Ukranian composer and sound-artist Heinali returns with beautiful, mesmerizing new album ‘Madrigals’, inspired by Renaissance/late Medieval polyphony and created with generative modular synthesis and historial instrumentation.

‘Madrigals’ is the result of a two-year-long exploration into generative counterpoint in modular synthesis. Inspired by Heinali’s love of the polyphonic compositional style of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the album employs historical acoustic instruments such as the theorbo lute and the baroque alto viola alongside Heinali’s mastery of notoriously complex generative synth systems.

Heinali (Kyiv-based Oleg Shpudeiko) points out that late Medieval and early modern music - like his own studious approach to synthesis - is often inherently mathematical. Both are as much musical expressions as deeply cerebral studies. In modular synthesis, theory guides the musician’s reading of the sequence of logical operations, knowing the system well enough to anticipate its sound simply by reading the matrix of algorithms at its heart. In the case of early music, polyphony was achieved by acute study of interrelationship between notes and intervals. In both cases, harmonic layers are acquired in theory before practice, almost always by a single composer working alone.

Heinali writes of the surprising joy of writing generative patches that bloom with their own unpredictable life: “after two years of working on the patch and then several months of recordings, I discovered in awe that some of the voices acquired a kind of subjectivity. They were now framed by their stories — sets of relations that had been established over several years of practice. There was, for example, a high bird voice that loved ostinato and sometimes, under certain circumstances, went into deep bass. The interaction of these voices, as a result, gave rise to some kind of narrative”.

In ‘Madrigals’, music moves gradually. It is a garden of many intricate textures; its flora abundant, its seeds sprouting with colour and surprise. Heinali’s astute references to Medieval music were informed in part by the advice of Julia Vash, formerly of the University of Music and Theatre ‘Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’ Leipzig.

The ascent in opening track ‘Rondine’ feels physical, with high peaks and thin air. In ‘Beatrice’ (a piece beautifully elevated by Igor Zavgorodni’s brilliantly intuitive, poignant viola) a Millefleurs tapestry depicts pastoral bliss with a thunderstorm threatening to burst over the horizon. ‘Giardino’ is a tender, dusklit garden of diverging trails. Closer ‘Vita Nova’ lives up to its name, bursting with electric life.

Over almost twenty years of mercurial, unique experimental electronic music, Heinali has become a much sought-after creator of electroacoustic soundscapes. His 2017 and 2018 releases on Injazero Records garnered huge acclaim from press and radio worldwide, marking his arrival as a singular and significant voice in the experimental-electronic music landscape. He has also composed original music for video games, contemporary dance production and installation. His recorded works have also been released by Sony, The Flenser, Fluttery, NEN, Paradigms and other labels. His history of live performances includes appearances at venues and festivals such as the Zorlu Performing Arts Center in Istanbul; Plivka, Art Arsenal, and Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv; Ukraine’s Next Sound festival and Museum of Modern Art of Odessa; and Berlin’s Akademie der Künste. 

releases November 13, 2020

Madrigals LP

https://heinali.bandcamp.com/track/aves-rubrae

Organum Triplum 'Aves Rubrae'

"Heinali and Saienko provoke us to linger at the intersection of the medieval and the modern, the elemental and the eternal; of the rural voice, the traumatic experience, and the mystical vision"
Maria Sonevytsky, Pitchfork 8/10

"it feels like a gift to have this music out in the world, available to all and sundry, a small packet of rapture, or spiritual ruin, for whomever might need it at any given time."
Philip Sherbune, Futurism Restated

"Гільдеґарда is not soothing, and its purpose is not contemplation. It is a call to wakefulness. It reminds us that music is not locked away in a museum but is accessible... Spiritual experience and tension expand this reception at the junction of programmed electronics and spontaneous singing."
Jakub Knera, The Quietus

"Adapting two compositions by Benedictine mystic Hildegard von Bingen, modular synthesist Heinali and vocalist Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko bring ancient wisdom into the present, using Ukrainian folk techniques and synthesized medieval polyphony to reflect the past and transcend the trauma of war. Overwhelmingly affecting - and deeply singular - music."
Boomkat

Modular synth by Oleh ‘Heinali’ Shpudeiko
Vocals by Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko
Recorded at the Abbey of Sylvanès and mixed at GMEA in Albi, France by Benjamin Maumus. Additional recordings by Kuba Kutera in Wroclaw, Poland
Mastered and cut by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering

Regional Latin pronunciation consultation by professor Myroslav Trofymuk and Associate Professor Oleksandra Trofymuk

Cover painting by Maria Vasylenko
Layout by Aleksandra Grunholz
Executive producers and curators: Mat Schulz and Wannes Cuypers

Гільдеґарда was originally commissioned by Unsound, CTM Festival, Athens Epidaurus Festival / Subset, and GMEA - Centre National de Création Musicale Albi-Tarn

Гільдеґарда (Hildegard)

I was experimenting around Lucier's sound degradation technique and was in the process of recording iterations, playing the music from my mobile phone placed inside the piano. But when I left the phone playing the recording of a piano passage and mics inside and closed the lid I suddenly was enchanted by the quiet sound emanating from the inside of piano which felt like it was played by a ghost.

Piano Ghost

Sleep Cloudlessly

Fade

Support Ukraine:
https://savelife.in.ua/en/

Kyiv Air Raid Alarm

"Heinali airs his ambient mood classics. Oleg Shpudeiko (the man behind Heinali) creates a gloomy atmospheric environment with the piano, strings, ambient / glitch structures. "Air" is his 6 song album.

Heinali from Kiev, Ukraine started composing music in 2003. His sound is generally eclectic, though often described as atmospheric and emotional. In 2009 he joined the Soloma art group and composed music for media art performances “Traces on the Snow”, premiered at “I Love Kiev” contemporary art festival (Kiev, Ukraine, 2009) and “Aero”, premiered at “Gogol Fest” contemporary art festival (Kiev, Ukraine, 2010). His music was featured in ‘Ni Ogros Ni Princesas’ Provizional Danza choreography directed by Carmen Werner (Madrid, Spain, 2011). Collaborated with Maria Navrotskaya, Pleq, Merzbow, Aiode, Anton Baibakov, Orchestra Eclettica e Sincretista, Matt Finney. Collaboration with American poet Matt Finney became a separate heavier and darker sounding project. In 2011 they wrote music for the opening of Olya Pischanskaya’s photo exhibition, which took place at Korobchinsky Art Centre (Odessa, Ukraine, 2011).

Heinali joined Fluttery Records family in 2012. "We signed international music project Draff Krimmy" says Taner Torun, the label owner. "Jan Hammer recommended us Jun Minowa and his projects Gargle and Yawning. Heinali was introduced to us by Jun Minowa. It seems that artist we work with are so happy that they are recommending us to their friends and our family is growing that way."

When we return to Heinali's latest "Air" we find cinematic sad music, strings moving around the central piano motifs which are minimalistic. Power of light touches, the ambience, the echo and the sense"

http://www.flutteryrecords.com/flttry039.html

Leaves

Scarf

Bells

http://heinali.bandcamp.com/album/useless-music

Useless Music I

Useless Music II

Swirling Lightly

Experience a new work from the Kyiv-based musician and composer Heinali, crafted in remembrance of the invasion of Ukraine that began one year ago.

Read about Heinali's work here: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/854

Heinali’s “Aves rubrae”

A recording of my talk at CTM 2024. 

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yqoEqU5AsDZ3GPV16lYXzTWJiCxFJ7oGzotM4oprxjY/edit?usp=sharing

This talk explores the perils and wonders of working with mediaeval music in our times, its transhistoricity and alterity – including 13th-century compositions as time-dilating black holes, possessed synthesisers exploring the boundaries of divine determinism and catastrophic polyphony traversing the wartime reality. Heinali is a Ukrainian music composer and sound artist whose core practice reimagines Early music with a modular synthesiser, exploring intersections of the Providence and Contingency, the past and the present, technology and the sacred.

And I Feel Dread, And I Feel Love - Reimagining Early Music at the End of Times

Aves Rubrae ('red birds' in Latin) was initially commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for MoMa magazine in 2023. It was recorded in one take on Heinali's modular synthesiser—an instrument that Oleh set up informed by artistic research of the past five years, enabling him to improvise polyphony and monophony, borrowing techniques and ideas from medieval composers & theorists and contemporary fields of analogue synthesis & generative music—exploring intersections of the Providence and Contingency, the past and the present, technology and the sacred.

Similar to the organa of XII-XIII century Notre Dame polyphony, Aves Rubrae is an organum that features fast-moving upper voices with intricate melodies created by the machine overlaid on the slow-moving drones of the lower voice. However, unlike the Notre Dame polyphony, composed for grand church celebrations, 'Aves Rubrae' has an eschatological tone that is perhaps more fitting for the world at hand. The piece references 'Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night' (allegedly referencing one of the apocalyptic prophecies of Nostradamus) by Coil, paying homage to one of the most influential artists whose music shaped Oleh during his teenage years.

Music by Heinali
Mastered by Kuba Kutera in Wroclaw, Poland
Cover art by Mariya Tobischek
www.instagram.com/dvodushnyk

Aves Rubrae

Photography by Sasha Naselenko: http://cargocollective.com/fo

Sank

Гільдеґарда

Heinali & Andirana-Yaroslava Saienko - Zelenaia Dubrovonka

Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko - O Ignis Spiritus

Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko - O Tu Suavissima Virga

Part of the original soundtrack for A Thread choreography by Jean Abreu Dance. 
 
Viola by Benjamin Kaminski.
Recorded at Woodworm Studios and HHS.
Mastered by Lawrence English @158

Lament (A Thread OST)

Part of the original soundtrack for A Thread choreography by Jean Abreu Dance. 

Viola by Benjamin Kaminski.
Theorbo by Andrew Maginley.
Recorded at Woodworm Studios and HHS.
Mastered by Lawrence English @158

Drift (A Thread OST)

Cover image by Sasha Naselenko: cargocollective.com/fo

The Lost Lovers (For Eyame)

The Lost Lovers (For Eyame) [2025 remaster]

Listen and download 'Green' from the Bound soundtrack! 

iTunes - http://bit.ly/BoundOSTiTunes
Spotify - http://bit.ly/BoundOSTSpotify
Google Play - http://bit.ly/BoundOSTGoogle

Bound is a PlayStation 4 game about repairing a broken world through the beauty of dance. You can play it now at http://play.st/Bound.

Don't forget to follow us on on Twitter: 
Heinali - http://www.twitter.com/heinali. 
Plastic - http://www.twitter.com/Plasticdemo. 
Santa Monica Studio - http://www.twitter.com/SonySantaMonica
#BoundPS4

Bound

Bound OST - Green (Full Track/Download)

Useless Music III

Seagull

http://heinali.bandcamp.com/album/sway-sway

Sway, Sway

http://heinali.bandcamp.com/track/little-by-little

Little by Little

http://www.flutteryrecords.com/flttry039.html

October

Haiku is a naïve song cycle composed in 2010 that consists of four compositions for synthesized voice and artificial instrumentation, each based on an original haiku by Matsuo Bashō. These are restored/remastered versions. It's a quiet music and should be listened that way.

Haiku I

http://heinali.bandcamp.com/track/the-sun-will-rise-yet-we-wont-be-here

The Sun Will Rise Yet We Won't Be Here

For Ataraxia short film by Guillermo Vejar.

Festival de Cine de Oro Negro 2018, Veracruz – Winner best Short Film of Veracruz.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/283199384
http://gatunofilms.com

Ataraxia OST (2015)

From Iridescent LP:
https://heinali.bandcamp.com/album/iridescent

Iridescent

Enfold

Ukrainian duo Heinali (aka Kyiv-based composer / sound-artist Oleg Shpudeiko) and pioneering experimental jazz saxophonist Michael Balog combine for a special one-off EP of improvised melody and exploratory sonics.

Brimming with the characteristic confidence of two acutely skilled musicians, A Mechanical Bird in an Electric Garden represents a meeting of two disparate approaches and a departure from Shpudeiko and Balog’s usual work. The record reveals Heinali’s love for generative polyphony and polyrhythms, his strange sci-fi sonics creating a spacious, futurist architecture that houses Michael Balog’s (relatively) recogniseable sounding - a snaking melodic binding that wraps through the machinery like coloured ribbon.

"The name A Mechanical Bird in an Electric Garden reflects the nature of our interaction,” Heinali tells us. “Machine based generative polyrhythms and generative polyphony vs human improvisation. The name came from my own mythology that kind of developed on its own during the past year. I started to refer to my music as "electric gardens of polyphony". Partly because gardens are usually inhabited by many independent voices of various birds that usually sound at the same time. And polyphonic compositions of pre-Baroque era are very similar to gardens: they have a very stable horizontal quality that is not so much about expression as it is about exploration of certain states (similar to some of the contemporary music practices like drone that deal with musical sculptures instead of musical compositions). Partly because of Brian Eno's idea of composer as a gardener. And the mechanical bird is, of course, Michael's saxophone.”

Over almost twenty years of beautiful, mercurial, creative expression, Heinali has become a much sought-after creator of electroacoustic soundscapes. His 2017 and 2018 releases on London / Istanbul electronic label Injazero Records garnered huge acclaim from press and radio worldwide, marking his arrival as a singular and significant voice in the experimental-electronic music landscape. He has also composed original music for video games, contemporary dance production and installation. His recorded works have been released on Injazero, Sony Interactive Entertainment, The Flenser, Fluttery, NEN, Paradigms and other labels. His history of live performances includes appearances at venues and festivals such as the Zorlu Performing Arts Center in Istanbul; Plivka, Art Arsenal, and Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv; Ukraine’s Next Sound festival and Museum of Modern Art of Odessa; and Berlin’s Akademie der Künste.

Michael Balog is Ukrainian jazz saxophonist and musician. He is an author of educational methods and the founder of Lviv’s Vedel School of Contemporary Music. Domestically celebrated for his multidisciplinary art projects, Balog is an ongoing experimenter, connecting spiritual chorals, improvisational music, theatre and film works, jazz and electronic music.

A Mechanical Bird in an Electric Garden

Nocturnal Song

Diurnal Song

Brave Little Heart

Premiered by self-titled: https://www.self-titledmag.com/heinali-new-album-madrigals/

Credits:
Igor Zavgorodnii: baroque viola, violin.
Oleg Shpudeiko: modular synthesizer, mixing.
Recorded by Vadyk Lazariev at LipkyZvukoZapys in Kyiv (December 2019)
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering.
Cover art by Nastia Lopatiuk.

‘Madrigals’ is the result of a two-year-long exploration into generative counterpoint in modular synthesis. Inspired by Heinali’s love of the polyphonic compositional style of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the album employs historical acoustic instruments such as the theorbo lute and the baroque alto viola alongside Heinali’s mastery of notoriously complex generative synth systems.

Heinali - Beatrice

London-based Injazero imprint seems to be backing some top-quality music from their ever-growing roster of global talent these days [cough!], with the Ukrainian composer Oleg Shpudeiko returning with this third solo album to the label as Heinali. After a handful of self-released records, a few on a boutique Paradigms, just as many on Fluttery Records, and a couple of collaborations, Shpudeiko finds himself back in the studio, studying medieval polyphony expressed through the programmed synthesis of his modular gear. Historical acoustic instruments, such as the theorbo lute and the alto viola, also appear on this echo of renaissance music. But the baroque focus on mathematical progression through harmony and counterpoint is best heard on this complex, lengthy, final track of the album, titled “Vita Nova.” The composition features generative synthesis, which is, albeit driven by some chance and random voltage, is still very much controlled, with the parameters being set by its programmer to grow, evolve, and to surprise the listener as much as the composer. In this pre-defined system of the four Madrigals [a madrigal is a secular music composition using human voices for its polyphony], Shpudeiko pushes the ever-changing parameters of the synth voices to shift in timbre, tempo, and depth of frequency range.

Madrigals

Vita Nova

TRACK PREMIERE : Heinali - Vita Nova

Ave Moog

Oleh Shpudeiko is a music composer and sound artist who performs under the stage name Heinali. His core practice draws on medieval music and compositional techniques, continuing their tradition through contemporary electronic music and modular synthesis, using the past as a mirror to reflect and process contemporary experience. While his primary focus lies in studio albums and live performances, Oleh also composes music for video games, films, and choreography. His credits include the award-winning soundtrack for the video game BOUND (Plastic/Sony Santa Monica), the 2020 album MADRIGALS, shortlisted for the Shevchenko National Prize, and sound art commissions from institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU), and the Museum of Odesa Modern Art (MSIO). He has an extensive performance history, with appearances at festivals and venues including CTM (Berlin), Rewire (The Hague), NEXT (Bratislava), Musikprotokoll (Graz), Primavera (Barcelona), Unsound (Krakow and Adelaide), as well as Plivka and Next Sound in Kyiv.

heinali

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