The journey from the beginning to this day has not been easy. But what should we consider that beginning? The desire to compose something new in 2022? Or the creation of Ships Fly Up (SFU) over six years ago? Perhaps it all started when I was writing soundtracks? Or even earlier — at the age of sixteen, amid my first attempts to learn the guitar and compose music? All of these undoubtedly influenced Apostasy, but none of them is the true beginning.
I believe the origins lie beyond the familiar notions of time and space — not in “our” world, where I have felt like a stranger almost since birth, a world that never became my home but only a refuge, a temporary stop. The search leads much further. I would say that Apostasy — which is exactly how the album’s name translates — reached here like an echo from a deep, shimmering abyss that wove both me and my art.
The meaning and origin of the Apostasy music will be revealed more fully in the pages of a book I am currently writing. In it, I will tell a story rich with mysticism and secrets, one that turned the lives of the main characters upside down — and perhaps it will touch yours as well. The novel is about two‑thirds complete and nearing its end. The music intersects directly with the narrative, and by the will of Lokin, it appears in our world first as the sixth full‑length album, Ships Fly Up.
Below are my brief comments on each track:
1. Lokin
Lokin is one who comes from the other side of reality. I first learned of him on the pages of my own book. The composition is imbued with mysticism and the otherworldly — constant companions of my life. I made the first sketches back in 2022.
2. The Black Sun
The Black Sun. Its poisonous shadow can offer shelter only to the chosen few. The track features plenty of electronics, and one of the synth melodies reminds me of the echo of a dying world. In the final version, I left the first “chorus” without rhythm guitars — a reminder of my roots.
3. Apostate
An apostate. When the sound engineer learned the track’s title, he asked me: “An apostate from what?” Without hesitation, I answered: “From imposed destructive canons hidden behind the mask of benefit.” I consider the guitar melodies in this track to be among the strongest in my work.
4. In the Woods
In the Woods. Under the canopy of dark crowns, true magic lives. This is a rare track where electronics appear only in the closing section — a deliberate choice that emphasises the uniqueness of the guitar motifs.
5. The Doomed City
The Doomed City. Through an old radio, the sounds of the cursed and rejected reach us. The title echoes the famous book by the Strugatsky brothers, but the track is about something else. It evokes thoughts of death and life at the same time.
6. Only Lovers Left
Only Lovers Left. Others are not destined to behold the grandeur of the fallen world. This track carries notes of vampirism and gothic decor. The dynamic part shows that I am still in love with metal.
7. The Shining Night
The Shining Night. Its brilliance is akin to a diamond lying under moonlight on the tombstone of eternity. I kept this track hidden from the person who helped me by tirelessly listening to all the tracks countless times — from their creation to their release — and sharing constructive feedback. All tracks, except this one. I wanted to give him a gift: the chance to hear The Shining Night for the first time on the shining night of Apostasy’s release.
8. The Rain Began to Fall Again
The Rain Began to Fall Again. Its scorching drops fall and fall without end. Usually, I do not like rain, but in this track, it pours so sincerely and deeply that I have no choice but to stand beneath it with open arms and soak in the sacred waters of the fallen heavens. The piano melody came to me like a revelation, and I played it over and over until the rain washed away all the sorrows of a dark heart.
9. Dawn of Sunset
Dawn of Sunset. The Beginning of the End. And from the ashes, a new world will rise again. Up until the moment of writing these lines, this is the most challenging track I have ever created. Sleepless nights with brief pauses followed one another. Months of work — and at the last moment, I cancelled the single’s release, following an inner call. At one point, I began to suspect it was cursed and wanted to kill me. Then I suspected the sound engineer might kill me for the number of revisions. Yet he showed noble patience, and Dawn of Sunset took its rightful place in Apostasy, leading the listener toward the Inevitable.
10. Fatum
Fatum. Inevitability. The Wheel of Fate. Darkness both thickens and parts before Him. He is the darkness. A soundtrack to events described on the torn‑out pages of an old book. I hope that one day I will find them and learn His answer to the Apostate’s question.
Music by — Egor Fedotov
Mixing & Mastering — Maxim Larikov
Apostasy
Album, 2024/05/31
Single, 2024/04/26
Apostate is a single included in the album Apostasy
Single, 2024/03/29
Only Lovers Left is a single included in the album Apostasy
Only Lovers Left
Single, 2023/12/22
Dawn of Sunset is a single included in the album Apostasy
Dawn of Sunset
Maxi-Single, 2023/04/18
Genesis
The maxi‑single Genesis features two remixes of Catch the Moment and Los Oceangeles. I didn’t choose these tracks by chance for what was, in a way, an experiment. I wanted to transform the familiar compositions into something they seemed to naturally gravitate towards.
Synthwave became the main genre, but as those who have followed Ships Fly Up for more than a day already know, I rarely confine myself to a single direction. I enjoy enriching rock with electronics — in my view, it adds a special charm. I often incorporate a certain “trailer‑like” or “soundtrack‑like” quality. This likely stems from the fact that my development as a composer was greatly influenced by writing music for games — a pursuit I still engage in occasionally, albeit much less frequently now.
In Genesis, I preserved the core motifs of the tracks and, instead of the “usual” rock arrangement, added significantly more synthetic instruments, including electronic drums. All this helped create an atmosphere of cyberpunk — and perhaps of a distant future. Moreover, as one respected YouTube listener noted, it’s not devoid of mysticism and a “tense‑determined mood”. I think he hit the nail on the head. The result is a kind of dark synthwave with a touch of epic grandeur and cyberpunk aesthetics.
Whatever the case, this music carries exactly what I wanted to convey to you through all these compositional “twists and turns”. I hope I’ve succeeded.
And now, a few oddities. On April 18 — the release day of Genesis — I turned on the next part of the audiobook The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft, where I’d left off: specifically, Chapter 3, Madness from the Sea Depths. By a strange coincidence, it turned out that this chapter mentions an article from The Sydney Herald dated April 18, 1925.
According to the book, when the Great Cthulhu awoke, certain artists would unconsciously begin creating strange and sometimes horrifying works — a kind of harbinger. I think the tracks from the single could, in some moments, convey the unsettling atmosphere of the book. But I hope I haven’t inadvertently reflected the genesis of the Great Old Ones — and that it’s all just a coincidence.
Album, 2022/10/07
Rivers Without Time — a new old album from the past. Like all the others, it was born somewhere far from here, very far indeed. And I’ve spent my whole life searching for that place.
The journey to Ranucan continues. Along the way, I met someone who literally turns dreams into reality, and he told me I could do the same. In turn, I’ve shared this with you.
Then, before my eyes, the Ghost Kingdom unfolded. Someone dear to me remains there, but the road does not end. Leaving that gloomy place behind, the Great Ocean revealed two fundamental truths to me: Love and Freedom. To ensure I would not forget them, it introduced me to another wanderer — one who, through cosmic interference, still managed to manifest in my reality.
We realised that, in truth, we are all trying to return home — by deciphering 14 clues. And the rivers that flow for eternity, carrying the Sacred Waters, have become part of them. Rivers without time.
Flying past Planet 14, they beheld its grandeur and, in the hope that this was the very Home, dived into its mystical expanse…
Single, 2022/04/22
14
The ships are flying upward. But what lies above? Where, after all, are they heading? Perhaps I’ve learned one of the directions. The ships are flying home.
Single, 2022/04/13
Ships Fly Home
Single, 2021/10/15
M.I.L.Y.
M.I.L.Y. — a new single by Ships Fly Up, released on my birthday. By the time I turned 34, I had written quite a lot of music (though everything is relative), and much of what I’ve composed has remained largely unheard by anyone.
You write, write, write… And it would seem — why? Once, when I was about 16, I got my hands on a guitar. It was my father’s guitar. And the magic began — one I’ve been mastering to this day. That’s when I realised I had to write music. As if I’d always known it, even though I can’t say the world around me took it as a great joy — though…
But whatever the case, I kept composing. It’s been a long journey. Though what are 10–15 years on the scale of eternity? As I walked this path, releasing little‑known tracks, deep apathy could wash over me, bordering on depression. I asked myself, my soul, the sky, the earth, God, and even the Devil — why all this? What for? Why do I do this? What does it bring me? What does it bring to people?
There were tears and joy. There were also sorrow and despair, when I didn’t know if I could pay the rent.
I’ve never had what’s called a “normal” life. Since childhood — detachment from the world, from the necessities imposed by society. Since childhood — a drive to discover who I am. At times, I thought my birth here was a mistake — a mistake that cannot live like all the “normal” people. And at other times, I believed my ship, which had been passing by this world, for some inexplicable reason, had suddenly flown home without me. Without me…
I remember looking out of the house window at the sky, and tears welling up. A deep longing for the home I’ve been seeking the way to all these years.
I know what loneliness is. I’ve been lonely for many years. It’s like in the track You Can Change Everything: “I know you feel loneliness… Even when you’re not alone…” And I came to love loneliness. It stayed with me for a very long time.
There have also been many oddities in my life that I cannot give an objective explanation for — and all of it revolves around music. Music I still carry, and that still plays on your phones. But I feel tired from the life I’ve lived so far. It had so much — and so little. So little happiness. Yet the happiness I did manage to catch, I tried to put into my art.
M.I.L.Y. is the imprint of happiness in my life. An imprint of happiness — in the form of a mysterious face on the cover and in my soul. A face etched into every cell of my body. I don’t rule out that someone might say the track is rather sad. Well then. Perhaps I’ve somehow learned to be happy from sadness? Who knows.
Альбом, 2020/08/20
Love and Freedom of the Great Ocean
Once I despaired. But it wasn’t just once — it happened more than once. In such moments, it’s sometimes unclear whether you’re testing your Path for strength and truth — or whether it’s testing you. Or perhaps it’s both.
And if the intention is strong, something opens up in those moments, and you seem to step onto the next level. You realise it was necessary. And the answer comes. It must come. Even if you have to invent it yourself.
The answer to the call is not a dogma read in a wise book. The answer to the call comes from the very depths of our Self.
And at that moment, that answer was Love and Freedom of the Great Ocean — the fourth album by Ships Fly Up.
Album, 2019/03/15
Ghost Kingdom
The album contains nine compositions — or perhaps even nine stories. What are they about? To answer this question, I should probably say a few words about myself.
My faithful companions have always been loneliness and my beloved craft — writing music. I’ve been composing since I was 16 or 17, I suppose. Back then, I was a terribly gloomy youth with long black hair, a kosovorotka-style jacket, a passion for heavy metal, constant depression — and a dream. Over the years, my image transformed, the depression receded, but I decided not to part with my dream, so I’m still pursuing it today. On the way to it, I do what I seem to do best — write music. Perhaps it’s almost the only thing I can do.
My path hasn’t always been pleasant. At times, it was hard — even very hard. I tried to find meaning in my life, in my being here. I wanted to understand what I was living for. And so, continuing to follow my heart step by step, a couple of years ago, a thought about Ships Fly Up came to me — from somewhere deep within the Universe or from my own microcosm. I threw myself into this project wholeheartedly, because in it I finally found myself. In this music, I feel an energy that is native to me and true freedom. It was a breath of fresh air.
When I create and listen to what comes out, I enter a state of flow — one that engulfs me and lets me feel who I truly am, who we are (all of us, or not — I don’t know): ever‑living particles of the Universe, capable of travelling through endless realms and gaining new experiences and impressions. But if I forget this, the magic of the world can fade, and a grey hopelessness may set in — with its monotonous everyday life and dark entities thirsting to feed on life force and lead me astray from the Path. The new album is about this too.
Ghost Kingdom is, for me, a new and thrilling journey rooted in freedom — one that holds pain and despair, love and hope, mysticism and a connection to the otherworldly, as well as something else I simply cannot put into words, because it exists on the level of feeling. Some tracks revealed to me worlds that can instil fear and horror bordering on awe at their vastness and splendour, while others showed the brightest creative light in the Universe.
In the Ghost Kingdom album, I’ve expressed what had longed to be heard within me for years but had found no outlet. Perhaps it captures a significant part of the journey I’ve walked so far. What this album will become for you, and what it will show you, I don’t know. However, I do know this: whatever it may be, one of the main purposes of all Ships Fly Up music is to remind us that the world is far from being limited by the boundaries we inhabit. It — like ourselves — is much, much deeper, more diverse, more mysterious, and more colourful than we’re used to thinking.
Ghost Kingdom is the darkest and most depressive of all my albums — and the heaviest, both in terms of sound and the work put into it, as well as psychologically. Perhaps a true test.
Few know that after the official submission for release, I had this album removed from digital platforms at my request. At some point, I realised something was off with the sound — even though I’d listened to it countless times during production.
I remixed it several times, trying to find the sound that would best convey its nature. I remember being like a man possessed — for a long time, sleepless, trying to catch the right mastering version, but the album wouldn’t yield. There was a moment when, in the middle of the night, sitting in front of the monitor screen, I put my hands to my face, realising I’d hit a dead end and saw no way out.
The albums I release are dear to me, and a release is like a new birth, a new stage — hence the corresponding inner attitude. Perhaps the album itself wouldn’t let me settle for the wrong version. And I didn’t stop, trusting my instinct and the force that hovered in the space with heavy flaps of dark wings, casting a heavy shadow over the nearly born Ghost Kingdom.
The right version emerged as if on its own — hard‑won, yet natural, as if all that “spilled blood” had to serve as a toll for being able to release these nine tracks. The release happened right on schedule — March 15, 2019. And on that very day, my father passed away. Perhaps the Ghost Kingdom, which I described through wordless music, turned out to be the place he went to after his departure.
Also, few know that, according to one of the key ideas, this album was supposed to be called Anomaly, and the track of that name was meant to be placed not in the ninth, closing position as it is now, but in the first. However, things turned out as they did, and the track became the end of the story, not its beginning — which is now marked by Ghost Kingdom. And so, I dare to suggest that the Ghost Kingdom is but the beginning of life, not its end — what we usually call death.
Album, 2018/06/20
Dream Maker
I am the one who loves. I am the one who dreams. Love awakens me, and dreams give me wings. There is no more sadness — only eternity, in which the Dreamer has found his place.
Album, 2017/03/29
Journey to Ranucan
The album I have the honour to present to your attention is like a book to me — on its pages I’ve described my wondrous journey to places that exist on no map. I even feel a bit like a writer, though my strange manuscript turned out to be wordless — except for one chapter, and even that one was written without ink and quill.
I invite you, too, to embark on a voyage to mysterious realms that can shift and appear anew each time. They are unfathomable, and their number is likely infinite. Let music be your guide. If you trust it and let it lead you for even a brief while — releasing the pull of the earth — the journey may become truly unforgettable, just as it was for me.
Music is a bridge that connects not only worlds but also our hearts. Perhaps someone has been waiting for you beyond that bridge for a long time — and yet you’ve hesitated to step onto it. Be bolder. Follow your heart — which is the music that sounds within each of us. Each has their own, yet together they form the grand orchestra of the Universe.
If you haven’t yet begun your journey, then perhaps the best moment is now. It’s worth it. Good luck on your path.
Apostate
Rivers Without Time
Music
The Solemn Descent Helilont
Maxi-single, 2025/10/31
The Solemn Descent Helilont — a maxi‑single and the 14th release, featuring a Trinity of Tracks. It tells the tale of The Solemn Descent into the Shimmering Abyss — the source from which my wings grow, my thoughts emerge, and my salvation comes.
The Solemn Descent .1
The Beginning of the Descent. A Leap into the Abyss.
I decided to craft this track in the spirit of trailer music. I’m drawn to motifs that burn with eternity, building up to a final scene.
Helilont .2
The second track stands as the leader of the Trinity.
When the Abyss fills all space, it is this track that echoes from its shimmering walls.
Helilont (Light Version) .3
A lighter rendition of Helilont.
The metallic elements have been removed to offer relief to the repentant and to showcase the Abyss’s magnanimity.
Music by — Egor Fedotov
Mixing & Mastering — Maxim Larikov