Listening Hymns | ILYICH

Listening Hymns is a performative spoken word archive. Tracing ways of listening through the words of artists, musicians, poets, writers, meditators and activists, the ever-growing selection of voices speaks volumes of the practice of listening through the performative and the sonic.

This choir of voices is performed at Refuge Worldwide as part of ILYICH's artist residency, interwoven with live DJ sets, samplers and percussion.

This episode is special as we listen to the latest album by ILYICH, Sudnozavod (Ukr. Shipyard). An artistic fabulation grounded in lived experience, the album draws from the sounds of 1970s and 1990s Ukraine, embracing jazz fusion, spoken word, pop, field recordings, electronic music and cinematic soundscapes.

The album builds on ILYICH’s stage work After Hope, premiered at Sophiensæle in Berlin, and includes sound and music that have made it into the performance or not. The album responds to global fascization, specifically through the lens of Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine, a fascist regime claiming to lead an “anti-fascist operation.”

While grounded in the specific context of Ukraine, the album listens outwardly, searching for resonance and standing in solidarity with other struggles against militarism, authoritarianism and colonial violence across the globe.