The fairy-tale world of Ylotana

It finds me everywhere I can be alone: on a plane, looking out the porthole; on the London streets on the way to some cinema; in an Italian village at my brother Grigory's home; in Iceland, racing in a car toward the sunset; in fantastic Nepal, looking from the outskirts of Pokhara at the awakening Annapurna. Everywhere you're left alone with yourself. And sometimes with friends: you'll start some story — and it can't be stopped.

It's a musical-literary-artistic symbiosis, that is, an attempt to cross-breed genetically different kinds of art. This attempt is not new. People have engaged in similar things throughout the whole history of humankind. We too decided to approach the solution of this scientific problem from the standpoint of the present day. For the purity of the experiment, people of different professions were selected, unacquainted with one another, speaking different languages and living in different corners of the globe. I would still consider Great Britain the homeland of the project. Since it was precisely there that the first seeds were sown, later scattering in different directions. And it's precisely there, at my studio, that the final product is polished.

For me, honestly, translation presents no difficulty at all, since I don't do it myself. All the translations into English are done by my elder son Pyotr Podkopov. By the way, my first project "My Little God" was dedicated to him precisely. I mean the main musical composition and the story itself, in which the prototype of the main character was my elder son and his "hard" childhood. Incidentally, each of the five fairy tales relates to one of my children. "I Am You" is Platon. "Micromir. Parade of the planets" is Arseny. "Panic in Paradise" is Savva. The fairy tale for my youngest daughter Marfa is called "Dance For The Snow Queen." As for translation, I'm grateful to this project for having introduced me, and for continuing to introduce me, to an incredible number of utterly incredibly gifted people. These are musicians, painters, performers, engineers, administrators who miraculously turned up on my path at the most necessary moment. It's the same with the translators. I went to Finland to negotiate the printing with a print shop and there I ran into a school friend of my brother's, who, living there, publishes his own newspaper and works on the radio. Having learned about the project, he offered to translate it into Finnish. So soon a Finnish page will appear on our site too. In Italy I met a woman agent through whom we rented a yacht in the summer. It turned out she was a professional journalist. Somehow our book happened to fall into her hands. The fairy tale interested her, and she offered to translate it into Italian. It's roughly the same with Spanish and Japanese. So there are no problems with translation.

The idea for such a plot came into my head when I seriously took up computer programs. At a certain moment I felt that the computer was no longer just an obedient machine realizing my ideas and fantasies. Suddenly I saw in it a wholly concrete partner with its own suggestions, which you can accept or not, but it expands your possibilities. And however deeply you believe in your partner, that's how much more productive your joint result will be. Not to mention how sensitively the computer reacts to any changes in our mood. I think this is clear to everyone who spends a lot of time at the computer. I don't know whether it's true or not, but they say Bill Gates forbids his own wife to enter the room where his computer stands. I understand him.

Why not. MySpace, Facebook, Odnoklassniki — another kind of human communication. Only pluses.

Art for me has always been an important and serious occupation. But, looking at real life, it became clear that, doing only art, realizing one's own ambitions and also creating the necessary life comfort for myself and the people close to me would be impossible. That's why, from the age of 17, all sorts of business projects began to arise, which in turn required a creative approach, since there was simply no other way to conduct business. Art and business always in parallel. One as a hobby, the other as a vital economic necessity. But each time my business projects grew and expanded, the hobby receded more and more into the background, until it faded away entirely. During one period I didn't pick up a guitar for almost four years and thought I'd never pick it up again. I was completely possessed by the thirst for profit. Things were going simply fabulously. However, any project has a beginning, a peak and a decline. And when a business is in a period of free fall, it causes certain emotional experiences. This is where an old friend comes to the rescue — creativity. The guitar, the old notebooks filled with quatrains. It makes things easier. New vital forces arise. New ideas appear. And everything starts over… When I realized this, I decided that from now on I would try to maintain a maximum balance in the relations between my bosom friends, namely: to try to give equal attention to creativity and business. All the more so since both the one and the other give me enormous pleasure.

My highly respected and beloved parents were always very busy with each other and with their endless affairs, which I consider wonderful. This continues to this day. For instance, as soon as I started making my fairy-tale project, recorded it and brought it, illustrated, to my parents — extremely tactful and subtle people — in a working version, there was no reaction whatsoever. I thought they didn't want to upset me, they were my first fairy tales after all. About eight months later, when the first book was ready, my mother calls me and, with delight in her voice, tells me what wonderful works these are, how much life and depth there is in them. Then my father calls and says he liked everything very much, especially the one about the boy and the computer, and that this fairy tale is generally about him. I didn't bother asking exactly what role he saw himself in there. My parents were always very busy people, and so no one read me fairy tales, but on the other hand, practically from birth my mother played me vinyl records on which professional performers read fairy tales set to beautiful music. My favourite to this day remains the magnificent "Nutcracker" to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. That, for me, is a real fairy tale. Every year on December 31, when the whole family decorates the tree in the house, these very melodies play all day long.

Many friends think that there's an autobiographical quality in my fairy tales. In fact it's not so. I look at my characters from the outside, but I always feel for them strongly. It seems to me that without sincere feeling nothing serious can come out. And fairy tales, for me, are very serious.

The stories appear spontaneously from outside. You're walking down the street, and suddenly… a Genie? A Genie in love? You start to explore further, to unwind it, and it turns out he's also a revolutionary. Then you tell your friends, together we laugh at the characters, and at some point finished images appear. When it becomes clear that there's nothing to add or take away — I write it down. As a rule, in the morning, lying in bed while my head is still completely clear, I take the laptop — and in about an hour it's all ready. Then editing, again not without the advice of someone close.

Good and evil, morality and immorality — these are merely attributes of our real life. And fairy tales are merely one more reflection of that reality. That's why fairy tales can and should be different. People sometimes find in my fairy tales things I had no idea about. Everyone understands everything according to the measure of their own "advancement."

I mentioned my desire to bring my life into balance. Anatoly=Ylotana is one more attempt. To be honest, I like my name and I didn't want to stray far from it in the title. Just Anatoly is already not modest, but Ylotana is just the thing!

We debate endlessly, but each of us clearly holds his own positions and is so cool in his own sector that an argument is merely an attempt to come as close as possible to the moment of realizing a thought, of making a decision. It never came to conflicts. Besides, the project carries a warm and kind beginning within it. The bulk of the musical compositions was created by me and my old friend Oddy — Oleg Burobin. We met when we were both 11 years old, that same day we picked up guitars and made a rock band. The last time we argued, I think, was when we played at the school dances, and even then it was more over the girls.

There's an idea to create serious animation and, possibly, a hand-drawn film with live actors in a comic-book style. The main thing is to collaborate in this area too with real professionals. So far life somehow hasn't brought us together. We even moved our office to "Mosfilm." All the film celebrities are right next door. But somehow it's not coming together yet. Maybe we'll move to Hollywood…

It's nice that the project is starting to live a life of its own. And already, independently of those who voice it, draw it and record it, new sides of it are emerging, the development of which was not originally part of our plans. So, for example, we receive invitations to take part in music events, festivals and various happenings as a musical collective. And yet we've never even gathered together. A drummer in Birmingham, a cellist in Berlin, acoustic bass guitar and keyboards in Moscow, a clarinettist in St. Petersburg, me with my guitar and synthesizers in London… But all of them are unconditional professionals, so in the near future, I hope, we'll perform a live set. Meanwhile our next project, titled "Dance For The Snow Queen," includes nine dance compositions written by Dima Lee and my brother Grigory. Interestingly, in recording these seemingly wholly electronic compositions, live wind instruments and Oleg's fretless acoustic bass guitar were used. For us it was the first experience of producing dance music. Our friends — the London DJs LukeVB, Mr.C, Bushwacka — rated this project positively and agreed to take part in it. I hope that our Russian pals — the DJs Kompas-Vrubel, Sapunov, Sanchez, Kubikov — will also find time to do something interesting with us. I'd like it to be a pleasant surprise for everyone.

From 20 to 22 April the largest international book fair took place in London, where we presented our main projects. On 24–25 April in Moscow, in the "Kosmos" pavilion at the VVTs, the youth festival Faces & Laces took place, to which we were also invited to take part with our own stand. It was there, precisely, that you could hear our new compositions and also read the latest stories. In addition, there's an agreement with one of the leading British ballet masters to create a ballet based on one of the Ylotana stories. Our long-standing friends — the clubs "Solyanka," "16 Tons," as well as the concert venue at "Swan Lake" in Gorky Park — are also inviting us to collaborate. Such offers aren't turned down. So, I think, we'll see each other soon. Finally, our long-term negotiations with Universal Studios have reached their final stage. And soon — in just 3–5 weeks — the digital version of the album "My Little God" will be distributed in online music stores. In the near future our music will be available for download from all the major mobile providers in Great Britain and Europe. The USA is on the way!

By the Chinese calendar I was born in the year of the Dragon — the only one of all the signs that doesn't exist in real life. That's why mysticism and magic occupy a dominant place in my life. That what's happening around us defies all logic, you yourself know…