Artist: Mootney
Title: 'What Happened To The Music'
Label: Mystictrax

Mootney is Davyd Rubinshtein, and this is his second record for Mystictrax. The label's own copy puts him in the "dirty Kyiv electro" tradition and says he has always worked at blurring the lines between genres. He lives on the outskirts of Ukraine's capital.

Mystictrax is run by Lostlojic and started in 2019 as what the label calls a mystification, built around "radioactive" cassettes from Chornobyl. It has gathered more than fifty artists from Ukraine and beyond since, Poly Chain, Radiant Futur, Vadim Griboedov and Monotronique among them, and it puts records out on USB sticks and ZIP disks as well as tape and digital.

Since the invasion it has run charity compilations too. 'Together for Ukraine', made with Standard Deviation, pulled in Laurent Garnier and Ben Sims and raised money for volunteer foundations.

Three originals here, plus a remix to close. The label says the EP is built on extensive vinyl sampling, and frames the title as a question aimed both inward and outward, at what endless consumption costs. The remix comes from D3U5E, who co-founded the London electro label PROGRAMM_LDN; the credits on this one name him as Josh Lowe.

For more from the same city, we reviewed Andrey Sirotkin's 'Nothing Behind the Words', which he recorded in Kyiv during the war, and Osvit's 'Analgin' came out of Odesa.

Out now, and Mystictrax have it. Go and grab it now.