BRAII — Moth, Not a Butterfly (2020)

Post-punk band BRAII interrupted its own silence by announcing their second EP release at the end of the year. "Moth, Not a Butterfly" gets the band back to what they started with.

Really, when their "City of Nothing" (2018) EP, came out the collective was interesting to follow, for the audience which suspected it is a prologue only. Because Oksana’s spirit which is so glued to the music world would not let it end with non-full-format album. That is why the "Lovely Dark Things" (2019) album brought so much pleasure for the fans of this new Kyiv-based project, unfortunately, that cannot be said about this last release of BRAII.

The history of this album creation is rather prosaic, it may be described by one word only – self-isolation, as the music and lyrics were written by Oksana Bryzgalova herself, at home. To make it all work, she had to learn Ableton, the program for creating and recording the music. To bring some diversity into the sound of separate compositions, there were sessions with other musicians. Oleksiy Kryvosheiev from the Istok studio was the music engineer of the album as usual. Mini album was presented modestly – only a few posts in the social media and some comments from Oksana that were duplicated by all who dedicated the words to this event. It seems to be logical as there’s gonna be no live presentation of the release because to the pandemic. But still there’s one more reason not to write about this release as much as about band’s previous ones, and that is its ordinariness.

The only feature to outstand this album is its format since the band released "Moth, Not a Butterfly" as the video-album. Oleksandr Ostrohliad who had already worked with BRAII became the director of the 20-minutes-long video-album. His role remains under the question mark as the final work has no fabula. Actually, there were many people who took part in working on this material which Oksana advices to watch at once, without any interruptions to get the whole spectrum of feelings, to visualize your emotions with the help of this video. Frankly speaking, this work could be a visualizer, but it is hard to call it “video-album”. Because to be marked so, it should be in chime with itself, it has to tell us the things that music doesn’t. In this case the only connection between visual and musical parts of the work is esthetics, gloominess, as always. And again, this is the achievement of the art-director Kyrylo Yelyseiev, and partly of the photographer – Ilya Mikhaylus. As the whole release remains wholesome thanks to the common atmosphere, it lets you suggest that its metamorphose from a picture to the certain form is not finished, it’s not imago yet.

About the concept – the abstract sentences of Bryzgalova meet the results:

"Moth, Not a Butterfly" is not a desire to shine, glitter, to tell and show, to pretend it is interesting when it’s already not, to pretend you want if you don’t and haven’t ever wanted. It is when the things last too long and it is nothing to explain. There are no personal love stories to be found, no feminist moods or protest. These are the thoughts and melodies of the night. Dark, light, sad, drunk, deep, or shallow. They wake up when the city falls asleep." – Oksana Bryzgalova, BRAII.

The awake thoughts of this album heroine are unshaped and so far from the literal world that they aren’t worth further seeking of sense – they are a form with no base, a shallow casing. The things named in lyrics do not interact with the video part except one moment in the song "Beast Among Seabirds" where the protest photograph arises, showing the radical crowd handing the offensive for homosexuals poster with a "beast" word on it. That is all. The album tried to embody the things which are in focus of the heroine but there are too many themes randomly chosen and left on the half-path, uncovered, and raw.

Musically BRAII played a less successful version of their first EP. The contemporary post-pubk became even more contemporary, synthetic. But there is still one composition that intrigues in the style of band to which we used to – it is "Wake Me up in the Next Life". Furthermore, it is the only song in which we can finally hear the voice of Oksana a bit louder. Though the motif repeats and does not surprise with the uniqueness, the composition evolves by adhering with the guitar inputs above, and this makes the song attractive. It’s a pity, but all other compositions are too like many other ones of this genre, they all rapidly resemble something and more likely to be a background music than they can sound separately and characterize some certain sound of a certain band.

There is no reason to be proud of making the album in 2 weeks if it does not mean a thing to the band’s art in general, does not push it further. So the album’s name is perfectly chosen. To have a butterfly out of a chrysalis you should have stayed in the cocoon, in which we all are put by realities, for a longer time. The desire to use time this way is good itself, but it is lack of working and thinking hours felt there for something to be born and really fly.

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BRAII — is a Kyiv-based post-punk/ indie-rock band which was formed in 2017 by Oksana Bryzgalova who is the vocalist of it. There are debut EP "City of Nothing" (2018) which came out on vinyl and the "Lovely Dark Things" (2019) album in the band’s discography, also there are some videos. Moreover, the band has already had a few European tours.

BRAII in social media:
https://www.facebook.com/BraiiBand/
https://www.instagram.com/braii_band
https://soundcloud.com/braiiband
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvhMXOMu8cyU3cK5sFRoYMA
https://braiiband.com/home