Biography
Molchat Doma (Russian for "the houses are silent") are a post-punk and cold wave trio from working-class Minsk, Belarus: vocalist Egor Shkutko, guitarist and synth player Roman Komogortsev, and bassist and keyboardist Pavel Kozlov.[1] Before making music together, they held working-class jobs.[2]
Their sound pairs a programmed drum machine with chiming guitar, atmospheric synthesizers and Shkutko's baritone, and has drawn comparisons to 1980s acts such as New Order.[1][3] Their second album, Etazhi, was released in September 2018 on the German label Detriti Records.[3]
The band's rise began when a YouTube user uploaded the album in full after digitizing it from vinyl, and the platform's algorithm began recommending it in early 2019.[1] A later TikTok trend around the track "Sudno," built on a poem by Boris Ryzhy, widened their audience further. Komogortsev has said the band only learned about TikTok when their new American label, Sacred Bones Records, told them.[1] They signed with Sacred Bones in January 2020.[3]
References
- Molchat Doma: The best band you've never heard of (The Moscow Times) — Profile covering the band's lineup, the Ryzhy poem, the YouTube and TikTok rise, and Komogortsev's comments on Sacred Bones.
- The long 1980s: Belarusian dark wave band Molchat Doma takes its music to the US (Global Voices) — Concert report discussing the meaning of the word sudno, the poem's subject, and the song's TikTok afterlife.
- Etazhi (Wikipedia) — Album details: release date, production, credits, the Harakiri Diat upload, and the 2020 Sacred Bones reissue.