The Making of Basement 626

In January 2025, the experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, traveled to Kramatorsk without pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel for capturing the emotions of a place on the edge of a battle for survival, and to explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation amid the brutal realities of war. They loaded all their gear into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city of Kramatorsk, and transformed one of the many basements serving as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.