These songs were written at different points in my life. Each one is a snapshot of a moment I needed to hold onto. When feelings run too deep for words, music steps in.

Writing a song that’s both memorable and meaningful — one with a real melody and something worth saying — is harder than it sounds. It took me about seven years from writing my first song to finding the voice I’m sharing with you now. What ties all of this music together is a love for life, a belief in good things, and faith in a better tomorrow. Even in the most minor-key moments, I always try to leave room for hope.

I’d like to believe this music will resonate with many people — because it came from somewhere real in me.

It started in 2012, when I released my first track. I had no idea then that it would be the first step toward an album I’d spend the next fifteen years building. But from that moment, something shifted. I felt like I had a story that needed to be told.

Every song here is its own chapter. Some are drawn directly from life. Others are composites — impressions built around themes that moved me. More than once, working on a new track was how I got through something painful. Sitting at my desk, disappearing into the music, I found a space where the noise of the outside world couldn’t follow — somewhere to breathe, recharge, and come back to myself.

Some of the lyrics reflect my personal philosophy and outlook on life. Over the years, I’ve developed a clear sense of what I believe — and if any of that reaches someone still figuring things out, I’d consider these songs well worth writing.

The love songs occupy their own corner of the album — and I’ll be honest about them: they’re the most “composite” of the bunch. Behind each one are stories I witnessed up close, feelings I absorbed from people around me. There are things that are easier to write about when you’re watching from a slight distance — and maybe that’s exactly what makes these songs so open-ended. There’s a lot of room in them for your experience, not just mine.

But life moves forward. And I genuinely hope that my next album will give me songs I can call truly mine — lived, not just imagined.

The album is bilingual: eight songs in Russian, eight in English. But that split isn’t just about reaching a wider audience.

Some subjects were so personal that I simply couldn’t write about them in Russian. There’s a certain distance that comes with writing in a language that isn’t your mother tongue — and that distance, paradoxically, makes it easier to say the hard things. Words in English feel slightly less exposed. They let me speak about things I might have kept to myself otherwise. So the choice of language in each song isn’t incidental — it’s part of what the song is saying.

Every single part of this album — from the first note to the final upload — I did myself. The lyrics, the music, the arrangements, the mixing, the mastering, the backing vocals and even the art cover. I never worked with an outside producer or engineer. There simply weren’t people like that in my world, so I taught myself everything.

The sound is built on instrumental VST libraries. Every part was programmed by hand — no pre-made patterns, no auto-arrangements. Each of the roughly fifty instrument layers in every track was written out note by note, from start to finish. It’s slow, painstaking work — but it sounds exactly the way I hear it in my head.

My teachers were manuals, YouTube videos, careful listening to music I admired, and my own ears. Not the most direct route — but it’s mine.

Before the album ever hit a streaming platform, it was already heard — live. On March 27, 2025, my 35th birthday, I performed my first solo concert for family, friends, colleagues, and invited guests. The show ran for exactly two hours, including an intermission — and honestly, I think that’s a pretty strong statement for a debut. Not every established artist can fill two hours on their first night out.

I organized everything myself: found the venue, handled the equipment, designed and printed custom booklets with lyrics and QR codes linking to my site. I mapped out the setlist, planned the outfits, and wrote spoken introductions for every song — because I felt that each one deserved its own moment. A song without context is only the surface of what it is.

The people in that room were the first to hear these songs live. Their response gave me the energy to finish what I’d started.

05:03 Боль Любви Моей; 12:43 Tomorrow; 16:46 Лишь Ты Одна; 21:09 Stay With Me; 25:30 Так Сложно И Просто; 33:36 Time; 38:55 In My Memory; 44:34 Не Уходи.

16:56 Дай Мне Свободу; 24:11 Life Is One; 28:50 Лечу Выше; 36:05 I Pray; 41:30 Любовь Моя; 45:04 You’re The One; 48:55 Я Отдам Тебе Жизнь; 54:29 Pain of Loving You.

After the concert, I knew I couldn’t release the album the way it was. My ear and my standards had been growing for fifteen years — and I could hear there was more to be done.

That’s when AI became an unexpected collaborator. We had long conversations late into the night — about which plugins worked best in which situations, how to treat vocals properly, what spatial effects would give the sound the commercial quality it needed. For someone who’d never had a mentor in music, that kind of dialogue was genuinely valuable.

It turned out that the orchestral libraries I rely on — which work beautifully in classical and cinematic music — don’t carry the brightness and air in the high frequencies that modern pop expects. I had to rethink my EQ, saturation, and exciter settings from the ground up.

By the end, I had reworked all sixteen tracks. Balanced the levels so the album holds together as a single listening experience. Three months of daily, unrelenting work — and I have no regrets about a single hour of it.

Throughout the process of reworking all sixteen tracks, I questioned myself more than once. Was it even worth it? There was so much to do — and it kept pushing back a release date that nobody but me had set in the first place. I’ve always been my own boss, my own creative director — and my own harshest critic.

One of the hardest questions in all of this: when do you stop? I thought about it for a long time and landed somewhere simple: the ideal you can achieve tomorrow doesn’t exist today. The level I’m reaching toward will be real in a few years — which means chasing it forever is the same as never releasing anything at all. The only honest measure is the best you can do right now. Nothing more, nothing less.

Holding perfectionism and the ability to let go in the same hands is probably the hardest thing I deal with as an artist. I’m not wired to do “good enough” when I know I can do better. But eventually, the unfinished album started to block everything else — I couldn’t clear my head, couldn’t make space, couldn’t move forward. It was taking up room inside me and in my life.

So I made the call. This album is an honest portrait of what I’m capable of at this point in my life — and I’m ready to put my name on it.

I did it. I exhaled. I hit publish — and put down a weight I’d been carrying longer than I should have. I’m free now. Free for new projects, new songs, and maybe a whole new universe.

“MY UNIVERSE” is available now on all major streaming platforms. But the story doesn’t end there.

Three of the songs have extended versions — built around full orchestral introductions that I feel deserve to be heard. The album versions open more quickly; that was a deliberate choice for the flow of the record. But these orchestral prologues add their own drama and draw you into the world of each song before my voice even arrives. Letting them sit unheard felt wrong.

So a little later, I plan to release them separately — as bonus tracks for anyone who wants to experience these songs in their fullest, most expansive form.

I hope this album finds you the way it found the people who heard it live that night — openly, without warning, without algorithms deciding what you’re ready for. Just the music and you.

This album wasn’t planned or engineered to a formula. It grew alongside me — year by year, song by song — until it became something big enough to leave my world and enter yours.

I don’t know which track will hit closest to home for you. Maybe it’ll be one of the Russian songs, something that lands before you’ve had time to think about it. Maybe an English track where you recognize something you’ve never quite been able to say yourself. Maybe it’ll be one of those extended intros, pulling you somewhere before the words even begin. That possibility — that’s the whole reason any of this exists.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Welcome to “MY UNIVERSE”.