All profits of this album will be given to Svitlana Nianio!

# Notes by Michael Frank

I got to know visual artist, musician, and producer Guido Erfen and sound engineer, acoustic artist, and percussionist Michael Springer as part of a group of five by the name of SHM (1). The members of the group organised concerts at Rhenania, a disused grain silo, where I performed with The Absurd in 1988 and 1989. The band was also featured on one of Erfen's tape releases. Erfen and Springer met when they were still at the same secondary school and soon became close friends and musical allies. With the other members of SHM they built an independent network for creating and distributing music beyond the mainstream in Cologne. Rent at Rhenania was incredibly low, allowing a recording studio to be established there.

The first traces of the Ukrainian Underground arrived at Erfen's door via a cassette tape with three bands from Kharkiv and Kyiv, sent by Igor Trushkin, who – having studied journalism as a minor subject – had taken on the international correspondence for the Novaya Scena rock club. Trushkin had dispatched countless letters around the world, but Erfen in Cologne turned out to be the only addressee to respond. The package included a long essay by Sergey Myasoyedow which detailed the rock scene in the two cities. In 1986, Myasoyedow, together with Sasha Panchenko, had founded the "Novaya Scena" rock club in Kharkiv, presenting bands inspired by punk, the avant-garde, dadaism, and even medieval melodies. If Erfen hadn't been part of the independent mail-art scene, he wouldn't have had the chance to discover this unorthodox music. It was the summer of 1990, shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became an independent state the following year.

In 1991, singer and keyboard player Soloveyka from Kharkiv arrived in Cologne and – in a handover likewise arranged by Trushkin – gave Erfen half a dozen cassettes with underground bands from Ukraine and a handful with bands from the Soviet Union. Intrigued by the original music of many of the acts, he visited Ukraine twice, made friends there, compiled a tape with his favourite tracks and finally succeeded in convincing Hamburg label boss Alfred Hilsberg to present underground music from Ukraine on the CD "Novaya Scena" via his label What's So Funny About (the original home of Einstürzende Neubauten). The 1993 release was accompanied by an extensive booklet text by Trushkin, tracing the history of both scenes in Kharkiv and Kyiv, translating the song lyrics, and offering his own assessments.

The album compiled 20 tracks recorded between 1986 and 1992 by 14 bands out of Kharkiv and Kyiv – music beyond the usual Perestroika records, often with jarring dissonances over grooves that fans of Captain Beefheart or The Fall would certainly enjoy. On the other hand, there are tracks featuring flute and trumpet that seem inspired by folk, classical music, and punk. Ghostly chamber prog miniatures by Cukor Belaya Smert (lit. Sugar White Death) from Kyiv featuring, among others, the classically trained pianist and singer Svitlana Nianio (née Ochrimenko) and guitarist, visual artist, and spokesman Yewgeny "Yenia" Taran. Nianio sang in her native Ukrainian, as did two more of the bands. Today, this seems more relevant than ever, more culturally and historically significant from a Ukrainian point of view than it was even in 1993. Young Ukrainians were amazed at that time that rock music sung in their native tongue could work!

It is in the aftermath of the “Novaya Scena“ album that the music on this LP was created. About a year after the release of the CD in August 1993, Nianio and Taran came to Cologne to work on music for the dance production "Transilvania Smile" by the dance theatre ensemble Pentamonia (2). The seeds for the Traces of Ukrainian Underground in Cologne were sown. Starting in 1994, a series of informal recording sessions took place at Michael Springer’s Phanton Studio and at SHM studio in Rhenania. Together, these sessions formed the basis of the four different incarnations of the Ukraine-Cologne connection heard on STROOMS’s compilation.

The first four tracks focus on the collaboration between Michael Springer, Svitlana Ochrimenko, Taran, and Wolfram Burgtorf, a longtime friend of Springer's. Springer had almost completed “Fake“ when, out of the blue, Svitlana appeared at his studio. She carried a portable Casio keyboard with her wherever she went. She spontaneously added intricate keyboard melodies to the track and simultaneously sang as well. As far as Springer can remember, the lyrics deal with a man trapped under the ice in a frozen lake. In order to confound the gruesome atmosphere of the story, Michael finally added samples of his – quote – “horrible“ laughter to the track. The other three tracks by this particular Ukraine-Cologne connection are the result of spontaneous live playing with only minimal post-production by Springer.

The sound design of the last two tracks on Side A is quite elaborate. Guido Erfen, under the moniker of Gee Nerve (German speakers might get the pun), and the duo of Nianio and Taran create psychedelic and downright spooky vibes on the tracks featured here. What Erfen had in mind was to “create a kind of neo-exotica that gives the impression of a foreign culture that is in fact completely fictitious“. The trio put their heads together for weeks and created sophisticated arrangements, but then Nianio's and Taran's visas expired. The tracks were put together during one particularly inspired session on a Sunday afternoon in early March of 1995. It was not clear that these were to be the final recordings - the plans for further work on them once their visas were renewed inevitably fell through. The musicians parted ways and started solo careers. Luckily, the tapes of that special session were carefully looked after, and later Erfen edited and compiled the recordings into a proper album called “Frozen Jungle. “ It was finally released in 2021 by the US label Sincere Sensation. And, by the way, Ochrimenko took on the name Nianio after her stay in Cologne. Cukor Belaya Smert were no more.

The three tracks featuring Soloveyka would not exist if she and Wolfram Burgtorf hadn't met at these informal sessions at Phanton Studio. A little bit later, they started collaborating as a duo in Burgtorf's own small studio and chose the name Solar for their project. Soloveyka, who had performed with light jazz and pop bands in Kharkiv, spontaneously came up with melodies for the compositions by Burgtorf, usually just “shoobee-dooing” in scat vocals at first and then later writing lyrics. She sang in various languages, e.g., in English on “Your Secret“ and in Russian on the other tracks featured here: “Three Steps“ deals with the distance between two people when three steps on a staircase can seem as long as the way to the heavens. “August Samba“ is sung from the point of view of a jilted lover.

The final track on STROOM’s compilation is by Yewgeny Taran and also features Nianio's keyboard playing. It was recorded at SHM studio during the same sessions that led to the three tracks by Gee Nerve, Nianio, and Taran. Here you get the original version of “Death And The Bachelor“, one of two songs from the Cologne production that he took with him when he eventually moved to Munich. They ended up on his solo album "ModAndMiniAndSpaceAge", a double vinyl album released by Compost Records in 1996.

You may ask, where are they now? Svitlana Nianio is still based in Kyiv and continues to make music in a war-torn country. She was rediscovered by a younger generation during the 2010s and returned to playing live in front of audiences in 2017, now repeatedly performing abroad. Her old recordings are being re-released regularly. The fact that she had sung in Ukrainian early on may be another reason for the recent recognition of her work.

Taran has been living in Munich since the second part of the 90s and has continued with his DJ career and kept on producing music with new musical partners in a trio called Marmor & Stein (lit. Marble & Stone).

Wolfram Burgtorf established a career as a soundtrack composer for a long time, whereas Soloveyka seems to have dropped out of the music scene altogether. Under different monikers, Guido Erfen has released sample-based solo recordings, jam band tracks with “Das Hertz“ and an impressive album performing solo on acoustic guitar (“Primitive German Guitar“).

As Phanton, Michael Springer continues to create and release what he calls “natural electronic music," veering between dance, trance, and slightly prog vibes. The track “Use You“ from his album “In Exo“ (2024) is based on a sample of Nianio's vocals recorded at Phantonstudio in 1994.

1) SYNDIKAT HABGIER UND MEINEID (LIT. SYNDICATE GREED AND PERJURY). SHM STILL EXISTS BUT WAS REBRANDED AS SO HEALTHY MUSIC IN 2004. ERFEN IS FEATURED ON MOST OF THE RELEASES.

2) THE RESULTS WERE RECORDED BY MICHAEL SPRINGER SHORTLY AFTER HIS INITIAL COLLABORATION WITH NIANIO ON TRACK ONE OF THIS LP. THE MUSIC WAS FINALLY RELEASED AS NIANIO'S “TRANSILVANIA SMILE“ BY THE UKRANIAN LABEL SHUKAI IN 2023.

Linernotes by Michael Frank
Mastering by Mathieu Savenay
Artwork by Victor Verhelst

Thanks to: Svitlana Nianio, Guido Erfen, Michael Springer, Evgen Taran, Wolfram Burgtorf, Soloveyka, Andy Reisner, Marina De Cloedt, Eckerhard Langen & Kirill Olmezov.