I’ve been moving towards this moment my entire conscious life.

In 2006, I created a folder named after my debut album with a release date (2006). A year later, I renamed it to ‘My First Album (2007),’ and that pattern continued for many years, until now, as I finally see ‘Friends Team‘ on all platforms in November 2024.

For a while, people were actually waiting for this album—my subscribers, my friends. But three to five years before its release, they stopped asking, “So, when’s the album coming?” I was grateful for that since the question had begun to drive me to a neurotic edge.

That edge, and the neurotic struggle surrounding it, are stories in themselves. I should probably share more about the circumstances of this album’s creation.

My friend and collaborator Dmitry, who was there with me every step of the way, had no mercy when it came to our shared inside jokes about this album. “The album will probably drop when nuclear war starts,” he’d joke, given how much it had been through—from events like COVID to personal changes.

I even managed to move countries. In Berlin now for five years, I left Russia with a nearly completed version of the album, doing test drives with anyone I could, presenting it to family, sending it to labels. One American label, I later found, actually listened through from start to finish (I tracked it through Bandcamp stats).

So many people have already heard the album, in a way. We hosted impromptu listening sessions at every chance—in friends’ living rooms, studios, to industry reps, even to random passersby.

I performed these songs at festivals, shows, private gigs, self-organized events, even on the street. No one sang along. No one knew the words. The songs hadn’t been released yet.

I remember vividly the moment I wrote the final lyric. I took a hot shower afterward that felt like it reset my soul. I’d been living in that nervous tension for two years, squeezing out lyrics—sometimes a line, sometimes a paragraph per month. Writing this album’s lyrics (my FIRST album, no less) was a monumental challenge within the endless production stages.

I wrote them in English, despite my unfamiliarity with its grammar, constantly double-checking myself—a test of my perfectionism. I wanted the album in a language I didn’t fully know. And it turned out exactly like that.

The vocal melodies came first, improvised on a nonexistent language, so over two years, I slowly grafted rhyme and rhythm onto meanings that hadn’t yet been created.

First came the cover art.
Then a list of song titles.

I drew these from life, symbols that kept flashing in my mind like sparks in my restless mind.

Then the themes revealed themselves. This album is highly visionary; I saw it in full before I even held the master copy.

Together with my co-creator Arttom, we set out to create true art—a unique album, impossible to replicate. That impulse was born in our minds and, over a decade, became imprinted as my personal trial by fire (as I can say, looking back now).

In the process, we crafted our samples, manipulated my voice, allowing the wildest ideas and experiments to have their place. There were no boundaries. It was a flight into true consciousness. We smoked a lot. I became detached from the world.

Meditation in complete solitude, depriving myself of small and large pleasures, watching time pass, focusing—this is what awaited me for years, though I was blissfully unaware. Somewhere along the line, this album became my life’s purpose, a fixed idea that demanded completion. One of my deepest flaws is getting excited by a new idea and then jumping to another. In childhood, these blocks and barriers didn’t exist—you just lived, no albums, no meanings, creating without a purpose, fully immersed in all kinds of vibes.

This album wiped out those feelings. It wanted me to be fully devoted to its creation, until my identity fused with it and I couldn’t imagine myself outside this work. This brings us back to the theme of neurosis.

I’m not able to diagnose myself, but by the end, my identity had changed entirely. I also aged eight years in the process. Now, my life is laced with fears and uncertainty about the future. I’ve invested so much time in myself and this vision, always dreaming of making a living as an artist, traveling and performing with my music.

I haven’t lost that excitement, the infinite itch, and drive. These feelings are still strong, and this charge hasn’t dissipated. This is the sole reason I made this album the centerpiece of my life. I am certain it will lead me back to myself.

Music and Lyrics: Vladislav Serezdinov
Vocal Engineer: Vladislav Serezdinov
Mixing Engineer: Michail Volkov
Mastering Engineer: Zino Mikorey
Producer: Kim Keheleu
Co-Producer: Artsiom Khazau
Assistent Producer: Dmitrii Liubosei