Biography

СОЮЗ (SOYUZ) is a creative collective from Minsk, Belarus, led by composer and singer Alex Chumak. The band includes multi-instrumentalist and one of the key figures of the Belarusian underground scene Mikita Arlou and drummer Anton Nemahai. The name of the band is translated as "union", which reflects the creative nature of the relationship between its members. SOYUZ's sound has been shaped over time, and by the release of the album "II" in 2019, it showed an interest in exploring and reimagining the legacy of jazz-oriented, non-English-language pop music of the 20th century. 
 The third album, "Force of the Wind", released by Mr Bongo, follows that course, focusing on '70s Música popular Brasileira and building bridges from it to present-day Belarus. Chumak notes that from the moment he first encountered Brazilian music, he found in it a kind of concentrated emotion that felt as if it was familiar to him from his childhood. SOYUZ aims to convey this universal, largely non-verbal emotion to the listener. The theme of nature and its forces runs through the whole album, communicating with the listener from the start through the cover. These themes predetermined the choice of the album's musical palette: from the Rhodes piano, depicting the glare of the sun, and strings, creating a feeling of flight, to the peals of thunder, reproduced with a spring reverb.