This Friday is already marked in red by Born Free and Discos Capablanca family member Odopt. While Grisha Nelyubin and Ivan Maslov are preparing for their first appearance in Opium club, we have a significant chance to discover them. They are our sort of attraction, so we asked some questions beyond the synths, drum machines, computer glitches, vocal passages and percussions.

Q: What type of power runs Moscow’s clubbing scene? As you are travelling a lot, how would you characterise its uniqueness?

A: Moscow is a big kid, that needs surprises every day. Lots of things come and go now, people throw some very good parties and discover awesome venues but that doesn’t last long. As soon as you become popular, some unwelcome people, media and police attention make it extremely hard to maintain high level of uniqueness. If one club is able to survive for 5 years thats already a win. During last ten years we still end up going to Simachev, Strelka and Bar Enthusiast and that’s it. Which is very sad, because we have one of the biggest young audience in Europe, interested in everything new and ready to support the subculture, but there is no any place we will meet each other this summer for example. Maybe some festivals and concert-halls with classical music. The variety of the last ones is pretty impressive. For example we went to Steve Reich ballet yesterday and bought the season ticket till the end of 2019.

Q: Have you been drawn to music since you were young, or was it something you discovered later in your life? How did you get into producing music?

A: We are complete opposition of each other but yes we breathe music since we remember ourselves. Ivan was in music school playing piano during many years and then he was making songs with a band. Grisha was always a collector, who buys a magazine about music in the morning, reads interviews and reviews during studying and after classes goes to find the best reviewed album to the market. At first it was tapes and then CDs. He remembers making mixtapes at the age of 12 for his mother to listen them in her car. like “My Favorite Music Vol.7” When we met, we dived deep into production, Ableton and synths, produced some tracks and some remixes for friends and then when we felt ready we started Odopt. 

Q: What does your name ‘Odopt’ mean? What is the story behind it?

A: We were always pretty bad with names, so the idea was to call ourselves “Unknown” or “Untitled” or something like this and forget about it forever. Since our first EP was on swedish label Born Free we translated untitled into their language and one the options was Ödopt, which we immediately loved. We decided to delete the dots, not to create any problems and limitless questions about them, but our friends from Stockholm still pronounce it in swedish way. Like Uuwwdopt. And its great!

Q: On Friday it will be your first time in Smala. What are your personal expectations for the party?

A: We planned to play for twelve hours but the guys told us it will only be seven, which is sad because we wanted to break our record of the set duration. But seriously, we know it is one of the best parties in Europe in one the best clubs in the world, so we feel extremely honoured. Without even coming to Vilnius we fully felt it on their OPIUM party in Berlin’s Renate, which was huge, because they brought like a full plane with their crowd and organized the perfect line-up. Everything was on top so the expectations are on quiet high level for sure.