IC3PEAK is a Russian experimental electronic band from Moscow that formed in October 2013. The band initially recorded songs almost exclusively in English, however, their latest albums are in Russian, except the track "Pain" on Сладкая Жизнь which was released November 2017, сказка which was released on September 2018. In 2018, a series of the band's concerts were cancelled or disrupted by law enforcement and the music duo were detained at the Siberian city ofNovosibirsk with no probable reason and they were not released in time to perform at the show.
History
The Moscow band IC3PEAK consists of vocalist Nastya Kreslina and producer Nikolay Kostylev. The band describes itself as an "audio-visual project". The duo’s first performance took place in Saint Petersburg, followed by a concert in Moscow as the second part of the series "W17CHØU7", to an audience of around 600 people. The band released their first EP "Substances" on the Portland label STYLSS in 2014, featuring the track "Ether" for which they released their first music video. The band released the EP "Vacuum" in 2014, on French label Stellar, Kinematics, allowing them to widen their audience in Europe. Their first European performances took place in Paris, Bordeaux, Riga, Prague and Helsinki, followed by more shows in Russia. In 2016, the band toured Brazil and filmed the music video for the track "Go With the Flow".In the same year, their first tour of the U.S. and a performance in Mexico took place. In 2017, IC3PEAK won the Electronics category in the Jägermeister Music Awards and the Golden Gargoyle Award for "best experimental project of the year". At the beginning of November 2017, the band released their first Russian-language album "Сладкая Жизнь" and the track "Грустная сука", which received more than 10 million views on YouTube. The album "Сказка" contains songs on social themes. In the song "Смерти Больше Нет" Kreslina sings from the perspective of a riot squad militiaman, facing the Lubyanka jail-headquarters of the FSB. The song features the lyrics "Together with others you will be twisted in the square" and "I go outside to caress a cat while a cop car runs it over". In the fall of 2018, the group, like a number of other Russian independent performers, started having problems with the cancellation of concerts in Russian cities by local security forces. The band have been caught up in a crackdown on popular music acts across provincial Russia, where shows have been cancelled in a flurry of local pressure that is said to have provoked an intervention by the Kremlin. They are still allowed to travel abroad and are currently touring China.
