Neformat Family: Trip Inside Me

Ukrainian music underground has almost no bands which disappeared completely – usually there’s something and someone to remember about each of them. This time the psychedelic / indie rock band Trip Inside Me is in the focus of our nostalgia rubric. It is the collective, that has released one album only, but its steps may be found in all music media of Ukraine, its songs are in few compilations, and wherever the band was heard – it got positive feedbacks only.
Many people know that the brainchild of the art-coalition of Iana Yelysheva and Mykola Odintsov earlier had the name Ella Yellow and represented the trip-hop scene. But few people know that it’s completely wrong to consider these two projects to be different versions of the same thing, because, as Yana says Trip Inside Me was born at the moment when those three words came in line to name music of the absolutely different genre. Besides, this time the duo was joined by the drummer Semen Pepel (who also played in Small Depo) and bassist Olexiy Andruschenko, which meant the serious intent, not only to make a worthy record, but also to announce themselves live. Though, as musicians later confessed live shows are not for them.

"At first it was the band Ella Yellow, which was improved by every member who came or left it. But not to play something compromise between tastes of each of them, we decided to continue as duo, only two of us, before we could find really interested in this theme and talented musicians… We gained our friends as drummers, one of them takes part in album recording particularly, the other one helps to prepare for the live shows", — musicians wrote on Neformat forum.

for them. The band debuted with the maxi-single "Goldfish", which came out in August of 2015 and was immediately caught by the wave of actual then sound – such bands as stonefromthesky, R. Roo, Sorrow Leads To Salvation, and Leo Cardigan released the alternative version of this composition on Soundcloud. Also the band shot a hypnotic video to support this track:

Their one and only album "Open One Of The Doors", which felt the touch of people from different corners of the world on itself, came out on the 22 of September in 2016 and was presented on GOGOLFEST three days later. LP recording took place at the home studio and the drummers Arthur Mykhailenko and Semen Pepel helped a lot with it – without them the album could lose its rhythm. Mixing was provided by Sasha Kuzovlev from Astrakhan and mastering of the album happened on Studio Krause, in Germany, to where the fate has relocated this duo for good and where they inhabit until now.

With no promotion at all, "Open One Of The Doors" was listed in the best albums selections of such resources as LiRoom, Muzmapa, Karabas Live and others, and in general it was noticed by almost all Ukrainian sites and public pages which wrote about the culture, of course, Neformat wrote about it as well:

"What captivates the listener of Trip Inside Me foremost? Of course, it’s the fascinating voice of the vocalist and everything which is about the vocals sound. The technic, the part structure, effects – this all, without any exaggerations, is the visit card of the album. The angelic singing here isn’t something in the middle of dream-pop and ethereal, but it has the real power, which is demonstrated in almost every track", – our reviewer Vadim Oliynykov wrote.

The foreign listeners liked the fresh sound of Trip Inside Me, too, that’s why the band could be heard on IO Radio (UK), RADIO ANTENNA1, also you could read reviews on their art, written in different languages on the other side of the border.

As "Open one of the doors" was released digitally only, the band created a little book to it, which could be purchased to kill the thirst for physical contact with the musicians. That book contained illustrations to each of the tracks and was made by the vocalist Iana Yelysheva. The book also featured a postcard, stickers, and a link to the album in WAVE format. Later, the pins with the band symbolic appeared, which even exceeded all expectations from the merch support.

"Each page is the story from our past and also a thin line between dreams and reality. Each song is a trip inside the person, the door into some moment of life", – the musicians said about it.

Photo from bands' bandcamp page

A little bit later Trip Inside Me, with their track "Live Sound", were featured in the compilation Electric Funeral Cafe Vol​.​III, which came out on the legendary in our areal label Robustfellow, Also they took part in recording the tribute "A Tribute to My Bloody Valentine — Forever and Again" (2017), having recorded their own version of the song "In Another Way". This project appeared to be surprisingly popular as it was written about by music media of Brazil, Canada, Mexica, USA, and Britain, particularly those publications may be found on Zone Nights, Sound & Vision, Ooyuz, Shoegazer alive9 and others.

If to talk of this band’s fate, we can tell that success followed them wherever they moved, on what musicians reacted alike their inspirer Caótica Ana – hided in the cave, succumbed to hypnosis of their own music and fell deeper and deeper inside themselves until total vanishing. Now there’s an eponymous website left after them, and it leads nowhere.

One of the first band’s performances

For true, what looks like an end is not it, because the duo still exists, dislocated in Berlin, it prepares to the new material release. According to the words of Iana, the first album recording was "traumatic" and not easy to do, that’s why it demanded a longtime analysis, only after which the transition to new phase became possible:

"Moving has changed our priorities much. Our approach to life/people/ourselves has changed, too. Plus, Berlin itself, with its large techno-motion, influenced the music we started working on. So, only having let go the past, I felt strong enough to record and mix the material for our fresh EP."

The time of absence in the music world Iana and Mykola dedicated to the mastering of motion design and have created their own VR project named Park Érotique, for which they composed music, too, though under another name. The fruit of their new hobby may be enjoyed with their new music release as the artists promise to accompany it with two new self-made videos and, in such way, to unite both their passions.

"Since we’ve found ourselves again, our new artistic focus is not to concentrate on one thing only, but to try different in this life and, having gained new experience, to create something original, combining knowledges from the different fields", – Iana Yelysheva shares.

So let’s relisten "Open One Of The Doors" and wait for the news!

Trip Inside Me in social networks:

https://soundcloud.com/tripinsideme
https://tripinsideme.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/tripinsidemeband/?ref=hl
https://forum.neformat.com.ua/rock/78002-trip-inside-me.html

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Cover photo — social networks