Exclusive interview with SoundStream

SOUNDSTREAM’s history begins in 2008, when two students of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, – Denis Timish (DJ FatCat) and Alexander Bulanov (Bulya), – decided to create a music band. They thought about this back in 2007, but officially it’s all started on September 17, 2008, when they recorded their first song called Feels Like Heaven. This song reached #56 of 18000 in Soundclick.com Dance Chart and this result couldn’t fail to please the band!

The second song was an instrumental track Rainy Day, which was recorded in the middle of November. Shortly, after recording this track, the band started collaborating with Andrew Sinenko (also known as GungE), who helped with some ideas. At the end of the month the song Save You was recorded. It was the first song of SOUNDSTREAM, which featured Kate Lesing on vocals. Later, in early December, 4 Ever & 1 Night and Don’t Let Me Go were out.

Music ideas came one after another, but in the second half of December the band members were very busy with the studying (the end of the semester was near), so they hadn’t enough time for music. But despite all difficulties in a few days before the New Year they recorded a new song entitled See Me Now, which is considered one of the best songs of SOUNDSTREAM! This song had success not only in Ukraine, but also abroad, especially in Russia and Singapore (according to PROMODJ stats).

In early April 2009 SOUNDSTREAM recorded its debut album entitled Number One, which contains all band’s tracks recorded since 2008. This album was very successful on the Internet.

The band didn’t stop at this point. They immediately started working on a new material. But there were many disagreements between Andrew Sinenko (GungE) and the band. Since the end of 2008 they argued about many things. That’s why DJ FatCat and Bulya decided to stop collaboration with Andrew (however, in fact they no longer co-worked with him since the beginning of the year). So, the work on a following album was going on without his help.

Partytime, the new album, was out in the end of May and included 12 new tracks, among them are Could I Feel This Way Forever, Do You Feel My Love, Everlasting and others. A bit later a megamix-album entitled simply Megamix was released. It contained a mix of the best band’s songs from the two previous albums. And after some time two new songs were recorded – Yesterday Becomes Tomorrow and Planet Beats & Bass, which sounded rather different from the previous tracks of SOUNDSTREAM.

In the mid-June Bulya went to USA for 2 months, so the band had to temporary stop its activities. But it didn’t take a long time. In September guys reminded about themselves by presenting the Remixes Collection, a compilation, which contains 12 remixes of the SOUNDSTREAM’s songs from the previous albums. The same time they were also working on their third album, release of which was forecasted by the songs Yesterday Becomes Tomorrow and Planet Beats & Bass. However, after these tracks were out, it became clear that the band started moving away from its original music style. And the new album, entitled Midnight Hour, which was released on October 1, has confirmed it. The sound of this album was rather different from the previous SOUNDSTREAM’s albums. Now their music style was something Scooter-like, with the exception for One By One, a Dancecore/Hands Up song. But despite the change of style, this album had considerable success. Planet Beats & Bass and Better Way (New Version) even got into PROMORADIO rotation. The songs Feel The Rhythm (feat. Moro) and One By One also enjoyed popularity as well as Yesterday Becomes Tomorrow (in spite of the fact that it reached #93 in Soundclick.com Dance chart).

Inspired by the success of the album, band members went on writing new songs after short time. But despite the fact that the change of music style was positively welcomed, the band decided to return to its classic sound.

In the middle of October a vocalist Daria Bezkorovayna joined SOUNDSTREAM. They started working on the first song with her participation. But due to the epidemy of influenza the band had to postpone its plans until the end of November. However, neither at the end of November nor in December the work on this song wasn’t completed. Band members were too busy with the studying after the quarantine, and actually had no free time.

In February 2010 Save You (New Bass Club Mix) was played on dance radioshow “COREHEAD” at 109fm.net. And at the beginning of March Don’t Wanna Stop 2010 (Hard Club Mix) was included in the mix of DJ King Alex (Albatros Music Company) from Ivano-Frankivsk, who is the author of the mix series such as trackANDmix, Dancestream and others. After some time SOUNDSTREAM recorded the first song with Daria Bezkorovayna, which was entitled Story Of My Life. But unfortunately this song also became the last song with her participation as Daria unexpectedly decided to leave the band. It was a big disappointment for fans as well as for the band. DJ FatCat and Bulya were not ready for such turn of events. They had to apply big efforts to continue working. Since Story Of My Life got in a following mix of King Alex and since Are You Ready? was aired on DANCESHOW “COREHEAD”, they understood that they should go on. And at the beginning of June SOUNDSTREAM presented its 4th album entitled Dancefloor Generation. This album was made in the best traditions of the first two albums. In addition, the music became more professional and diverse, each song on the album has its own special character. Some tracks contain Electro-House elements. But at the beginning the album had very little success. Number of downloads was rather low, and actually no one was interested in promotion. But after some time Dancefloor Generation got big success at the popular Russian torrent tracker RuTracker.org, where it got more downloads than Number One. Moreover, the track Clubland had success in the UK (according to PROMODJ stats) and reached #36 in Soundclick.com House chart.

After Dancefloor Generation was released, band members decided to take a little break as it already was summer in full swing. The work on a new material began at the beginning of autumn, and after a while SOUNDSTREAM was ready to present some new tracks, among which a rousing song SOUNDSTREAM Plays 4 U!, which got broadcasted at the popular Internet-radiostation Clubberry.FM! In late October Anna Pazyura joined the band as a vocalist, and after some time they recorded another outstanding song entitled One More Time.

2011 began with a record of the song You Came, – a cover of Kim Wilde’s song. It was recorded in early February. At the end of the same month SOUNDSTREAM successfully hits the Radio KPI – a radiostation of the university of the band founders. In May SOUNDSTREAM records a new song entitled I Believe with the participation of MC Yama. It enjoyed great success and reached #35 in Soundclick.com House chart.

Trying to improve its positions in Asia, SOUNDSTREAM registered itself at the Singaporean site music412.com, where it kept the 1st place in artists rating for a long time. In late August a new album entitled One More Time was out. After some time this album got success on the Internet, especially the song Away (despite the band didn’t plan to make a hit from this song and didn’t do anything for its promotion). However it charted very badly at Soundclick.com Dance chart, reaching only 114th position.

In the middle of November after a short break SOUNDSTREAM started giving signs of life again and recorded a new song entitled Feel It. A new sound was demonstrated in this song: following the example of Scooter, the band decided not to use most of the previously used instruments, at the same time not completely giving up the traditions of its style. However it hadn’t got big success outside Ukraine. At the beginning of december SOUNDSTREAM recorded an instrumental song, entitled No Surrender, which immediatly got into PROMORADIO rotation!

Due to some temporary difficulties at the beginning of 2012 SOUNDSTREAM didn’t record new songs for a long time. There were even some rumors among the fans that the band doesn’t exist anymore, but that were just rumors, which were not true, because in May Soundstream was back with the new hit, entitled Life Can Never Be The Same. But unfortunately later one unpleasant thing happened: Alexander Bulanov (Bulya), rapper and one of the SOUNDSTREAM founders, decided to leave the band. He was replaced by Yuriy Muktarov, also known as DJ Spacedreamer, and it was the beginning of the new life for SOUNDSTREAM. DJ Spacedreamer was no newbie in music and has already had some success in his own project. He was very familiar with SOUNDSTREAM’s music before he joined the band and that’s why he quickly got on the inside.

In August the song Music Takes Control was out, and it was the first SOUNDSTREAM’s song which featured DJ Spacedreamer. It reached #34 at Soundclick.com Dance chart and it was a big success for the band since no one song of SOUNDSTREAM has reached such a high position in that chart before!

At the beginning of 2013 SOUNDSTREAM continues working on a new material. It was confirmed by the song We Are Alive, which appeared in November. This song showed that the band goes on with the new sound: the song contained Dubstep elements and 6/8 rhythm, which was used by the band for the first time. At the beginning of December this song reached #1 at German Dancefloor Movement Top-20. Also owing to this song, in the middle of 2014 SOUNDSTREAM got into PROMODJ Top-100. However in the first half of 2014 the band didn’t show any activity. One of the reasons was very unstable political situation in Ukraine. And only in the end of June the band presented a new song entitled One Nation, which was a kind of call for unity of the country. It reached #3 in Dancefloor Movement Top-20.

In late October the new album entitled Resurrection was ready. It was the first one recorded with the new line-up. Comparatively to the previous, that album was more diverse and contained different music styles from Eurodance and Hands Up to Dubstep and Electro. Almost all tracks from the album reached high positions in Soundclick.com charts. In a week after Resurrection was out, four songs from it got into PROMORADIO rotation – Music Takes Control, We Are Alive, Life Can Never Be The Same and No Surrender, which was aired there earlier. After a month Life Can Never Be The Same also was aired on the British Core FM radio.

2015 started from the release of the new song entitled Party Hard (Here Comes The Night). SOUNDSTREAM continued experiments with new sound and it was the right way, since this song also entered PROMORADIO rotation. After some time they recorded a Dubstep song entitled No Way 2 Hide, which unfortunately didn’t gain much success as fans were not ready for such experiments. So, later the band made a dance mix, which was much more successful and was featured on different unofficial compilations.

Now the band is actively working on a new material and preparing a new album, which will be probably out by the end of this year.

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

Soundstream: We all have different ways to music. Denis “DJ FatCat”, the founding member, was born in Khmelnitsky in the west of Ukraine. While he was at school, he used to attend piano classes. In 2005 he started making first attempts in writing electronic music on a PC. After some time he decided to create a music band.

Yuriy “Spacedreamer” was born in Kramatorsk in the eastern part of Ukraine. His first music experience also started when he started composing own music on a PC. And before he joined Soundstream, he had already had some successful trance releases.

Anna is also originally from Kramatorsk. Nevertheless they never met with Yuriy before he joined the band. Before Soundstream Anna participated in different metal bands as a vocalist. But she is not only a good vocalist, she can also play the piano and guitar.

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

Soundstream: This name appeared spontaneously. Denis proposed the first thing which came to mind.

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

Soundstream: Yes, since we are indie band, we share our music for free. Sometimes our fans ask us to sell them a CD and we do, but music for us is not a matter of money. We make music just because we love it.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

Soundstream: If you wanna gain some success, try to make something unique. Just don’t let any problems stop you and you’ll definitely achieve what you want!

Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?

Soundstream: Currently we exist as a studio project and hadn’t performed live yet. But we have such plans and will definitely do it when we get an opportunity.

Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?

Soundstream: as we answered before, no.

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

Soundstream: Well, usually we don’t even need to search for the inspiration, it finds us itself 🙂 Sometimes we can try to compose something new for hours and can’t get any satisfying result. Sometimes we get inspiration by listening to some new club tunes. But the best ideas come to our heads spontaneously.

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

Soundstream: Yes, our band site is http://soundstream.zz.mu. Also we share our music via social networks (VK, Facebook, Twitter) and music sites like SoundClick, ReverbNation, PromoDJ, ShowBiza etc.

Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?

Soundstream: Britney Spears – Oops I Did It Again (joke:)

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

Soundstream: We would make a big tour around Ukraine, or even world tour.

Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?

Soundstream: We use FL Studio as a sequencer and different VST-synthesizers e.g. Nexus, Vanguard, Sytrus, z3ta+ and many others.

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

Soundstream: social media is great option. Also we send our music to radio stations and online music magazines, which help us to promote new material. Sometimes we notice our music on unofficial compilations, so pirates sometimes can be useful, haha 🙂

Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?

Soundstream: Believe it would be Scooter, since they are our main inspirers.

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

Soundstream: Well, currently we are working on a new material, which will be featured in our next album. At the moment we don’t know how it will be entitled, but we believe it will be finished by the end of the year. Like the previous one it will contain music of different genres.

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

Soundstream: Interesting question… Music has become such an important part of our life, that we can’t even imagine ourselves without it. It’s like being a fish out of water.

Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?

Soundstream: it’s too hard to remember since it was long time ago.

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

Soundstream: We don’t.

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2015?

Soundstream: more radio airplays, new tunes and new album. We hope they’ll like it!