sudnozavod

Vinyl / Music Album
36:58

What is Sonic Antifascism? For ILYICH, something like an answer begins in Kherson’s vast ruined shipyard looming large in the shadows of history.

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Situated in the delta of the Dnipro in southern Ukraine, it was once the largest shipbuilding site in the USSR, giving birth to Vishwa Asha, meaning Universal Hope, a cargo ship built in 1974 during the Indo-Soviet partnership. Decades later, Vishwa Asha is decommissioned or lost, a ghost ship drifting through the fractured narratives of war.

Sudnozavod (Ukr. “Shipyard”) is the latest album by ILYICH, a musician and artist from Kherson. An artistic fabulation grounded in lived experience, the album draws from the sounds of 1970s and 1990s Ukraine, embracing jazz fusion, spoken word, pop, field recordings, electronic music, and cinematic soundscapes. It builds on ILYICH’s stage work After Hope, premiered at Sophiensæle in Berlin, and coincides with a solo exhibition and its digital and vinyl release at SAVVY Contemporary in October 2025.

In the 70s and 80s, albums like Portrait in Jazz by Bill Evans or Birds of Fire by Mahavishnu Orchestra were smuggled into Ukraine and copied onto discarded x-rays, known as bones. These sonic relics formed an underground archive of forbidden sound. In a context where sub-dominant jazz chords were politically suspect, even soft music became a form of resistance.