“Life is great… No fear and no limits. Just believe all your dreams will come true.” These lyrics from Hitarda Music Band’s “You Are the Winner” exemplify their goals and motivations in creating and developing their music.
In our search for exciting, new, and creative artists, we discovered this group from the Ukraine. We were drawn by the positive and happy elements of their sound and lyrics. The leaders of Hitarda are two talented music producers, Filipp Logvinenko and Ann Muse. They have found a way to successfully combine elements of electronica, dance, and rock music. Their mixture of these three music genres is truly unique.
Who is part of Hitarda Music Band?
Well, Filipp and I are the permanent members of Hitarda.
How did you develop this project and when did you start it?
Let me say a few things about how we started it. Filipp and I compose music for movies and video games. They are a lot of serious orchestral music tracks. We have been doing this for a long time. Once at the studio we were messing around–I was singing something and Filipp was kind of making a beat. It was fun and we even created a couple of song demos. That’s when we decided to create something completely different from what we do every day. That’s when Hitarda was born. Hitarda is another part of us, something driving, bright, free, and unpredictable. It was in 2011.
What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Interesting question…I think the biggest challenge for us is trying to get a perfect English pronunciation of the lyrics in our songs. I have to work hard on trying to pronounce words the way that native English speakers do . But I really like it because we end up with good results. First we saw little small changes but then they became more significant. It always makes me happy when I see native English speakers react well to our creativity. And last year we got a lot of fans from US, UK, Australia, and Canada and even got to the US Reverb Nation top 20.
What has been your biggest success so far?
Last year Hitarda was nominated for the Electronica/Dance Artist category with the song “Love Makes You Beautiful” at the Los Angeles Music Awards 2013 that is held every year in Hollywood for independent artists and bands! It was a really huge one.
Where did the name come from and what does it mean?
We wanted something fresh and extraordinary for the band name. We were thinking about it for the whole week. Hitarda is not a real word, it’s a mashup of two words. The first one is Hit that means really popular music work and the second one is a Russian word Petarda (English equivalent is Petard) Thus the name means an explosive hit.
Your music combines rock, electronic, and dance sounds. What was the inspiration to combine these styles?
We are crazy music lovers, constantly listening to a lot of totally different music. We try to apply new musical techniques in our works. And…music experiments are one of the most exciting things in our lives. But our favorite style is rock music. and I can say with the confidence, we came from rock. When I was a child, I was the only fan of rock artists in my environment, particularly Black Sabbath, Metallica, Aerosmith, Guano Apes etc., while all my friends used to listen to pop artists. Now there is a lot of high-quality dance music with catchy rhythms. Therefore, we have decided to combine our favorite rock with modern beats.
What makes your music, “music of the heart?”
This is how we feel about Hitarda. It is like our child. We love it crazily, do our best to make it better, spend all our time and money to develop our project. When we make something in Hitarda, I mean either making a new song or shooting a video, we do it with love and passion. That is why we say our creativity comes from our hearts. Honestly, I had a dream since my childhood, to compose music and to inspire people by it. So when someone says that our songs help them become better, express their love, or just get cheered up, it’s such a great feeling! So Hitarda for me is all about love, happiness…
What is your creative process like? From where do you draw inspiration?
To be honest, anything can inspire us. It can be sunny days in winter, a walk through our favorite places, good music, good food, good friends. And sometimes a variety of things can generate a seemingly opposite reaction. For example, we watched a horror movie and then created the song Love Makes You Beautiful. The muse comes often in very inappropriate places. It can happen for instance, in the underground and then I start thinking of how to keep a melody in my mind. It is especially hard when at the same time another song comes from somebody’s phone or other device.
What do readers and listeners have to look forward to from Hitarda?
One of the nearest goals of our band is to go on a world tour that is planned for this year. We want to see our amazing fans personally, talk to them, and share our creativity and our energy. It will be a great tour, a long-awaited meeting, and a lot of music. We have great fans! Not only do we inspire them, but they inspire and support us as well. It is very nice to receive their wonderful comments, and heartfelt letters.
