Essay

How One Ukrainian Is Reinventing Noise

Konstantin Poveda: I Want to See Modular Artists in Rock and Hip-Hop Scene

As Putin's full scale invasion continues in Ukraine, with some of the heaviest bombing of the war this week, it feels more important than ever to publish articles like this.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be sharing a series of pieces by Ukranian journalists from Neformat (Kseniia from the publication has previously written for us), who Drowned in Sound have teamed up with. We'd like to thank Music Export Ukraine, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, and the Aid for Artists Committee for backing this partnership and funding features like this.

Konstantin Poveda: I Want to See Modular Artists in Rock and Hip-Hop Scene

Authors: Vadym Oliinykov, Yaryna Denysiuk

Konstantin Poveda is an engineer, teacher, and noise musician. His brand, Crazy Chicken, has already gained recognition beyond Ukraine - Konstantin’s modules and synthesizers appear in the setups of artists from the UK, Italy, Poland, Australia, and Germany. Sometimes they even end up in the clumsy hands of someone who’s barely held a soldering iron.

Poveda designs all his synthesizers and modules himself, runs workshops for adults and kids, performs as a noise artist, and creates masks and characters for his own live shows - all in full DIY mode.

This interview takes place at Otel’ an underground club on Nyzhnioiurkivska 31 and arguably the heart of Kyiv’s experimental scene. Poveda sits cross-legged on a homemade platform-sofa. Above him hang swaths of fabric; around him - wires, wooden crates, and a wash of red light casting over his unshaven, smiling face.

Konstantin got into music relatively late - it wasn’t until the 10th or 11th grade at school that he started listening to anything with intention. Mostly metal and rock, both classic and more obscure. One band he remembers from that time is Halloween. These Germans however didn’t really shape Konstantin’s future path. The first instrument he did were drums, which Konstantin picked up in his second year of university, sometime around 2009–2010.

Konstantin: That was the time when everyone was afraid of bird flu, swine flu - now it feels like some kind of childhood horror story. There was a two-month quarantine, and we had nothing else to do. So my friends from uni and school decided to form a band. Everyone grabbed the instrument that spoke to them.

None of us had any formal training. We played hard rock, original songs and classic covers. The only one with real experience was the guitarist. He was kind of the core around which we formed. We were learning how to play and, at the same time, learning how to live (smiles).

Neformat: How easy was it to pick up drums?

K: Not easy. Drumming is genuinely tough - it takes a lot of practice. I basically only practiced during our weekly rehearsals. At home, I had a practice pad. My approach wasn’t systematic, but I still made progress. Whenever we managed to play something without falling off the rhythm - we were happy like kids.

Although the hard rock era didn’t last forever for Konstantin, it left a mark. He spent about three years playing drums with his school friends, tried out a few more bands along the way, but after the last one fell apart, he became unhappy with performing music altogether and stepped away from it for several years.

At the same time, Konstantin was growing up, and so were his musical tastes. Around 2018, he started building his first modular synthesizer, supported by the mix of his engineering background, encouragement from fellow musicians, and even childhood experience. Back then, with support from his parents, he soldered his first amplifier. It didn’t survive to the present day, but the memory stuck.

K: I got back into music after an injury - I had to quit sports because I couldn’t keep up with the same level of training. So I started looking for other hobbies. I picked up drawing and modular synths. Modular synths were love at first sight. I attended a lecture by Stas Bobrytskyi and Oleh Shpudeiko at the PinchukArtCentre. They’re very different musicians in terms of sound, but both use modular systems. That showed me the vast range of what you can create with modular synthesizers - from gentle, lyrical tones to raw, experimental, aggressive noise. It was a powerful experience. And I was lucky that it were them giving that talk.

After that, I knew I wanted to play modular synths. At first, I bought pre-made modules, but almost immediately I thought: what if I made one myself? I realized it was doable. But I’d need to level up my knowledge - both in electronics and in module architecture. That became both a challenge and a passion.

Oleh Shpudeiko performing on Kora Late Night Show

N: Your background is in engineering, right?

K: Yeah, I’m an engineer, but my speciality isn’t in audio or sound systems. Still, we had plenty of electronics-related courses - transmitters, receivers, antennas, calculus, circuit theory... all that stuff. We even had a bit of hands-on training, although it only lasted one semester and happened once every two weeks. But overall, I’ve felt comfortable with a soldering iron since I was a kid.

N: What kind of stuff did you solder as a kid?

K: Mostly nonsense (laughs). I’d try building circuits from physics books - I didn’t really understand electronics back then, I was just copying what I saw. Sometimes, by accident, something would work. But mostly, it didn’t.

I was lucky: my parents are engineers, and they were fine with me ripping apart old electronics they were planning to throw out. They’d give me the stuff, I’d take it apart, pull out gears, desolder components. At first, I picked parts just based on whether they looked cool or not. Eventually, I started to understand what they actually did.

One time, I built an amplifier using a schematic from a book. But I picked all the components randomly, so the result had insane distortion and turned almost any input into something explosively harsh. Basically, it was a fuzz-distortion (laughs).

Learning to play drums - as Konstantin himself admits - isn’t exactly easy. So even as he was diving deeper into synthesizers, he didn’t immediately cut ties with old music habits. Instead, there was a sort of transitional period: a move from more traditional rock music to free-form experimental sound. A good environment for that shift turned out to be the band більше ніж ліс (translation: Bilʹshe Nizh Lis meaning “More Forest”). The project leaned into psychedelic rock, but unlike many of their genre mates on the influential Robustfellow roster, they didn’t chase foreign releases or European tours - they just played music for the vibe.

For Konstantin, this experience also served as proof: modular synths aren’t just for experimental electronics, they can work anywhere.

K: I first saw більше ніж ліс in 2019 - at a show at Mezzanine here on Nyzhnioiurkivska. I watched them mix a bunch of genres - each of them doing their own thing, but together it formed this flowing psychedelic rock. It sounded cool. I literally yelled during the set: “Let me be your drummer!” Back then, they were using a drum machine.

After a few rehearsals, COVID hit. Denys, the band’s founder, couldn’t find work in Kyiv and moved to Transcarpathia. So the next time we met up, I actually offered to play synth instead. We reconnected in Uzhhorod and did a small apartment show: me on synths, Denys on guitar and vocals. We played a few times like that, but unfortunately, no recordings survived.

We also played at the Electricity festival in Khashchi in 2020, and later at UBK in Kyiv, opening for the Canadian doom metal duo Nadja.

K: Did it influence me? I’d say it gave me an important insight: modular synths can work really well with guitars, drums, and live vocals. I was able to build soundbeds - long, ambient textures - or mirror guitar chords, but in a washed-out pad-like style that fit the psych vibe. That’s when I realized that modular synths could be a universal instrument - the key is knowing what you want to get out of them.

N: And what’s the modular scene like in Ukraine in general?

K: It exists. As a community, it’s there. Sometimes it flares up with activity, but for the most part, it’s just people who play modular synths. You can find them on different scenes all over the country.

Most commonly, it’s the techno scene - like Symonenko, Vlad Suppish, Stanislav Tolkachev, and many others. A lot of people use modular systems specifically for techno because they’re convenient -the sound comes out raw, alive, and not locked into standard patterns.

There are also folks making ambient, or doing weirder experimental stuff - like Bobrytskyi with his noise-jazz things. Overall, modular artists here tend to fall into three camps: techno, ambient, noise or just full-on chaotic experimental music.

I’d love to see modular break into more scenes. I want it to influence more genres. Personally, I try to use my modular setup like a classic synthesizer - not just for generative stuff or live jams, but for writing full tracks. It’s a super flexible sound design tool.

It’d be awesome to see modular artists in rock bands, on the hip-hop scene, anywhere really. I just want people to push their setups to the limit - to explore them as broadly as possible.

But Konstantin didn’t stop at just playing modular synths. That lecture by Bobrytskyi and Shpudeiko made such a strong impression on him that his interest in new instruments and technology eventually grew into a full-fledged brand. He was also deeply inspired by Ukraine’s DIY culture - grassroots maker communities like Hacklab, where Konstantin is a resident.

K: The idea for a brand came from a real need - I wanted to present my work to others somehow. At first, just to fellow modular folks and the Kyiv scene. But then, gradually, to a wider audience across Ukraine - and eventually to the international scene too.

At some point, I realized I didn’t want my builds to look like total homemade hacks - I wanted them to resemble the kind of professional modules I had in my own case, from global manufacturers. I wanted to reach that level. And that’s when the idea of launching a brand really took shape.

The first module took me a long time to make - I spent almost a year on it. Solving technical challenges, brushing up on my electronics knowledge, experimenting with sound. I built it, took it apart, swapped components -over and over again. And when I finally had a working prototype, I wanted to turn it into a real product - with a visual identity, a logo, a name.

Naming things is always tough for me. At first, I sketched this weird character -kind of a vampire worm with fangs and crazy eyes. But telling people “this is a vampire worm” felt... like a bit much. Too abstract. Too creepy. So I tweaked the design a little and that character morphed into a chicken with a black eye.

And that’s how Crazy Chicken was born.

The next logical step for Konstantin was to spread his passion even further. Playing modular synths and building them himself wasn’t enough, he wanted to share his experience and knowledge, and teach others this craft.

His first experience teaching electronics came through lectures at a Kyiv hackerspace. Later, he spent a full year running an extracurricular technical club at a private school.

One tangible outcome of that teaching journey was his most recent synth: Drone Craft. It’s with this fresh design that Konstantin now holds accessible workshops - both for adults and for kids.

K: The kids got to choose what they wanted to solder. There were lots of options - from decorative lights to actual synths. And when I showed them some of my builds and played the modular synth for them at our first session, they were totally into it. We spent the whole year building synths - simple ones at first, and more complex ones later on.

It was important that the things they built worked and looked cool. But it also had to stay within budget. The school covered the supplies, but I knew it’d be better to build lots of simple, functional devices. That’s how I came up with the idea of panel-less synths - where the circuit board itself serves as both the frame and the front panel.

Next, I wanted to revisit one of the kids’ projects, but this time for adults. For example, a magnetic microphone that lets you “listen” to magnetic fields. Both kids and grown-ups found it fascinating - you can literally hear the electromagnetic world around you: drills, monitors, washing machines, modems, phones - everything emits something. Once you hear that, you start to perceive electronics differently.

With adults, I also ran workshops where we built individual modules - like a simple filter. People loved it - not just as a soldering exercise, but as an entry point into the logic of sound design. I didn’t want to just hand out pre-made schematics. I wanted to show the whole path from a basic idea to more advanced features.

Drone Craft is the synth where all these ideas come together. It had to be simple, compact, and functional. Plus, it had to be buildable within a typical workshop session - about three hours. It uses 60 components. I could have added more, but then it’d be too complicated to assemble. It includes three oscillators, tone control, two types of mixing, volume, and a mute button - I think that’s a solid feature set.

You asked about the design. I like playing with colours and hiding little Easter eggs. For instance, my module Favourite Avocado Toast (see below) the PCBs are coloured like a sandwich: one green, one black. I’ve done other modules in all kinds of colours - blue, yellow, white, purple. For Drone Craft I went with purple - just because I liked it. But I let workshop participants choose - there’s also a black version.

Drone Craft is a compact, panel-less, functional instrument and, to me, a pretty sweet balance between complexity and accessibility.

Demo of the Favourite Avocado Toast module

These days, the musician performs solo as Konstantin Poveda, playing drone-noise - often as part of the "Noise Every Wednesday" series. It’s arguably the most experimental music community on Nyzhniyurkivska Street - maybe even in all of Kyiv. Here, you might witness a noise-operetta or a harsh set by a well-known techno artist, the boundaries simply don’t exist. It’s the perfect space for Konstantin’s self-expression - and not just musically.

K: I came to ambient, noise, and drone pretty spontaneously. As I said, I’d been experimenting with ambient textures. Plus, I love vintage electronics, stuff that has a naturally ambient feel, like Jean-Michel Jarre.

I started playing noise because of “Noise Every Wednesday.” There was demand, people were like, you should be doing noise. So I did. I already had a sense of how to approach it - you take your favourite ambient sound and deconstruct it completely. Distort it, overload it, make it dense and spectrally saturated.

To me, good noise music is something you can enter with enthusiasm and exit gradually or not so gradually. A skilled performer can guide the listener into a psycho-emotional state where they can absorb something intense, prolonged, structurally static. Five minutes of no changes? That’s fine - as long as the listener is already inside. The artist needs to create that entry point, guide them in, deliver the climax of noise and leave them there for a while.

Live noise set by Konstantin

N: How do you see the Ukrainian noise scene evolving? Is it progressing? Changing? Or maybe stagnating?

K: What I like is that I’m seeing real growth in many artists. People who started out calling themselves beginners - very shy, timid - are now much more confident. They’re performing more often. And that’s thanks to certain organizers and communities (smiles). It’s great to see. Watching people grow in real time, that’s powerful.

Why do I choose noise? Because it lets me ignore the rules. You can start with anything - any tempo, any timbre, any sound combination. Noise gives you total freedom.

I rarely play pure noise. I usually blend it with other genres. And I love how adding the word “noise” to a genre instantly strips it of clichés. You give yourself permission to be more radical, more awkward. Noise is a kind of lifehack for people afraid to experiment. It also lets you make sound as fat, dense, sometimes as unpleasant as possible. If someone hears your track starting from the climax, they’ll go: “this is just noise.” But if they listen from the beginning, they’ll say: “Ah, now it makes sense - there’s a build-up, there’s progression, and now we’ve arrived at this peak.”

What I don’t like is when people overuse terms. When someone calls their music noise or experimental, but never actually ventures outside the banal. That happens a lot.

experimental performance

It might sound like a cliché, but it’s often true: talented people are rarely limited to one niche. Just as Konstantin’s interest in modular synths evolved into something greater, so did his fascination with drawing - eventually becoming part of his artistic process. At many of his performances, he appears wearing handmade masks that resemble surreal creatures or demons. Konstantin has already crafted a lot of them, each one sculpted and painted entirely by hand.

K: It’s a way to protect myself. To create distance between me and the audience. And obviously, it’s also a way to present myself on stage. If I know about a gig in advance, I try to pick a unique mask - either a new one, or something I made a while ago but haven’t shown anyone yet. I feel freer when people can’t read my emotions. Because usually, my face during a performance is tense, focused. A mask takes that tension away.

Plus, it helps build a stage persona - one that exists only that night.

N: How do you make the masks?

K: It’s usually a long process. At some point, an image appears in my mind, and I start sculpting it out of modelling clay. I have a cast of my head - it’s rough, but good enough to work on shape. I sculpt directly onto it. I’ve made masks with four, even eight spider-like eyes. I always try to break away from human anatomy. Because when eyes are where your eyes are, and the mouth’s where your mouth is it’s boring.

When you perform in a mask, you gain more than just internal freedom. You get a reaction. People start thinking: “Oh, a guy in a mask. Why the mask?” (laughs)

N: But you don’t offer a clear answer?

K: I don’t like explaining everything. I prefer leaving space for interpretation. I often don’t even name these characters, don’t give them an explicit meaning. The only explanation for the mask is my music. And that’s wordless, abstract.

Each listener has their own associations, their own emotional response. Sometimes they share them with me, that’s always nice. Everyone has their own images. They rarely match mine exactly, but sometimes they overlap. And that’s enough. It means I managed to transmit something - a part of myself, my energy, my thoughts. What more could you ask?

Right now, Konstantin has a bunch of tracks in progress, and some are finished but if you’re looking for recent work from his experimental-electronic period, most of it can be found as live recordings online. All the current material is meant to be compiled into a full-length, multi-genre album, blending synthwave, hip-hop, ambient, drone, and even dance music. As for the release date, even Konstantin doesn’t know yet.

Naturally, some of these tracks were shaped by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

K: First of all, the war affected my psycho-emotional state. And that, in turn, impacted my creative process. I have a track dedicated to the war. It hasn’t been released yet, but Vlad Suppish played it on Gasoline Radio - in his podcast "Invisible Music", which features unreleased or overlooked tracks.

Vlad asked me to write something specifically for that show. It was a sleepless night - one of the first after I returned to Kyiv, early in the full-scale invasion. I heard explosions for the first time. Before that, I’d been in Cherkasy Oblast - there were machine-gun bursts, planes, but no blasts.

In Kyiv, everything sounded different. I couldn’t sleep all night. I remember the contrast - dawn approaching, the city falling quiet, birds starting to sing - and then, suddenly, cruise missile strikes. It was a strange sonic composition. And I realized I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I sat down at my synth and stayed there till morning. That’s how the track “Birds of Sleepless Night” was born. It’s very dense, straightforward, structurally static. Not much happens, but it’s intense. Maybe I’ll release it someday.

In closing, Konstantin emphasises that live shows are what define an artist’s work for him = which may be why he’s in no rush to release his own album.

K: -ych — post-metal, really high energy.
Somali Yacht Club — stoner, psychedelic, also great.
White Ward — prog-black, noir-style fusion black metal with really interesting layers.
On the experimental side, I’d mention Oleksii Podat. I’ve been following him for a while, mostly live.

By the way, all these projects inspired me precisely through their live performances. Their recordings are strong, too. But live, it’s something else. Something closer to a revelation than just an album.