safe place

Kyiv (Ukraine) born Sasha Renkas, made music as Antenna for almost a decade, releasing many EP's and a full length album. Now he follows his urge to make a different kind of music. The result is a full length album with slow, intimate, nighttime music varying from abstract pop ballads to ambient movie score pieces. At times they sound like stripped down Kate Bush instrumentals, drenched in reverb, or introvert Roxy Music with a touch of dub and nineties trip-hop.

‘Safe Place’ by Sasha Renkas will be distributed worldwide by Clone and digitally through Bandcamp.

My name is Sasha Renkas and this is my album called Safe Place. I am normally known for my house and electronic project Antenna and at a certain moment in my life I was struck by stagnation and wanted to try something different. I moved to a rooftop apartment on a hill in Brussels and gave myself total freedom from formats and expectations. I followed my introvert urges and music started appearing very naturally out of nothing. The music could be one or six minutes long, could be a pop ballad or an ambient piece. This time I wanted to approach it differently and step away from the somewhat static methods of creating electronic music. I tried to compose music more organically and performed my instruments live for this album. I mainly used old synthesizers and other instruments, under a heavy layer of eighties reverb machines.

I’ve been listening a lot to Cocteau Twins, Blue Nile, Roxy Music, nineties trip hop and minimal composers at the time of making this album. I wanted the album to feel like a seamless story, like a soundtrack to an imaginary movie.

Before moving to the Netherlands I grew up in the nineties in Kyiv (Ukraine) surrounded by economic turbulence and a weird mix of music from different decades that overflowed after years of isolation, accompanied by the weird early Ukrainian visual culture. I was mesmerized by the music video’s I saw on the TV and I wanted to belong there. I guess I never really grew up, still drifting like a cowboy through imaginary spaces, in a timeless vacuum, outside of real life. I decided to release Safe Place as Sasha Renkas, because it felt very personal and pure, all coming from a spacious, misty place where everybody is still alive and safe.