Marjana Semkina: When Words Alone Aren’t Enough

Partway through a meandering conversation that touches on death, war, vampires, TAYLOR SWIFT, the French, ADHD, and criminal psychology – the list could go on – MARJANA SEMKINA says “I can’t explain it with words.” It’s a moment that gets to the heart of Semkina as an artist, who readily talks about her interests and the causes she believes in, but hasn’t yet found a way to really describe her new album Sirin. She settles on an elevator pitch of “a bunch of songs about dead people, and dying, and pain, and people buried alive. A few songs about war, a few revenge songs about my exes.”

What she can’t explain with words is her reaction to her native Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so she has written songs about it, like album opener We Are The Ocean. “That is a message to Russians protesting everywhere,” she says. “They protested against the war and knew they would go to jail. It was important for me to send a message that they’re not alone in this. It was important so the world knows it is not happening in our name and we are very much against this.”

Now living in the UK, Semkina has used her music to fundraise for Ukraine through her wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns. When asked if the state of the world ever affected her creativity, she says she spent the first six months of the war disassociating and didn’t know what was going on. But she had commitments, like MAER, her project with Anna Murphy, which she credits with keeping her sane. In turn, art became a device for processing her emotions, and she embraced her role as a musician, making music as a way of protesting, raising money, and relaying to the world what it needs to hear.

She previously hoped listeners would find silver linings in her music, which is characterised by sorrowful compositions. She is less certain of what that silver lining might be on Sirin, but points to art persevering in the face of horror, which will perhaps comfort those who feel just as she does. “A silver lining is that people will look at me and be like ‘that’s a Russian person who really hates Putin and who really hates the war. Maybe not all of them are shit’. It’s my duty as a Russian who’s against the war to make it very obvious and very clear.”

Back when she first started making music, MARJANA SEMKINA was motivated by the desire to keep people company. She would consider it a job well done if people who weren’t feeling great, who were depressed, felt less alone because of something she made. As an angsty teenager, she turned to KATATONIA, ANATHEMA, and TOOL for that same feeling. In the years since, fans have often sent messages expressing gratitude for her company when at their lowest.

“It’s the best compliment when people say these things,” she says, “because it’s very important to let people know they’re not alone when they’re struggling the most.”

Her inbox may about to be flooded with more messages of thanks. Of the stunning Sirin, MARJANA SEMKINA says she has “never written a more miserable album”. But she is amused that some songs turned out sounding somewhat cheerful and upbeat. “I find it baffling how it ended up sounding so happy. I really hope it’s not going to trick people into thinking I’m a happy person because I am not. Don’t get it messed up.”

Semkina is great company. She’s funny, honest, impassioned. She’s ambitious and competent at whatever she turns her hand to, although she laments the amount of admin that goes into promoting a new album. “I’m a good musician, I’m a shitty marketing person.” The rest of her year will be shipping merch and vinyl orders, when what she really wants to be doing is working on the next project. She describes having a hyper-focus, so creativity will take a backseat while rolling out Sirin.

When writing an album, she says her “social life will go to hell. Everything else will disappear. I will be sitting here around the clock, working on something, burying myself in research or literature. Sometimes I take trips to museums or the theatre for extra inspiration. If I need an extra nudge, I always turn to other people’s art.”

She shows off her work station, which sits in front of a bay window overlooking the sea, surrounded by instruments and often visited by her cat. The dream is to tell everyone she’s died and disappear to a reclusive mountain with no internet, her guitar, and a bunch of books, before reappearing a couple of months later with a new album.

Her headspace can dictate these periods of isolation. “Sometimes my mental health isn’t great,” she says. “Sometimes I have days of just wanting to play The Witcher and not check my phone and not talk to anybody for days and days.”

Although she paints a reclusive picture, Sirin is a product of a “beautiful team of beautiful creative people.” She describes guest vocalists Jim Grey and Mick Moss as ‘incredible’ and that they ‘elevated’ Anything But Sleep and Death And The Maiden respectively to entirely new levels. She has also struck up a friendship with symphonic metallers BLACKBRIAR, who produced the music video for Pygmalion, and she features on their song Moonflower as Carmilla, a vampire who predates the legend of Dracula by 25 years.

Getting back to her elevator pitch for the album, Semkina says there is no convenient genre tag for her work. With IAMTHEMORNING, she and bandmate Gleb Kolyadin decided on ‘chamber prog’ for Bandcamp and it just stuck. She loves prog, metal, ambient, electronic music, absorbing everything she is drawn to, and with Sirin she has created something that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere in particular. With her marketing hat on, she says this is a nightmare for advertising her music on Facebook. But when it feels like there is more music being released than ever before, making an unclassifiable and incomparable record feels like a significant achievement.

Maybe that is why her fanbase are so fiercely loyal, providing a monthly income stream via Patreon subscriptions, and smashing her crowdfunding target for Sirin on day one of its Kickstarter. Maybe it is a case of if you know, you know.

She says the faith her fans have in her is empowering, but that she is “not a very confident person. I know I do some things well, I know I work hard, but I do not possess the confidence of somebody who starts doing something and thinks, yeah, this is going to be a success. I’m very fortunate to have a fan base that is very dedicated.”

The connection MARJANA SEMKINA has with her fanbase, like her music, can’t be explained in words. In her world of dead people, dying, and being buried alive, her music provides the soundtrack to the loneliness and pain of life. And yet, those who hear it have never felt more seen.

Sirin is out now via self-release. 

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