Kedr Livanskiy is the pseudonym of Russian musician Yana Kedrina, a DJ, producer and singer whose shoegaze-y electronic music sounds as if it has arrived in a time capsule from a retro-futurist era. Singing in Russian and English, hopping between different dance genres, and coating everything with nostalgic tape hiss, Kedrina made an indelible impression with her debut EP, January Sun, in 2016. With her much darker debut album, Ariadna (2017), she (unlike the album’s mythical near namesake) led the listener deeper into the labyrinth, combining foggy textures with synth melodies that seemed to spiral into themselves, and forlorn, wistful lyricism.
After the release of Ariadna, Kedrina says she fell into a deep melancholy. She was broken out it by rediscovering a love of DJing classic house, breakbeat, and garage, and by a stint writing music with St Petersburg producer Flaty. The result is Your Need – an album that came together in the space of just two weeks. Deeper, bolder, and more playful than Ariadna, it’s a robust album that mines the past for inspiration, while rooting you bodily in the present.
Blasting open with a synth sunrise, the very first bars of the title track (and album) suggest an optimistic new dawn. Throughout the dynamic journey of the record, Kedrina places vulnerability in conversation with toughness, light with dark. The backbone of Your Need is its punchy, Roland TR-08 sequenced beats, while its joyful spirit comes in the form of vocal and Korg synth melodies that shift in and out of focus.
Lead single Kiska sets a childish vocal refrain against a relentless rhythm, and gloomy dub track Lugovoy is a moment of introspection at the midway point. By the album’s close, Kedrina has the listener locked on the dancefloor, arms in the air for the UK garage-flecked City Track and the breathless breakbeat of the stand-out closer, Ivan Kupala (New Day). If on Ariadna she seemed lost inside a maze, on Your Need, Kedrina knows exactly where she’s going.
