Suokas was born in 1986, and is of Finnish and Russian extraction. By the time he was 12, he was already listening to electronic music, and making sound experiments using guitars, microphones, and tape noise. The only instrument he ever learned formally was drums, and he retains a sense that his untrained style on all other instruments is valuable.
Though his music is now so exquisitely nuanced, Suokas’s first musical loves included the crashing, industrial late ‘90s drum’n’bass sound known as techstep, and the rowdy and unsubtle party music of big beat.
Minimal techno in the 2000s provided a point where club impact and cerebral subtlety intersected, and Suokas easily connected with the Russian scene. Drawn to Moscow’s avant-garde techno community Nervmusic, he got gigs in lead Moscow clubs. Since then he released records on Multi Vitamins, Metroline Limited and russian Pro-Tez headed by Anton Kubikov from SCSI-9.
Transcendence through techno is nothing new and Suokas’ electronic ascensions soon drove him to more exploratory climes, including a new ambient soundtrack for the Vsevolod Pudovkin classic ‘Mother’ with Per Martinsen (aka Mental Overdrive).
A brief involvement with Karelia’s live, ethnomusicological trio ‘Yarga’ followed. Tour dates through Russia solidified the group’s highly intuitive, collaborative foundation and ultimately guided Suokas back to his roots and the realisation of the album ‘The New Cycle’, came out on PRAH in 2016, which has, in just a few releases, already trampled over boundaries between club, concert hall and extreme avant-garde—goes several steps further into realizing a unique personal vision. The album was rotated on BBC Radio by Mary Anne Hobbs, Gilles Peterson & Tom Ravenscroft.
On top of balancing music production, touring and sound engineering, Sergey runs his own label Laes Records, which assists local artists with independent publishing and production. Developing also as a composer of music for sync, he produces many albums for various libraries. His tracks have been used mainly in documentaries and television shows.
