by Aly Eleanor (@purityolympics)
Alexandra Zakharenko has always been restless. The St. Petersburg-born, Berlin-based artist burrows deep into sound as Perila. They rustle with field recordings, spectral vocal traces, and the physicality of space, even as pieces venture into different territories, simultaneously processed and emotional. 2024 was a banner year for the often prolific Zakharenko. In the span of a few months tailing the year’s end, she released two double albums: a long-awaited IRL recording with Ulla, a kindred spirit and frequent collaborator, and a vast, 21-track concept record about the tempo of the self.
It was a pleasure to connect with Perila last November to talk about soul bonds, taking your time, intimacy, jazz, and more. Since our conversation, she’s released even more music — this time, an archival sequel to 2021’s 7.37/2.11. New and old, past and present are always colliding.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Perila by Marissa Patrice Letiman
Perila: I'm in the mountains in France. It's very peaceful here, so I'm resting after city life.
Aly Eleanor: That sounds much more idyllic than the bustle of everything.
Yeah, it's essential.
Do you have any formative memories with music where you could start to detect that it was going to be important or that you would pursue it to some degree?
I was surrounded by music because of my father. We would listen to a lot of music. Subconsciously, I was already soaking up all these different styles. I was always immersed in the sound world. Making music came from searching for myself and trying to find who I am and my place in the world — responding to my soul’s call. In childhood, it influenced me a lot in terms of being perceptive and open to many different sounds, to be pretty free in terms of what music is. I've never had a musical education, so it’s all experimenting and research. Since I started releasing music and felt a response from listeners, it has influenced me to continue on this path. If I was alone in empty space, making music for no one, maybe it would be way different. But since there is a connection with the outside world, it’s a constant dialogue that fuels me to continue the research that I started.
Describing it as a constant dialogue is an apt way to put it. Since you've been a prolific collaborator, what draws you toward opening that dialogue to other voices? A lot of ambient music can get pigeonholed within solitude, despite being very open.
I’ve been lucky to meet like-minded people, soulmates like Ulla or Naemi. I'm not open to just collaborating with anyone. It’s a soul dialogue as well. Personal connection goes beyond sound, especially with Ulla or Naemi. It's a different way to engage with music since I really love being in my head and having an internal dialogue. When we make music, there's so much spontaneity and discovery. It’s hard to discover inside yourself when you're sitting and making music alone.
Talk about making Jazz Plates with Ulla and the experience of getting to finally record in person with someone that you have made music with for years prior. Did you go in with the mindset of making an album or were you going to see where the muses took you?
Ulla finally came to Berlin before she moved here. Before that, we’d been asked by Paralaxe Editions to possibly make a record together. It was an amazing motivator to meet. I was excited to make music in the same space for the first time because for like two years of our friendship, we were working online — she was in America, COVID times and stuff. We were transatlantic friends. Being in the same space was very…I don't know. We didn't have any plans. We just knew that we wanted to make some kind of jazz, using clarinet and voice and whatever was in the room. We met and opened up space for each other and things started coming out of us in this beautiful dialogue. [Jazz Plates] was charged by physical presence, which informed a lot of the sound, how it was made and how it was all flowing. It was like it was made in one breath. It was very natural, like there was something in between the sounds. Working with Ulla is always special and unique, like there’s a connection between our souls. Jazz Plates was a very special moment in our lives, and I think [the music] is a reflection of that moment.
The intimacy of collaboration is apparent on that record. It feels different from the other lengthy release you put out this year, Intrinsic Rhythm. It almost has the opposite of the warmth that Jazz Plates has, the warmth that comes from sharing space with another person. Whereas Intrinsic Rhythm is very internal, but not cold. Did it feel like the two records had diverging creative processes, or do they feel similar to you?
I think they're similar in terms of soul content and being very intimate and personal. Jazz Plates has that connection with Ulla. Intrinsic Rhythm was a very important record in terms of my spiritual growth, continuing the search for who I am and where I want to be. Sonically, it has a very thick palette of what I've gathered up until now. I'm planning to explore different sounds [going forward], but this was the finalization of a chapter of my certain path which I've been exploring with previous records. I've been waiting for it to come out for so long, so I already had time to detach from it. Listening now, it has such a colorful palette of sound worlds where I love to be and places that are almost not from this planet, but some other realm where I feel safe. I especially wanted to use voice because of how intimate it is. I’ve used voice here and there, but I wanted to challenge myself by making the second part of this double album just with voice. I’m taking all the things from my own intimate experience, like singing to myself and challenging myself to share it with others because I think it's the deepest I can get. I've been thinking about how it's music that is not for everyone; it's a very heady thing. It was also a challenge to show “this is who I am” and have a take-it-or-leave-it energy. I wanted to ground myself with this album so I could be myself without trying to fit in or replicate my previous records, building a unique sonic path and being confident in it. If Jazz Plates is about my relationship with Ulla then this record is about my relationship with myself and my soul, my relationship to the world. It's very thick with ideas, but it's all between the lines and mostly for me.
One of the most fascinating things about a lot of ambient and experimental music is how much is in between the lines, that you have to just feel. You wouldn't be able to articulate it unless someone told you. When did this record start to form?
This is probably the record I've been working on for the longest. I tend to make music in an impressionist way — feeling something, having an idea, and expressing it. The idea and moment are connected. Everything happens very fast if I catch the flow. I think I worked on [Intrinsic Rhythm] for almost a year. I didn't know at the time, but it started when I was invited to do a piece at INA GRM, an institute of contemporary electronic music in Paris. It was a very big thing for me. I was freaking out and preparing for a year, then it was such a beautiful experience. I'd been thinking conceptually about this piece for GRM and I wanted to continue researching this topic…it all started as a “sound garden,” looking at the sounds as if I were making my own garden. Like you went into a space and it's all evaporating and [the sounds] are interacting with each other almost by themselves, without me initiating anything. Then throughout the year, I collected more ideas, like what I wanted to convey and transcend through the sound. I was listening to a lot of jazz, like John Coltrane and all these spiritual jazz musicians. I felt, “Oh, I want to make something potent in this kind of spirit, too.” So I was thinking a lot, and the making was coming and going. I was living with the concept as a baby, growing and expanding it.
Given that expressionism you mentioned and how often you’ll upload little things to Bandcamp, even a year feels like an extended gestation period for a record, though it makes sense to give due creative time to something so intimate and emotional. How does your tendency toward in-the-moment expression get honed or reacted to when you're cultivating a longer work and assembling something as intricate yet formless as Intrinsic Rhythm?
With Intrinsic Rhythm, the sound of it was pretty versatile for me. There are some characteristics of my internal sound and music. But I was trying to collect all these different tints and palettes and colors to show a vast spectrum of sonic realms. What helped me reach this goal was working throughout the year, because if I did it in a month, it would end up quite similar. I think you're right to say that my music is very emotional in the moment. With this album, I was collecting sounds throughout the year — taking breaks, finding inspirations, and reworking material, like brewing tea or a good wine. Making something, putting it aside, coming back to it, and refining it was such a beautiful process. I could go deeper into things. Working on the piece for GRM also helped me realize the beauty of that process. It's part of my nature to be sporadic and spontaneous, but staying with a piece and crafting it is such a beautiful process as well. The result is very different from something spontaneous. I would like to do it more, a performance or something, but I need time to go deeper and break through things on the surface. Long periods of time help with discovering things that you never thought of in the beginning, just because you’re staying with them and pushing and pushing and finding things that are hard to discover when you have less time.
A first impression is only going to be a flash of response and it’s only worth so much in the moment. It gives you an indication, it's a start, but it isn't until you spend time with something that those feelings, thoughts, and reactions can deepen. Allowing yourself the time to do that is a gift we're rarely afforded these days.
I also wanted to do something more like a narrative. Working on [this album] for so long and making it fat in some kind of way, I wanted to keep a listener captivated, in the sense of narration and constant surprise. You listen to one track, you tune into some sonic world, but then you never know what's going to be around the corner. I like to break anticipation and play with confusion, working with the false expectations that can be created when you listen to an artist for a long time. I always push to discover new things because there are still so many ways to discover and express myself, just keeping it fresh and ~intriguing~ (laughs).
Something I've appreciated about your music over the years, especially with the two records from this year, is that each track has so much of that irreverence and variety that you're talking about, where you're working ahead of expectations. It's sometimes difficult to tell when a piece moves into the next section. Sometimes there will be an abrupt change that signifies, “Okay, we're in a different segment,” but sometimes it flows so naturally that it’s hard to detect. Jazz Plates and Intrinsic Rhythm contain both of those things.
Each track has its own space, its own realm, and so within its space I want to keep the suspense and focus, to create a beautiful journey to follow. I wanted to inject every song with vibrancy, so when you're on the next track you ask, “What happened?” (laughs) It makes you forget what was happening even a minute ago because the sonic world changed. If you're not just listening in the background, if you really go inside the sound, it's all for this immersive experience.
As you were accumulating the ideas that you would sculpt into Intrinsic Rhythm, were you drawn to particular sounds and feelings? What were some of the things you were thinking about as you were building the recording library that would coalesce into all these different tracks?
A big chunk comes from my obsession with field recordings and nature, and implementing them into my sound. From the very beginning, when I met with my label to talk about my next album, I was thinking, “What about having two records: one with voice, another with sound?” By playing them together, you can create your own sounds, always changing and in flux, with dialogue between two worlds, inside with voice and outside with a kind of electronic music. As for the sonic vocabulary, with both field recordings and voice, it was important for me to have separate records and try to push myself to open up more. I was inspired by Milford Graves, in terms of rhythm as a spiritual part of everything, the heartbeat and rhythm of life, the intrinsic rhythm — everything is rhythm-based. There is not a lot of [audible] rhythm in the album itself, but I was fascinated. It's leaking into some parts. There were a couple of tracks where I was experimenting with some drums, but it's more internal. I was chasing this spiritual element.
The way I work with music is never like, “I'm gonna record this guitar” or something. I have an idea, I open up a project if I have some material, and then I start jamming with the idea and inspiration. The sounds get channeled through a path of constant experimentation. When I have a bed of music or some draft, vocals start coming very naturally. It's a very natural flow. The idea and message come from within and the sounds find themselves through me.
How has slowness affected your perception of the rhythm of the world? How is it reflected in your awareness and through the making of this record?
It’s obviously a central idea of the record. Through all this research, finding that my rhythm was slow was a beautiful revelation. And of course, it's not that I'm an “awakened being” (laughs), but I'm on my way. It's easy to speed up because that’s how the world is. Being with this thought stream for so long helped me know how happy I feel when I’m in that slow rhythm. It's not only me, I think that it's for us all as human beings. The speed of life at which the world operates, with technology and crazy energy — it's not natural! I think the natural rhythm for all of us is way slower, though I understand it's very hard to actually slow down. But I caught this from my own process. I like to do what I call “log off days” when I log off from all social media, putting my phone down. When I'm in nature, I spend whole days without internet. Everything is very different. My whole nervous system calms down and I feel very nourished, you know? The next day, I have to check emails: *boom* agitation. I'm a pretty anxious person, so maybe that's specific to anxious people. The record reflects the feeling of being mesmerized by the details you can only see when you slow down. When you're always rushing — constantly in the future or past, not the present — so many things pass by. I'm a student of my own research, so I’m trying to keep it up for myself.
One last thing I like to ask any artists that I get to talk to: what is something that you love about your own art, about the intrinsic rhythms of your creativity?
I'm grateful to be constantly discovering my true self. That's the whole path of my creativity: listening to and learning about myself. The goal is to come to the center where we're all unique. We're kind of all the same as human beings, but each one of us has a unique nature, and it’s so easy to autopilot and disconnect from that. I'm grateful my creative process keeps me on a path of discovery, towards becoming my own best friend, my best partner, my best everything. It also teaches me to have so much fun with myself and my mind. I’m creating my own world. It's music, it's poetry, it's body, it’s being in nature. It's just who I am. It’s such a precious gift to creative people because the world we live in is challenging. But when you create your own universe, it's such a safe and beautiful space to be; it’s completely endless, there are galaxies and universes that you keep discovering all your life. It helps you stay centered in this crazy chaotic world. My creative process is keeping me sane, basically. Each year I can feel the benefits, becoming more grounded, more centered and happier. I’m very grateful for what I have, for what I’ve created for myself. And it's not even the end!
It’s important to emphasize the endlessness of that process and how the ceaseless nature of creativity is present in how we go about our lives and interact with the world. There's artistry there as well as in more explicit things, like a record or the text of a poem.
I really enjoy the metaphysicality of the creative process. It’s another realm that you can't put into physical things or even words. It's something that helps my mind constantly, to stay on this path.