Producer of guests from the future 4 letters. Usachev Yuri: biography, musical career. Career after "Guests"

01.07.2020

Before turning into an extremely famous Russian pop duo, the group released two completely non-commercial albums - “After Hundreds of Years” and “Time Sand”. After the fact that the album “Run from Me” will be released on vinyl by ZBS Records, and preliminary information that this will be followed by vinyl versions of “After Hundreds of Years” and , Mixmag Russia asked Yuri Usachev to tell the early history of “Guests from the Future”, until they received the first “Golden Gramophone”.

In the mid-nineties, I lived in St. Petersburg and was actively involved in hip-hop. There was a group called “A-2” back then, in which a guy named Artem Manukyan rapped, and I, what is now called “made the beats,” produced all the music, and was responsible for the arrangements. At that time I was generally a fan of hip-hop, I was involved in the St. Petersburg scene - the groups Da108, Mister Maloy, that was all our party. At some point, probably in 1996, thanks to DJ Kefir, I heard drum and bass for the first time and was immediately upset - how cool the music was, and I had never heard anything like it in my life. After listening thoroughly, I became even more upset because I completely did not understand how this music should be made, and began to make desperate attempts to record something similar.

Yuri Usachev (mid-90s)

In the end, something began to work out, plus I found a like-minded person - Evgeny Arsentiev, a violinist by training. So, in 1996, he and I started the group “Guests from the Future.” We managed to make a couple of tracks, after which I met a girl, Eva, who was then working as a backup dancer in the group “A-2”. At that time, two girls worked as backup dancers in the group - Eva and Tanya. The rappers were not rich people, so there was usually not enough money to record backing vocals, and Artem came up with the idea: “Why not use girls from the backup dancers as backing vocalists?” And here I am sitting in the studio at the console, the girls are in the vocal room and sing some fragment together, and some of them sound very great. But it’s not clear who exactly sings like that, I had to find out somehow, so I asked them to sing the excerpt separately. Tanya was the first to sing, and I immediately realized that I needed Eva. After the recording, I went on a tram to see Eva off, we got to talking, I suggested that she form a group and asked her to compose some poetry so that we could start recording. Eva called me literally the next day and sang to me directly into the phone: “Time is sand, time is water, tell me yes...”. I was amazed! These were excellent words, in which there was no everyday language, there was a literary language, and a melody was felt. Of course, we immediately started working on the tracks, and they started coming together pretty quickly.

The first official album of the group “Guests from the Future” is considered to be the ambient “After Hundreds of Years”. In the recording, I used the voice of Masha Malos, who, together with Mikha Voron and Denis Oding, was part of the promotional group Contrforce, which organized powerful dance events in St. Petersburg in the nineties, such as “Eastern Impact”, or organized the first visit of Carl Cox to Russia. I became friends with them, even wrote the anthem of the “Eastern Strike”. In a word, I asked Masha to read the text, which I wrote myself, it sounds at the very beginning of the album.

Yuri Usachev (mid-90s)

It is difficult to answer why the first album of “Guests” became ambient. At some point in our lives, a well-known girl in St. Petersburg, Gedri Krikshunaite, appeared, who had her own label, Zvezda Records. And so she influenced my life very much. Having met in one of the St. Petersburg clubs at a concert of the Leningrad group, she told me that she was ready to publish an album of our group, and the genre could be absolutely any. It inspired me so much that there are people who are ready to publish my music, even though it was purely underground music. At that time, I made my living by making arrangements for the group “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” and then someone wants to publish my own music. Marvelous!

Arsentyev and I were so inspired by this that we sat down and recorded a full-fledged live improvisation overnight. As a result, we ended up with a long five-hour session, which I then cut into pieces from which more intelligible fragments emerged. Then it was necessary to add some idea, add a voice, for example. It seemed to me that in this case it is possible not to sing, and just add a voice. Then I went to record the voice of Masha Malos, plus Eva also sang several parts on the album. Plus I also added notes from my answering machine. For example, the voice that says that he left a demo tape in my mailbox belongs to Evgeniy Orlov, who later became the first producer of Guests from the Future, and at that time was the producer of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. At the last moment I included this recording in the album and in 1997 the album “Through Hundreds of Years” was released on Zvezda records.

The track "Stars Look Down" from the band's first album

This album did not cause any resonance. If at that time we had, say, 20 fans, then with the release of the album there were 50 of them. Gedri did everything in her power: the album was in all music stores, but did not arouse interest. But then, after the release of our second album, “Sand Time,” the album received a rebirth and aroused a certain interest. All the work was not done in vain, since thanks to the album “After Hundreds of Years” the overall potential of the team became visible.

Group “Guests from the Future” (late 90s or early 00s)

At some point, I finished the story with hip-hop for myself, but the story began with the group “Cast Iron Runner”, in which we had a blast and earned quite serious money at that time, for example, we sold one of our albums for $10,000. But then I started getting more and more involved in drum and bass and doing some kind of parties. And as soon as I started doing drum and bass, DJ Groove immediately appeared on the horizon. He was then the main person in Russia for this music. He knew everyone, and since there weren’t very many figures in this genre on the Russian stage, he also found out about me. I began to actively show him my tracks, and one of them turned out to be “Time is sand, time is water.” He put it in rotation on Radio Station, where he was then the program director. Plus invited us to the Titanic club for a party on March 8, 1997, which, it seems, was called “March 8.” And it is this party that is considered to be the date of birth of the “Guests from the Future” group. Two stunted St. Petersburg ravers came from St. Petersburg to Moscow, went on stage in something tight-fitting and raver-like and realized that those thousands of people who stood in front of them were singing the words of this song, although no one knew about us at all then.

What did our live look like then? Specially for my order, the master made a CD player, from which the front panel was removed and which was placed in the synthesizer box. And from there, standing on stage behind the synthesizer, I played the tracks, plus played along with something on the synthesizer. That's the whole live. The fee for that performance was, as far as I remember, $200. And for me then it was great money. After that performance, Groove and I became friends, and I am grateful to him for putting a lot of effort into releasing the album “Time is Sand.”

The track “Time Sand”, the group’s first big hit

The main advantage of the album “Sand Time,” it seems to me, is that the very fact of the existence of this album proved to many musicians across the country that this music can be released, that it is needed and arouses interest. This is very important.

But despite the good first two albums, it was still underground music, and our popularity and fame remained almost unchanged, that is, on some completely invisible level. I continued to make custom arrangements for pop musicians, and Eva continued to dance. At some point, she and I came to the conclusion that we would not be able to convey our work to more people if we did not adapt it to mass culture, but we would just do it carefully and not vulgarly. Just then I was listening to Grove’s song “There is Happiness!” and I realized that this is the correct model, there’s just no vocals, just one line. Plus, this kind of music uses some old techniques for the house scene, but new ones for a wider audience. I realized that this is how all pop music works. For example, Vanya Dorn recently admitted to me that he made his song “Stytsamen” under the influence of our “Run from Me.” Songs, after the recording of which in 1999 we were carried away from the club world into the world of big Russian show business, eternal tours, and then another story began for another group, albeit with the same name and participants.

The end of the nineties of the last century was marked for the Russian music platform by the emergence of a large number of new popular youth groups. Hi-Fi, “Virus”, “Play”, “Demo” and others filled the vastness of radio stations and sounded in all discos. Among them was the St. Petersburg duet “Guests from the Future”, which appeared in one thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight, founded by Yuri Usachev. Who is he - invisible on stage and dominant behind the scenes?

Yuri Usachev (“Guests from the Future”): biography

The musician was born on April 19, 1974 in the Northern capital of Russia. Usachev Yuri Alekseevich became imbued with music as a child. While studying at a music school, he mastered playing the piano, guitar, cello, drums and clarinet. In addition, Yura was a member of the choir (consisting only of boys) of the Leningrad Radio House.

In parallel with his passion for instrumental music, Usachev is mastering computer electronic music and is even an active participant in the Jungle movement (St. Petersburg).

"Cast Iron Walker"

Usachev’s musical career starts with the birth of the “Cast Iron Runner” project in 1995, where he, together with his friend Anton Dmitrenko, creates a modern sound of electronic music, inspired by the experience of the Beastie Boys and The Prodigy. Supplemented with awkward lyrics, the resulting material is daring, but different from all others, and the recording of the disc brings the guys the first thousand dollars they have ever earned in their lives. The songs were quite unusual, this can be seen even from their names (“Shamil Basayev”, “Alla Pugacheva is Dead”). But due to the fact that in the nineties there was very little music (especially this kind of music) the project is becoming popular. “Cast Iron Skorokhod” plays in clubs and discos, and the group’s songs are heard on independent radio stations.

Other projects

In parallel with the main group, Usachev creates the project “Active-Positive”, and also becomes a songwriter and arranger of the popular group “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”.

In 1997, Yuri and St. Petersburg musician Evgeny Arsentiev formed the club project “Total Break Beat”, and subsequently collaborated with the group “Russian Size”.

The beginning of a long journey

1998 is the year the new group was created. When a young man saw a rap group perform on the stage of a St. Petersburg nightclub, he was attracted by the low voice and sad gray eyes of the backing vocalist. After the concert, he invited her to create a joint project. The girl in the photo below is Eva Polna, and the guy is Yuri Usachev.

"Guests from the Future"

The duet of a sweet-voiced vocalist and musician stood out from the general background with lyrical songs dressed in dance form. She sang and wrote lyrics, and he played electronic instruments and also wrote music for songs - nothing extra. Such minimalism did not prevent the group from becoming popular.

The date of creation of the group is considered to be March 8, 1998, when they first performed on stage. In the same year, the guys shot a video for the song “Run from Me,” and it became a kind of calling card of the duo.

In nineteen ninety-nine, the album of the same name “Guests” was released, which brought its first success. The public and music publications were captivated by the combination of ambiguous lyrics, romantic progressive sound and the sexy voice of Eva Polna. The composition “Run from Me” was in rotation on all radio stations and sounded from every music stall.

In the same year, “Guests from the Future” with the song “Dislike” perform at the final concert of “Songs of the Year”.

Continued success

In the year 2000, the group released the album “Winter in the Heart”, the song of the same name from which, as well as the track “Games”, conquered the top of the radio charts.

In December 2000, “Guests” celebrated the release of their third album, “This is Stronger than Me. Part 1”, in which live instruments were used during recording. This disc becomes commercially successful. The hits “So Bravely”, “Break the Window of Your Souls”, “This is Stronger than Me”, like hot cakes, scattered across radio stations, receiving unctuous reviews from music critics. As for the duo’s fans, their army grew with each new song.

During the same period, the discs “Time is Sand” and “After Hundreds of Years” were released, which included previously unreleased songs of the duo. “Time is Sand” sounds in the styles of acid-jazz, drum and bass, and in the songs of the second album one can discern an ambiance and lounge performance (pop direction combined with light rock and electronic music).

In 2001, “Guests from the Future” released the collection The Best and a new track “Love me in French” as a bonus.

At the peak of glory

The touring life of “Guests from the Future” now consists of a busy schedule of concerts in cities of Russia, the CIS and abroad. The duet becomes a regular guest at the New Wave competition for young performers in Jurmala.

Musicians associate the year 2002 with the release of the new album “Eva”. It differs from the previous ones in that it was entirely recorded on a computer without the use of instruments, with the exception of the guitar.

On March 8, 2003, “Guests from the Future” celebrated its fifth anniversary with a big festive concert at the Yubileiny Sports Palace (St. Petersburg). A little later, another album “This is stronger than me” is released. Part 2". In addition to new songs, it includes cover versions of the hits “You Are Somewhere” and “Metko”.

In 2003, the duo received the national dance music award “Movement”, as well as a diploma from “Hit Parade” magazine. In 2006, the group’s first solo albums, called “More Than Songs,” took place in Moscow. A rich program with the participation of jazz musicians, a string quartet, dance numbers, and video mixes from Yuri Usachev ensured a full house.

The album “More Than Songs” was released in the summer of 2005, and its main hit, “The Best of You,” remained on television and radio for more than six months.

In total, “Guests from the Future” recorded eleven albums (2 of them remixed) and 2 collections, and released a dozen and a half video clips. But after almost 10 years of working together, Eva Polna and Yuri Usachev announced the breakup of the group. This decision was made on the initiative of Yuri, who became cramped and uninterested in the project, which, however, did not prevent him from working as a sound producer and arranger for the group for some time.

Career after "Guests"

As a creative person, Yuri Usachev strives to develop comprehensively and is passionate about the production business. In 2002, he was the general producer of one of the largest Russian recording companies, Gramophone Records. Working as a producer, Usachev strives to produce a high-quality musical product: highly professional, unique, but created according to classical canons.

In 2006, Yuri Usachev makes another attempt to realize himself as an electronic musician and DJ and creates the Art-House group with the participation of DJ Tisha (Andrey Timoshenko) and AlexYlech (Alexey Ulrich). The guys are working on creating music in the style of electro and progressive, and for good reason. The resulting material is highly appreciated by famous Russian and world DJs. Armin van Buuren's record company (Armada Music) even came up with a proposal to publish this music.

In the summer of 2009, Yuri Usachev (photo above) composed music for the next MTV-Russia film awards ceremony.

Today, the musician tours as a DJ and plays both his own material and compositions by other authors. In addition, he successfully works as a sound producer with such performers as Alsou, Katya Lel, and the Vintage group.

My-Ti and Yuri Usachev

The musician’s biography is marked by the tutelage of another project - My-Ti (2008), in which a girl with a unique voice sings - Tina Kuznetsova. As a multiple winner of song competitions, she successfully gathers admirers of high-quality electronic music at performances in cities of Russia and the former Soviet Union. European clubs also include My-Ti house compositions in their programs.

Tina simultaneously works in the team Zventa Sventana, with which Yuri Usachev also actively collaborates. Another girl is involved in the project - Alena Romanova, and its main idea is to show and convey the soul to the listener with the help of such different types of music as jazz and Russian folklore , aspirations and hopes of modern man.

Family

Yuri Usachev, whose personal life has never been publicly displayed, is still a family man. Contrary to rumors about his homosexuality (which the musician himself spread as a PR move), Yuri has a wife and children.

The wife, Kristina Kuznetsova, like her husband, studied music since childhood and graduated from the Gnessin Music College in pop-jazz vocals. She was a participant in the Russian show “The Voice”, and currently works in the projects My-Ti and Zventa Sventana. In two thousand and ten, the couple had a son, Gabriel. In addition, the musician has a thirteen-year-old daughter, Emilia.

(1974-04-19 ) (45 years old)

Yuri Usachev- Russian composer, DJ, producer.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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From early childhood he began to study music. He studied at a music school and sang in the boys' choir of the Leningrad House of Radio. At music school he learned to play drums, clarinet, piano, cello and guitar. In addition to developing as an instrumentalist, Yuri begins to study computer electronic music and takes an active part in the St. Petersburg “Jungle” movement.

Career outside the group

Wanting to realize himself as an electronic musician and DJ, Yuri Usachev creates the “Art-House” project. Its members include St. Petersburg DJs Andrey Timoshenko (dj Tisha) and Alexey Ulrich (Alex Ylech). Work begins with music of current electro and progressive styles. The material was highly appreciated by leading Russian and world DJs. "Armada records" of Armin Van Buuren expressed their readiness to publish the music [ ] .

Yuri Usachev: “I believe that there is a club culture in Russia, and it is on the rise! There are good interesting records written by Russians. They are often played by world giants - isn’t this an indicator of development? At the same time, I would like to say that the club culture of the regions of Russia is sometimes higher than that of the capital! And that's great! "

Usachev, Yuri Alekseevich

Yuri Usachev

Basic information

Full name

Usachev Yuri Alekseevich

Date of birth

Country

Russia

Professions

composer, arranger, DJ, producer

Tools

Genres

House, Electro House, Electro Progressive, Experimental, Progressive House, Soulful house, Synth-Pop, Vocal House, pop music

Teams

Steps into the future

Achievements

The collective’s collection includes many awards, including: “Golden Gramophone”, “Stopudovy Hit”, “Bomb of the Year”, “Movement”.

Constant rotation on television and radio, numerous tours, widespread press attention, top lines of various charts - all this is evidence that “Guests from the Future” were one of the most successful pop groups of the late 1990s - 2000s in the post-Soviet space.

Not just a guest

The future comes today

Wanting to realize himself as an electronic musician and DJ, Yuri Usachev creates a project "Art-House". Its members include the famous St. Petersburg DJ Andrey Timoshenko (dj Tisha) and Alexey Ulrich (Alex Ylech). Work begins with music of current electro and progressive styles. The material was highly appreciated by leading Russian and world DJs. Armada records of Armin van Buuren expressed its readiness to publish the music.

Yuri Usachev: “I believe that there is a club culture in Russia, and it is on the rise! There are good interesting records written by Russians. They are often played by world giants - isn’t this an indicator of development? At the same time, I would like to say that the club culture of the regions of Russia is sometimes higher than that of the capital! And that's great! "

Categories:

Personalities in alphabetical order
Musicians in alphabetical order
Born on April 19
Born in 1974
Composers of Russia
Pop musicians of Russia
Born in St. Petersburg

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Yuri Usachev’s wife Tina Kuznetsova gained popularity not only thanks to her marriage to a famous musician, ex-soloist of the group “Guests from the Future,” but also due to her own talent - they learned about her after Christina (that’s her full name) became a participant in the second season of the show “ Voice" and reached its finale. She wrote the song that captivated the audience of the competition together with her husband. Khristina Kuznetsova is a member of the group “My-Ti” created by Yuri Usachev and its project “Zventa Sventana”. She met her future husband in 2004 while working in the studio, and they got married only five years later. When Tina Kuznetsova came to producer Yuri Usachev, she had studied at the Gnessin School, two of her own jazz projects, and performed at club and festival venues not only in Russia but also abroad. At first they only communicated about work - they recorded several English-language compositions, and then Christina and her friend created their own ethno-project “Zventa Sventana”.

In the photo - Yuri Usachev and Tina Kuznetsova

Gradually, Yuri realized that Tina was the woman with whom he would be interested and with whom he would be happy. A romantic relationship began between them, which lasted for five whole years. Before this, Kuznetsova had just broken up with a guy who had problems with drugs, was very upset about this breakup and lived in anticipation of new love. When she felt sympathy and attention from Yuri, she was pleased, because she also liked Usachev, but at that time he had a common-law wife and daughter, so the romance between Christina and Yuri did not begin immediately.

Usachev tried several times to break up with Kuznetsova, feeling guilty before his wife and little daughter, but his personal life cracked - his common-law wife had someone else, and they still broke up, and now nothing stood in the way of his romance with Christina. Tina did not insist on sealing the union with a stamp in her passport as soon as possible, so Yuri was in no hurry to make an official proposal, although he understood that she, like any girl, would like to have a real family.

In the photo - Tina Kuznetsova with her son Gabriel

Usachev proposed to his future wife in an unusual setting - at an altitude of ten thousand meters, when they were flying home from Israel from the wedding of their friends. They decided to hold their own wedding in a small circle in the restaurant of one of their friends.

To give birth to a child, son Gabriel, whom Yuri Usachev was looking forward to with great impatience, Tina went to London, to one of the best British clinics. To support his wife, he not only attended the birth, but also spent several weeks in London to be close to his wife and newborn baby.

Yuri Usachev’s eldest daughter Emilia turned fourteen this year; she lived in London for a long time, and recently returned to Russia. Yuri's daughter often comes to visit him, and he is glad that she has a good relationship with his wife and her little brother.