The winter cold of London isn’t for everyone. This bitter February snap can drain the souls even of those used to much frostier climes. “It’s very gloomy,” says Nikolai Kostylev of Russian band IC3PEAK. “It can really affect my mood.”
Still, it could always be worse. NME meets the electronic duo in the plush lounge of the swanky Soho Hotel to chat about their eighth album, ‘Coming Home’. Decked in all black and Adidas, the pair could pass as Berlin hipster tourists. You wouldn’t know they’re state agitators, sonic experimentalists who’ve worked with Grimes and Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes, and a band in exile. “Right now, I’m considering moving here for a period of time,” Anastasia ‘Nastya’ Kreslina says of London. “It’s a big city with a hectic lifestyle. I’m used to that template.”
Kostylev was born into music as the son of a conductor and music professor before the Soviet Union collapsed and “went into shambles”, splitting his family apart. Scoring burned Muse and Radiohead CDs from “music nerd” friends in a town near Moscow where internet speeds where primitive and records either expensive or scarce, he defied expectations to follow his lineage and pursue a life and career in sound. “I had to gaslight myself into believing it was possible,” he says now. “I felt a lot of pressure from family and friends because no one believed it.”
“At first we were calling it ‘audio visual terror’ because everything that the establishment didn’t like was called ‘terrorism’” – Nikolay Kostylev
Latvian-born Kreslina’s mother, meanwhile, was an opera singer and member of an Orthodox church choir – an origin story that makes total sense of her theatrical style and the religious imagery of IC3PEAK. “Coming from Orthodox culture, they’re used to suffering,” she says, getting blunt with the theology. “If you come out with something bold and aggressive, sometimes the crowd likes to be a bit submissive.”
They stood out when they burst onto Moscow’s underground rave scene. Kreslina hopped on one of Kostylev’s solo tracks at first “as a joke” in 2013, then when they started getting some strong attention, IC3PEAK were born. “Everything happened so quickly,” remembers Kostylev. “We started the project, then everyone came to the first rave and already knew the songs.”
Raves by their nature are anti-establishment. Imagine having the balls to do that in Russia of all places. “It was just possible at the time,” he shrugs. “It wouldn’t be five years later, and certainly isn’t now. People would just be in jail if they did that in Moscow today.”
With their gothic clash of electronica and rap, designed to question and prod, IC3PEAK naturally had their fair share of run-ins with the law. “At first we were calling it ‘audio visual terror’ because everything that the establishment didn’t like was called ‘terrorism’,” Kostylev says. “I fill my eyes with kerosene, let it all burn/ The whole of Russia is watching me, let it all burn,” sings Kreslina on the ghostly 2018 single ‘Смерти Больше Нет /Death No More’. Its video, loaded with imagery of drugs, death and a middle finger to good old-fashioned Russian censorship, has amassed over 170million YouTube views to date.
With ever-growing attention on their work, conservative figures at the time grew agitated and the duo found their national tour targeted by security forces – culminating in a series of arrests, threats and a stand-off, won by IC3PEAK with the support of their following and global media. “When the fans tried to help us in the cities where we were detained, it gave us a feeling of union and justice,” remembers Kreslina. “I felt that when I was attending protests too. I really miss it – not just in Russia but worldwide. You feel like you’ve found your tribe and that you’re accepted.”
These may read like the actions of a ‘political’ band, but Kostylev isn’t so sure. “The Russian government basically politicised us more than we were before,” he muses. “After that happened, there was something very urgent to fight against. It was a matter of survival for us.”
“When all the world is screaming, there’s no place on the map for that. You have to whisper in someone’s ear” – Anastasia ‘Nastya’ Kreslina
That survival became quite literal when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and IC3PEAK knew the tide had turned too dangerous for them to remain – not that they ever felt particularly at home. Kostylev had a “BDSM relationship” with Moscow, loving parts of the city but overall feeling small and oppressed. Kreslina, especially due to her half-Latvian heritage, never really “fit in”.
“I looked weird, I acted weird, and I was a female – a female who was mostly bonding with boys,” she says. “I felt like boys had the whole world and I had just one small part of it as a girl.
“After our story with the Federal Security Service, I didn’t feel safe. I felt anxious and had problems with sleep. It was a chase to leave the country, but I no longer felt like anyone was chasing me or watching me.”
IC3PEAK may have found themselves in exile, but they were also now masters of their own destiny. “I could create my own world with Nick,” adds Kreslina. “As a statement, these were things I couldn’t say; I was screaming.”
But screaming only goes so far.
What good is a manifesto when the world is at war with itself and little makes sense? IC3PEAK are certainly done with slogans. “I think the time has passed,” says Kostylev. “Now we are trying to speak in between the lines way more than before.”
After their earlier days of “attacking people with sound and visuals”, as Kreslina puts it, these times call for a more subtle approach. ‘Coming Home’ is an album of tender break-up songs – to the place they once called home and to a love Kreslina had to leave behind. “I wanted this record to bring people in, and not to ask for attention,” says Kostylev of the new album’s more ethereal, shoegaze palette. “I wanted to be absorbed into it instead of being shocked. I wanted it to be very humane, vulnerable and imperfect.”
‘Coming Home’ couldn’t have been another call-to-arms in a world already at war. Absolutes and platitudes only increase the divide. “I can’t blame an old lady in the Russian countryside who just watches TV all the time for what’s going on,” Kreslina continues. “You need to look inside as well as outside to get back to critical thinking.
“I was used to yelling so people would pay attention. Now when all the world is screaming, there’s no place on the map for that. You have to whisper in someone’s ear, to be more intimate in what you’re saying to make people notice and pay attention.”
The album, split between Russian and English, seeks to make a connection despite language. “Art can unite people,” asserts Kreslina. “There are universal things you can understand without understanding the meaning.” Still, it doesn’t take much to make sense of the record’s closing lines: “I know it will be fine tomorrow.” But will it?
“I feel very pessimistic,” says Kostylev bluntly, and this interview took place before Donald Trump waded into Ukraine peace deals with Putin-pandering. With the looming spectre of threat to Europe and Elon Musk’s infamous ‘salute’, he sighs: “Politically, everything feels very 1930s. You don’t have to be a futurist to know that it’s going to be extremely turbulent in our lifetime. What’s going to happen? Nobody knows.”
Since fleeing, IC3PEAK have been moving between Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, Italy, Latvia and Portugal. The record sleeve is adorned with a photo of the two friends, wearing angel wings, walking towards a burning house. Even if they do get back to Russia, what they knew will be gone. When everything’s in flux, you find peace and certainty where you can.
“I was asking myself, ‘Where is home for me? Do I even have one?’” concludes Kreslina. “I still have these questions, but what I discovered is that making art gives me that. Getting back to music gives me that feeling of being home.”
‘Coming Home’ by IC3PEAK is out now. Find the band’s world tour dates here
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