Audiosvora discusses their international lineup, genre-defying sound, upcoming EP Motion, creative process, Budapest influences, and ambitions to bring their unique energy to live stages worldwide.
1.
Audiosvora brings together musicians from Russia, Hungary, and Colombia, with
the band now based in Budapest. How did this international lineup come
together, and how has each member’s background influenced the band’s identity?
The
international lineup of Audiosvora actually came together very naturally. I met
all of the current members here in Budapest. Attila, our guitarist, and Kolos,
our drummer, are Hungarian and local to Budapest. Fabien, our bassist, is
originally from Colombia but has been living here for quite a while. I’m
originally from Russia and handle vocals. That’s how the current lineup
gradually came together.
I wouldn’t
say that our music is a d
eliberate mixture of Russian, Hungarian, and Colombian
musical cultures. You probably notice those differences more in the way we
communicate, work together, shoot videos, and simply spend time as a band.
Attila and Kolos tend to be quite calm and laid-back, while Fabien is
incredibly energetic and definitely brings some extra fire into the group.
What I find
most interesting is that despite coming from completely different backgrounds,
we simply clicked as people. Budapest happened to be the place where all of us
could meet and eventually become one band.
2. You
describe your sound as “from hardbass to metalcore in five seconds.” What
attracts you to combining metalcore and post-hardcore with electronic styles
such as drum & bass, breakbeat, phonk, rave, and Russian hardbass?
The Prodigy
have always been one of my favorite bands, so electronic music has been part of
my musical world from very early on. Even when I first started getting into
heavy music, it was through genres like nu-metal, where electronics, samples,
and DJing were already a major part of the sound.
Later, I
got really into electronicore and trancecore, especially early Enter Shikari,
so combining heavy and electronic music has always felt quite natural to me.
Russian
hardbass was more of an experiment that happened to work surprisingly well. In
general, I really like combinations that might seem strange or incompatible at
first, but suddenly make perfect sense within a song.
That’s
probably what attracts me most to electronics in Audiosvora. They give us
another huge set of sounds and tools to experiment with.
3. Your
music crosses several scenes, including trancecore, nu-metalcore, melodic
hardcore, and electronicore. Do you see Audiosvora as part of a particular
scene, or are you deliberately trying to avoid being placed in one box?
I don’t
think we really want to belong to one particular scene. There’s simply too much
different music we enjoy to decide in advance that Audiosvora has to exist
within one specific genre.
If I had to
choose an umbrella term, electronicore probably makes the most sense because it
leaves enough room for everything we do. But even that doesn’t describe every
song we make.
In a way,
that’s one of the advantages of being an independent band: we can allow
ourselves to make the music we actually want to make. Maybe from a purely
commercial perspective, it would make more sense to choose one direction, make
the sound as consistent as possible, and stick to it. But I’m much more
interested in following a good idea wherever it takes us.
I’d hate to
throw away a great idea simply because “Audiosvora isn’t supposed to do that.”
And I don’t think mixing genres means losing our identity. Whatever elements we
use, there are still recognizable characteristics that make the music sound
like Audiosvora. To me, that matters much more than a specific genre label.
As the
songs for the EP started coming together, we realized that despite their
musical and emotional differences, the idea of movement kept appearing
throughout many of them. In a way, that connects naturally to our own
experience: half of the band are immigrants, we live far from the places where
we were born, and Audiosvora in its current form exists because of those
movements in the first place.
At the same
time, I wouldn’t describe Motion simply as an EP about
immigration. Movement means something much broader here. In some songs, it’s
about looking backwards at childhood, people, places, and moments you can’t
return to. In others, it’s about moving forward into the unknown in search of someone
or something. There’s also the idea of losing trust in supposedly safe
destinations and in the signs that promise there must be a right shore
somewhere ahead.
I think the
central idea is probably expressed best by a line from the chorus of Motion: “We
don’t move to reach a goal — we move to stay the same.” Sometimes you
keep moving not because you’re trying to become someone better or reach some
perfect destination, but simply because you need to preserve yourself and keep
from falling apart.
So it isn’t
a concept EP in the sense of one linear story. It’s more like several different
perspectives on the same state of being — constantly moving between the past
and the future, memory and uncertainty, loss and the attempt to hold on to
something.
Musically,
the EP is also quite diverse. The title track shows a lot of the
characteristics people can expect from Audiosvora: heavy breakdowns, plenty of
extreme vocals, transitions into rap-style delivery, heavy guitars, and a lot
of electronics, including phonk elements and synths.
But Motion doesn’t
represent everything on the EP. For example, there are no clean vocals on the
title track, while some of the other songs go into much more melodic territory.
So I see it as a strong representation of the record, rather than an attempt to
fit the entire EP into one song.
5. When
you write a song, how do you decide whether an idea should become a heavy
metalcore section, an electronic passage, a breakdown, or something completely
unexpected?
I mostly
write by feeling. For example, an idea might initially appear as an electronic
melody, and then I’ll try moving it to the guitar, changing it around a little,
and suddenly it becomes a full guitar riff. Sometimes it works the other way
around. I don’t really see a strict separation between the electronic and
guitar-driven sides of the music — one can naturally transform into the other.
I usually
have some idea of where I want a song to go, but I don’t like treating that
idea as a strict brief for myself. I might sit down intending to write
something extremely aggressive and somehow end up with a much more melodic
song. I actually enjoy when that happens.
Sometimes
that makes the process long and confusing because the song keeps transforming
until it becomes something completely different from what I originally
imagined. But that’s an important part of writing music for me. I enjoy the
process of searching, not just the finished result.
Ultimately,
the only strict rule is that I have to like the song that comes out of it. If
an unexpected turn makes it better, I’d rather follow it than force the track
back toward the original plan.
6.
Electronic music is becoming increasingly influential in modern heavy music.
What do you think electronic elements can bring to metalcore that traditional
instrumentation alone cannot?
For me,
electronics are primarily about expanding the sonic palette. I don’t really
like putting electronics and traditional instruments against each other and
saying that one can do something the other simply cannot. There’s already an
incredible amount you can do with guitars, bass, and drums today.
What
interests me much more is the combination of those worlds. Electronic elements
give you a huge additional range of textures, sounds, and ways to change the
atmosphere of a song. A single synth, breakbeat, rave sound, or something
completely unexpected can change the entire feeling of a section.
At this point, almost everything in music has been done in one form or another, so for me the most interesting things happen in the combinations. The more different elements you have available, the more opportunities you have to put them together in your own way and give a song its own character.
7. With
members coming from different countries and now living in Budapest, how has the
city influenced Audiosvora’s music, energy, or creative process?
Budapest
actually reminds me a lot of my hometown, Saint Petersburg. Sometimes it almost
feels like a smaller version of it, so perhaps that made it fairly easy for me
to feel comfortable here.
I wouldn’t
say that my songwriting process depends heavily on a particular city. I can
write music pretty much anywhere. But your surroundings inevitably become part
of your life, and I find Budapest very inspiring visually — the architecture,
the streets, the atmosphere. I enjoy simply walking around the city and
spending time here with friends.
But the
biggest influence Budapest has had on Audiosvora probably isn’t musical at all.
This is where I met every member of the current lineup. Essentially, Budapest
is the place where Audiosvora as it exists today became possible. Without all
those moves and encounters, this version of the band simply wouldn’t exist.
8. Your
approach seems to leave plenty of room for humor and experimentation alongside
aggressive music. How important is personality and fun to the Audiosvora
experience?
Personality
is extremely important to me because music inevitably reflects who we are, how
we see the world, and what we happen to be feeling at a particular moment.
But that
doesn’t mean everything has to be serious all the time. People aren’t
permanently sad or permanently happy. Sometimes you want to write something
genuinely heavy, sad, and depressing, and sometimes you just want to have fun
and make something weird.
I think a
band should be allowed to exist in those different states as well. In that
sense, Audiosvora is almost like a living organism: sometimes it’s angry,
sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it just wants to have fun.
I don’t see
any reason to remove humor, lightness, or strange experiments just to make the
band appear more serious from the outside.
9.
Looking beyond Motion, what are your ambitions for Audiosvora over
the next year? Are there particular stages, collaborations, countries, or
musical directions you would love to explore?
The biggest
goal is definitely to finally bring Audiosvora onto the stage. We haven’t
played live with this lineup and under this project yet, although all of us
have previous live experience. So I really want the next year to become the
year of live shows for Audiosvora.
We’re
already rehearsing actively, we have quite a lot of material ready, and things
are moving pretty quickly. I expect us to start playing shows after the EP is
released.
From there,
I’d love to get onto festivals and gradually start playing outside Budapest —
in Germany, neighboring countries, and hopefully much further away eventually.
I’d also
really like to collaborate on a track with another band, possibly before the
end of this year or sometime next year.
And, of
course, we’ll keep releasing new music. I don’t know exactly how many new songs
will come out next year, but it definitely won’t be a small number.
Until now,
we’ve mostly been building Audiosvora’s audience in the digital space. The next
big step is to finally bring all of that music onto the stage and start
building an audience around Audiosvora as a live band. That’s probably
our most important goal right now.
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