Das Wortspiel is a new experimental music project from Ukraine. Its founders are the sound producer and composer Max Smogol and the incredibly talented singer Maryana Golovko. Maryana is a professional opera singer, a member of the world famous Ukrainian NOVA OPERA project. She but she also records pop, jazz and soul releases under the name SUOK.
In Das Wortspiel, Maryana goes even further: she ventures into avant-garde spoken word genre territory, continuing the work of Anna Clarke, Kate Tempest and Laurie Anderson. Her debut LP with Max Smogol, Chapter I, is a concept album that blends melody with ethnic singing and theatrical performance. And her music of different genres serves as a background: lounge, fusion, electronic, ambient and field recordings (especially many city and metro sounds).
We have had the pleasure of interviewing Das Wortspiel and this has been the result.
Can you tell us a little about your experience? Where are you from / how did you get into music?
Max: I have lived in Kyiv for almost half my life, so I already consider myself a Kyivan. But I have been living in Berlin for over a year now. Music has always been in my life for as long as I can remember. Even when I was getting a higher technical education. After graduating from the institute, I finally connected my life with music and sound. At first, I was engaged in sound engineering for a while, but later I switched to writing and performing music. For more than 15 years, I have been writing music for commercials, TV series, and movies. I also participated as a guitarist, vocalist and sound producer in various projects, including solo ones.
Maryana: I was born in Kyiv in a very musical family. My dad is a comprehensive person. Having several higher educations in various fields, he considers himself as a musician. And that's why he raised me to love music and everything related to it. I studied at a music school. Then I received a financial education. But later I realized that I cannot continue to exist without music and singing and went to study vocals. Currently, I’m a soloist in a contemporary opera formation named Nova Opera and became a part of a new project «Das Wortspiel» made by me and my friend, the great composer and musician Max Smogol.
Maryana and Max, can you tell us how you met? How did you decide to do a musical project together? After all, you are from such different worlds. Do you remember the moment when you realized it could work?
Max: In fact, I have already collaborated with Maryana several times, first, as a session vocalist and narrator at our studio. She sang many times in advertising and film music that I wrote for various projects. I was immediately struck by the versatility and flexibility of Maryana's talent. She could sing in absolutely different styles and it always sounded very organic. It ended up being a collaboration on a project called Us, which my friends and I created. And later, I joined Maryana's solo project SUOK, as a guitarist and sound producer. What we did as part of Das Wortspiel happened somehow by itself. We were doing what we couldn't help doing and somehow it turned into a project and our debut album.
Maryana: First of all, we have been friends for many years. But before we made our album, we collaborated in various projects: Us, SUOK, etc. Since Max is part of the team of a very powerful sound production studio, we have repeatedly worked in the commercial sphere of advertising and film production, as a composer and narrator. Max is a very strong and interesting musician. He fantastically feels music and my voice as well.
You use a lot of “spoken word” in your songs. Tell us what kind of lyrics you used, are they your own or by famous Ukrainian authors? And what exactly do they mean to you?
Max: Yes, indeed, in the album you can hear poems by Yuriy Izdryk (famous Ukrainian writer and poet) and an excerpt from a story by Olga Kobylyanska (Ukrainian modernist writer), but there are also poems by Maryana and several of my texts. Actually, it all started with Maryana's poem dedicated to Kyiv, it was called Livoberezhna. Mariana just started reading it at the rehearsal, and I started playing one guitar theme, which had been spinning in my head for a long time. I consider this moment the beginning of our project. Later, we tried to do the same with some of Izdrik's poems and really liked the result. By the way, I have also been a big fan of Yuri's work for a long time. Maryana also showed me an excerpt from Kobylyanska's story. I really liked it, and I saw in it a parallel with what is currently happening in our country.
Maryana: At this difficult time for our country (we wrote an album in 2022), we really wanted our music to rely on important meanings. I wanted the word to be heard and not lose its weight. That is why this album is built on poetry. Vocal is here in the place of expressiveness.
How would you define the sound of your album? When writing the tracks, did the arrangements come from the vocals or vice versa?
Max: At first, the process went like this: Maryana read poems, and I devised a musical theme on the guitar in real-time. It was just improvisation. Then Maryana would start humming something else on the already existing musical theme, and in the process, we could come up with or change some pieces. But then I took my old laptop and wrote a complete arrangement, sometimes adding and sometimes changing some pieces of the composition. In addition, I also added to the music the noises of the city and various locations that surrounded us at that time. Also, I would say that the process of creating the album's sound took place in Ableton projects due to composing different sounds into one musical canvas. But later, it happened also like this: I wrote a full-fledged track, I even sang my vocal part to it, sent it to Maryana, and she already came up with some of her own parts and text for it. This is what happened with the composition Outside your window. And sometimes, I just even read a poem that Maryana posted on Facebook and wrote music for it, sending it to Maryana with wishes that I see her vocal part. This process was not uniform, and each track had its own unique story.
Maryana: It was a really exciting creative process. But this time it is related to reflection on the present. We were going to rehearsals, I showed my poems, or poems that impressed me. Max created musical passages then turned into tracks.
Why did you decide to release only one single and then the whole album? Didn't you see any other singles on the album? Is it because your LP is valuable as a complete conceptual work?
Max: In fact, I think this album can be listened to as a single track. To be honest, that's how we intended it, as a complete story. Therefore, there are no pauses between songs. But it seems to me that several more tracks in it deserve to be singles.
Maryana: As our friend said, it is an interesting, full-fledged journey. So we look at the album as complete conceptual work. But as for me Rymu Rum, Jolie and Livoberezhna deserve to be separately highlighted.
How do you see your audience? Describe your ideal listener.
Max: This question has always been difficult for me. Although everyone says that it is very important to understand for whom you write music. But I never think about it. I think anyone with an open mind and heart can get aesthetic pleasure from our album. But first of all, I think that these compositions are for Ukrainians. At this time, I hope that the meanings that Maryana and I put into them resonate with Ukrainian listeners. But on the other hand, music is an international substance. Its strength lies in the fact that even without understanding the text of the song, any person can feel what it is about through the music.
Maryana: A very interesting question. For me, our perfect audience is people who need immersion in sound and meaning. This album is unlikely to be useful as background or entertainment music. It's a story. This is a complete message.
Why do you position yourselves as a duo from Ukraine but use a German expression for the project's name?
Max: I think it's because the album was written in Berlin. And besides, we liked how this name sounds in German:)
You have already performed several times, including at the Most Wanted Music showcase in Berlin. Tell us, how does your live performance differ from the recording? Are there any elements of staging/show in it?
Max: I can say that live performance is very different from a studio performance. And at first, it stressed me out a bit. But later, I saw the advantages of this. We invited amazing performances by very cool musicians, and what they added live actually made the music even more interesting and sometimes revealed some compositions from another unknown but interesting side.
Maryana: During live performances, everything is different. After all, we have different experiences. I worked a lot in jazz and contemporary experimental theater. This is a slightly different approach. I like to improvise too much. But it doesn't work very well with Das Wortspiel, so I'm learning to work with playback. We invited fantastically cool musicians to join us for sessions and our performances were enriched by their vision.
How do you manage to combine such disparate genres? How do you manage to give them unity and harmony?
Max: I don't even know how it happened:) I think that it is connected with my extensive experience in writing commercial music and Maryana's incredible professionalism and performance flexibility. During these 15 years I wrote music for commercials and TV series, I had to learn to write music in very different styles. But in the process of creating this album, no one imposed any references on me, so I was able to create music with my own vision. Fortunately, this vision appeared to me during these years:)
Maryana: Sometimes it seems to me that Max can do everything. He has a lot of experience in various genres and styles. But besides that, it has a very good taste. This allows the music to have its own vibe, but at the same time, there are a lot of colors. My multi-genre skills also came in handy.
Can you tell us something about your current or future projects?
Max: At the moment, to be honest, it is very difficult for me to make any visionary plans. There is a war in my homeland. I'm trying to do what I can to speed up our victory. I would like to go to different countries with concerts with our music. I believe that music, like any other form of creativity, is a great force. I am sure that the spread of Ukrainian culture would be important for Ukraine as well. But in anticipation of this, some musical ideas are already spinning in my head. Who knows, maybe they will be part of our second album.
Maryana: Currently, Ukrainians do not relate very well to the words "future" and "planning". After February 24 2022, all our plans fell apart. All we know is that we want to keep going. It's what keeps us together.
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