Interview with Artyom Prishchepov, composer and leader of Evoking Winds and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (https://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
AP: Evoking Winds is a team of musicians who make some music after work. We’re totally a product of a modern online era, living thousands miles from each other and collaborating on the messengers most of the time. Despite being a hobby, music drives us to spend countless enjoyable hours together, as we love the process of music creation.
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
AP: We live around the world and Evoking Winds is not the first time we make metal. Our team comes from the bands Sunless Rise, Irreversible Mechanism, Aeterna, Helroth, CMLXXXVIII. We have a full mix of geographies – Belarus, Russia, USA, Poland and China.
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
AP: We love fantasy books (Sapkowski, Le Guin, Tolkien), story-driven video games (Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Divinty: Original Sin and many more) – and all of that makes a big influence on us. Our cinematic approach comes from videogames soundtracks (works of Paul Anthony Romero (Might & Magic series, and of course Heroes III), Jeremy Soule (Morrowind and Skyrim), Marcin Przybyłowicz (The Witcher OST).
Speaking about metal – there is a great variety of magnificent artists who continue influencing our music: Belore, Medenera, Summoning, Wintersun, Agathodaimon, Vvilderness, Saor, Cân Bardd, Equilibrium, Keep of Kalessin, Fellwarden, Morwinyon, and many, many more.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
AP: We love to read and dream, and then all of that becomes music. It’s definitely a great pleasure when you come from a busy day, take your guitar and have your inner self feel home. It’s true about each of us at Evoking Winds – so this was our aspiration years ago and continues to be it now: feeling our inner selves home.
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
AP: You know, we’re going very amateur with this project and hardly invest in anything besides recording stuff. We don’t have CDs or vinyls for our latest album, as well as haven’t produced any merch at all. After our recent release, I was contacted by
a man from Hatten, Germany. His name is Henning, and he made his own custom merch with our logo and asked us for permission to keep it. We were very touched by this, and I must tell this was the proudest moment I ever had.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
AP: Well, we hardly do any promotion. I run Google Ads campaigns for our YouTube full album releases so that these videos find the relevant audience by YT suggestions mechanism. That’s it. Most of the Evoking Winds time we spend on writing some stuff and having fun.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
AP: No tours, no live performances are planned. We live in different countries, and won’t likely ever gather in one place. We’re so lazy that we hardly even call each other over Zoom, just text messaging all the time, lol. Man, we never rehearsed in one room over the last 15 years.
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
AP: We like when our music is downloaded online. We even made a “Torrent Download” button on our official website. All our music is also available as free lossless download on Bandcamp and published on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
AP: I would personally love to write some metal soundtrack to an entire videogame one day. RPG or Adventure style. It would really drive us a lot, as we love to play some good games ourselves and love to do cinematic-styled music.
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
AP: Nah, all is well. With given internet penetration throughout the world, our music is as easily accessible as never before.
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
AP: We’re in the studio, recording a new album – Your Rivers coming for 2024. We spent the last 4 years writing it, so we’re glad it is finally in production state with 80% done. This album has its inspiration in The Witcher saga by A. Sapkowski and touches different events of it.
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
AP: You can visit our YouTube channel or Bandcamp – but no physical goods yet. Some might come in 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/c/evokingwinds
https://evokingwinds.bandcamp.com/
Thank you Pete, it was a real pleasure to virtually meet and talk to you!
Have a great week ahead to you and your audience!
Evoking Winds links:
Band/Artist location – Minsk, Belarus
Website – You Tube – Bandcamp – Apple –
Spotify – Amazon – Deezer – Lastfm –
Check our page for Evoking Winds
