish with my daily tasks I go into studio. I have an exact plan to know what exactly I will do and what I have to get as a result. Of course, creating music is a creative process, so sometimes it can go into other directions – a new track, a new idea, finishing older tracks, switching to other monikers, having fun with hardware or discovering sound of tools instead of finishing the track. But anyway I’m somewhere close to a timeline.

At the end of the session, I save everything I have on my phone so I can listen to it anywhere. And I use that – listening on phone speakers while I’m switching and closing the studio, headphones listening while I’m walking, connecting it to the TV, laptop and other possible speakers later.

I try to visit my parents as much as possible: cozy dinner and smalltalk is always lovely. And a cup of coffee ... I know it’s not healthy but I can’t resist it. It’s my drink of choice. Then I come home to spend time with my family. And I drink another cup of coffee…

At midnight, the curfew starts and and mostly we will hear the air raid alarm. If this happens and we understand that drones or a rockets attack is near, we get up and move to different places according to the situation. Late night conversations ... full of anxiety and lassitude.

… aaaand repeat all that again.

What artists, albums, performances, or even aesthetics and philosophies are inspiring to your life in and beyond music right now and in which way? Have there been songs, albums, performances, and artists that concretely changed / influenced your life?

Music formed my life. It spiced it up, coloured it and lead me through hard times. At different ages these were different artists and sounds.

At the age of 4 I heard Space's “Magic Fly” – that music was like magic. That feeling of magic I pursue all the time when I’m digging and discovering new music.



My significant track for switching from electronic music to drum and bass was EZ-Roller's “Meatball”. I had heard nothing like that before and I was diving into that particular style of jazzy, intelligent and liquid sound.



Robert Babicz – true artist and human with a heard of gold. I learned things from him that boosted my relationship with creating music: Finish a track as fast as possible and move on, whether you release it or delete it afterwards. Just because the track is a snapshot of a current mood and you have to stay attached to it with your feelings - not with your brain.

[Read our Robert Babicz interview]

The difference between a good and a great track is a huge amount of small adjustments and details. Just because a person mostly can’t hear the difference, it doesn’t mean I shouldn't try anyway. I will make a better mixdown, will process it with analog gear, pick the right section from different takes and options, care for the best possible mastering.

Tell me about some of the feedback you've received from listeners about how your work has impacted them.

I would love to hear such stories as well but yet I don’t have them.

I get  the most unexpected positive reactions when I play DJ sets with nothing but my own music.

What are some of the goals and ambitions you have for your music?

For now, as Andrey Sirotkin, I release at least one track every 3 weeks. I also want to get closer to such a schedule with my other monikers I Wannabe, Niktoris and Shade Of Drums.

My next goal is to keep on with all of those “versus” releases. One track made by one project and re-arranged in another genre under one of my other monikers. I started the idea with the minimal tech track “Who to Blame” as Andrey Sirotkin and remixed it as a drum and bass track under the nom de plume of I Wannabe.

The second track was the deep house track “Woman He Loves” ...



... which later got its drum and bass version.



The next step is gathering forthcoming tracks with versions in releases. And maybe add slower beat version from Niktoris and ambient version from Shade Of Drums.



And of course releasing vinyl records on my own labels Vyrii and Deviant Drums.