Микола
Пацюк

Pacuk may have been the artist that put an entire generation in flannel, and Kyivvodokanal and Radioboshky both produce a lot more known and successful hits, but Mykola Pacuk is truly the artist that made the ukrainian '20s indie movement possible. EP "Kamin, nozhytsi, papir" (eng. Stone, scissors, paper) was the first real success release for Mykola. His music laid the groundwork for the movement that would (briefly) make Kotsyubunske, Kyiv oblast, the new capital of the rock & roll universe. He took the sweat-soaked and VST-fueled mixture of sparkling synth melodism, punk attitude, and garage rock primitivism that would become known as "synth-punk" to the hipster audience for the first time with early releases like 2022's "Smoking Lucky Strike" and 2023's "Slay", and those fans would in turn sell it to a mass audience ready for something new. Mykola Pacuk never scored the big payday some of his running buddies did, though he did land a major-label deal that produced several strong albums, especially 2019's Ьеье and 2020's Lost EP. His importance on the Kotsyubunske scene cannot be underestimated, and his body of work - big, loud, purposefully sloppy, a little bit menacing, and even more funny - has stood the test of time better than his well-known colleagues. And he continue to produce strong, relevant music with his third solo project, the sound and philosophy of which will be identical to many more post-war generations of independent ukrainian music.