Dima Pantyushin & Sasha Lipsky | ‘Peshekhod’ | Interview
‘Peshekhod’, the debut album from Dima Pantyushin and Sasha Lipsky, oscillates through an immaculate synth-pop ecosystem in which every shift feels both accurate in its absurdity and divinely danceable.
The album (“peshekhod” translates to “pedestrian”) investigates the inner narrative of a Muscovite as he wanders through the city, recalls his work, and contemplates his existence. It’s roughly autobiographical in scope— Pantyushin was born and raised in Moscow, co-runs Cafe Enthusiast in the city center, and is a visual artist by trade—yet explores feelings universal. His lyrics conjure the nostalgia and joy of parenthood in ‘Ray of Sunshine’, the paranoia of metropolitan life on ‘Pigeon’, and the slippage of time on ‘Chess’.
Your debut album, ‘Peshekhod’ was released on 26th of March on Beats In Space Records. What’s the story behind it?
Dima: In 2016, I asked my friend and musician Sasha Lipsky to help me with the recording of the composition timed to the recently published book-album with the posters I designed for the Cafe Enthusiast. I wrote the lyrics, showed it to Sasha and explained my idea, that I would like the music to reflect all the brightness and cheerfulness of my posters and it could be naive and simple.
In addition to that, I gave him a strange example: “Imagine if the blind person, having heard the song, could recreate in their head at least a little the atmosphere and mood of these posters in the book.” This is how our first work, ‘The Book’, was born. The process of working together immediately fascinated us and soon I wrote the words for another song, then for the third, fourth. We started filming video clips for each song. And after the fourth song, ‘Sunny Bunny’, Tim Sweeney wrote to me on Instagram and offered to release the album on their label. I did not know then either Tim or the Beats in Space label and was very surprised to learn from Sasha (to whom Tim also wrote, since I did not answer) that this is a very good and well known label in the world of independent music and that this proposal is a kind of magic.
Dima, you’re from Moscow and are co-running Cafe Enthusiast in the city center. You recently published a book of 299 posters made for Cafe Enthusiast. What’s the scene there? What would a visitor experience if stopping in Cafe Enthusiast?
The visitors from different countries come to our cafe quite often, from their comments I understand that “Enthusiast” is a place with its own special atmosphere, sometimes they talk about similarities with some places in Berlin or Tel Aviv or somewhere else, but this is often in the context of the fact that we have a very democratic atmosphere (especially by Moscow standards) and have our own small record store (Enthusiast Records), but this poster’s story, which is very noticeably inscribed in both the interior and our social networks, of course displays “Enthusiast ” in the category of rare and memorable venues. Of course, everything matters here: our traditional sandwiches, DJ sets on weekends and various events that we organize: from chess tournaments to flea markets. In my opinion, the place is “alive” and already has become for many people more than just a city cafe. And my posters are more often bought by foreigners, especially French people.
Sasha, you and your brother have a project called Simple Symmetry. What’s that about?
Sasha: Every time somebody asks this question I’m feeling I’m walking into a trap, haha. It’s so hard to talk about music, especially about your own. I believe that music is the most abstract art and therefore a great opportunity for all of us to finally switch off our intellectual perception and to use our intuition, to go hand-in-hand with our fantasy and to create our own meanings. To put it in a nutshell- I think that music deserves just to be heard without any dissecting. Anyway if you need more specificity – let’s say that way: Simple Symmetry is about two brothers doing electronic and mostly dance music, which is equally appropriate at dark and sweaty techno club and at summer festivals somewhere in the forests or at the sea-side. It’s about drum machines and modular synths, but at the same time vintage keyboards and guitars, it’s an attempt to find the point where techno and experimental dance music meets spaced out melodies, arpeggios and chord progressions.
You released quite a lot of material [referring to Simple Symmetry]. Where would you suggest we start?
Sasha: Just go through our discography, find one record or track that resonates with you – that’s gonna be the best starting point.
“Everything that surrounds us in everyday life”
And at what point did you two join forces for ‘Peshekhod’?
Dima: When we received the offer from Beats in Space, it was already clear that we will continue to record our songs, but in my head there was already an idea to create an album. I think we would have continued to record anyway, since both of us were very interested in the creative process, as I said above, but the offer to record and release the record on a label, of course, stimulated us.
How would you describe your latest album and what were some important events that influenced the album making?
Dima: Inspiration for us is everything that surrounds us in everyday life. We just pull out and notice something interesting for ourselves at a certain moment and translate it into the language of music and song. I often associate the selected topics of songs with a diary.
How are you coping with the current pandemic? If I’m not mistaken, Russia allows small events now…
Dima: It is difficult to answer: at first it was difficult – now it is easier. It will take a long time to retell this entire period, there were a lot of emotional changes. Small events are allowed, yes, but it seems to me that compared to many countries, these events are not that small.
Would you agree that the album is an observation of your city through the eyes of a pedestrian? What we don’t know is what kind of philosophy is pedestrian carrying.
Dima: I think that our “Pedestrian” does not have a direct reference to the location, he can live in almost any City of the world and have the same thoughts in his head. The key word here is the City. And our hero thinks in general about things that are understandable to anyone and all this is easily readable in the lyrics of the songs: balance between work and rest, children, personal experiences, hobbies and entertainment, justice, kindness, tolerance and harmony with oneself and the world around us.
“Sasha and I understood from the very beginning that we wanted to make a Russian-language album”
What can you say about the cover artwork?
Dima: My surname is Pantyushin, it starts with the letter “P” (“П” in Russian). The album is called ‘Pedestrian’ and also begins with the letter “P”. Also words: poster, sing, dance, walk and many others (in Russian) start with “P”. I didn’t like the sound of this letter in Russian and its shape, but then I decided to reconsider my attitude a little and put this “P” where? That’s right – on the Pedestal, on the cover of our LP. In general, when I started thinking about “P”, it seemed to me that in Russian there are too many words that begin with “P”, I decided to check this and it turned out that the biggest number of words in Russian begins with this letter. This became a revelation for me and the final point in the decision that on the cover there should be a large, almost full size P (and this is also a Portal (Pedestrian Crossing), through which I / we find ourselves in a new period of our Life Path. Besides, the album is coming out in America and with this “П” on the cover I wanted to highlight even more the place where the album was born. Sasha and I understood from the very beginning that we wanted to make a Russian-language album.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
Dima: To be honest, it is very difficult for me to answer this question, I have always listened and listen to a lot of completely different music.
Sasha: Listening to music is my daily routine (in the best sense of the word of course), I guess it’s gonna be much easier for me just to check out my Spotify and see what I’ve been listening to this week. Here we go:
Pop Negatif Wastad – ‘Pop Negatif Wastad’
Eola – ‘Dang’
Peter Grudzien – ‘The Garden of Love’
КИНО – ’45’
Sun City Girls – ‘330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond the Rig Veda’
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy – ‘An Anthology’
Various Artists – ‘La Ola Interior (Spanish Ambient and Acid Exotism: 1983-1990)’
Connie Converse – ‘How Sad, How Lovely’
Pere Ubu – ‘The Modern Dance’
The Totemist – ‘Ak’chamel, The Giver of Illness’
Klemen Breznikar
Dima Pantyushin Instagram / Spotify
Sasha Lipsky Instagram / SoundCloud
Beats In Space Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / SoundCloud / Bandcamp
