Ukrainian composer Roman Grygoriv has released the album Irrenaissance, with music played using the frame of an Uragan MLRS cluster munition missile. The release is available on Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music.
According to the artist:
“On one hand, irrenaissance is about the rebirth and decolonization of Ukrainian culture in the context of war. On the other, irrenaissance is the antithesis of the renaissance. After all, what kind of renaissance canthere be today, played on a missile? Since the start of the full-scale war, we’ve been reborn as a society, our culture and non-colonial art are going through a renaissance. But this renaissance is born of death. The album’s primary goal is to remind the world that Russia’s genocidal war is still going on in Ukraine.”
Roman Grygoriv’s first compositions using aspent shell as a sound source appeared in June last year. These included three pieces for missile andchamber orchestra, which the author performed and recorded together with the National Ensemble of Soloists “Kyiv Camerata” at St. Andrew’s Church.
These compositions are included in the album, which comprises 12 tracks. The first and penultimate tracks, “Songs of Unborn,” are for solo missile. It is followed by a triptych of previously composed pieces for missile and orchestra. Later tracks incorporatemissile sound into electronic music, with the tenth track featuring missile and voice. The album concludes with “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” the only piece without missile sound. It is symbolic that when the weapon falls silent, what remains is the human voice against the background of the piano. As the composer comments on the concept, “if a person plays a weapon, then there is hope that the light killed by this weapon will eventually be reborn.”
For Grygoriv, the performance became a way of reflecting on his trauma from the war: “I want to show that I am literally cutting this shell, carving out its innards.”
The electronic music performer and composer Olena Shykina also sees a therapeutic function in this act:
“It’s amazing how a person can turn fear into aggression, aggression into charity, and move from a state of fracture and inner death to life and hope. That’s why the missile, this terrible instrument,is secondary — it’s just a tool to build something new, unlike its original destructive purpose.”
Shykina elaborates on the sonic embodiment of the idea:
“The missile’s sound range shifts from unpleasant and dissonant to lyrical, when the missile blends with string instruments, and then turns again into an aggressive metal monster. The distorted, chimerical world shocks again and again. Musically,everything turns inside out, twisting and crawling.There is no respite. For instance, in tracks with electronic music, everything starts with a singlesound — and ends with a heavy wave of fragmented missile samples. The sound of metal is a visceral experience, so I would recommend listening to the album with headphones. Due to the vivid resonance and modulation of the sound, I often felt like I was inside a missile. It’s a unique auditory experience.”
The project team gave three live missile performances throughout the year. The first took place in November 2023 in Ivano-Frankivsk, the second in Berlin as part of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 in June, and the last was a performance at Blenheim Palace (Oxford) at the invitation of the Oxbridge Foundation in October.
Roman Grygoriv noted a difference between audience perceptions in Ukraine and abroad:
“In Ivano-Frankivsk, people were immediately ready to perceive the performance with genuine awe. The hall was so quiet that you could hear me walking barefoot on the carpet. Back then, the music sounded and was perceived as a requiem.
In Berlin, some people were deeply moved by this act, which I call a performative ritual, while otherstreated it as just another performance. They couldn’t believe it was a real spent shell, not a dummy. After the performance, they went to the missile and took smiling selfies with it. It was truly disheartening to witness such a misunderstanding of the situation.”
Roman Grygoriv believes that NATO summits and UN Security Council meetings should be the main stages for the performance. The composer asserts, “The idea of a musical act using a spent enemy shell is inexhaustible for cultural diplomacy.”
Album Credits:
Roman Grygoriv (concept, composer, missile performer), Olena Shykina (electronics composer and performer), Antonii Baryshevskyi (piano), Andrii Koshman (voice), Marichka Shtyrbulova (voice), Andrii Shakhadynets (sound recording and mixing), and Viktor Vintoniak (producer).
Along with the release of the album Irrenaissance, Roman Grygoriv published the video Sacra Conversazione, recorded in April 2023 at St. Andrew’s Church:
As a standalone single with the same title, Irrenaissance, the composer released a piece for string orchestra, recorded by the Berlin-based Mriya orchestra at one of Germany’s premier recording studios, Sendesaal Bremen. This version of the work is performed live and is a part of the performative ritual Songs of Unborn.
This material was created and published thanks to a grant from the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America to The Claquers Media.
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