5/8 : radio

Kikok — 5/8 : Radio #259

You're riding an old bicycle along a dirt road through a dacha cooperative. Every time you hit a bump, the rusty bell and the slightly wobbly rear rack give a little jingle. In the distance, you can see a wall of towering pine crowns. The sky is clouding over, promising rain soon. You pedal past wooden houses with peeling paint on their walls, overgrown garden plots, lopsided fences tightly woven with ivy, concrete posts plastered with sun-yellowed ads for crushed stone, and apple trees bending low toward the ground. For some reason, you feel like you need to keep going — down to the creek, deep into the forest. But you stop. Somewhere far away, through the singing of unknown birds, the whine of a chainsaw, and the bark of a lonely dog, the melodies of the kikok mix for 5/8: radio reach your ears — and suddenly, you feel a sense of peace you haven't felt in a long, long time.

Call Weirdo — 5/8 : Radio #258

You're standing in front of a monumental building made of concrete and glass. The wind blows dry leaves across a small square paved with stone tiles arranged in a pattern that looks like your grandmother's living room rug. Under a wide canopy, an old-fashioned sign glows with cold neon light: "Cultural Center." A young man in a turtleneck sweater—with a strikingly familiar face—dashes out of the lobby, only to be called back by a girl in thick glasses: "Borya, what nonsense are you up to now?" But Boris disappears into a shady alley lined with towering firs. The wind picks up, and an unusually large moon peeks out from behind the clouds. Swarms of young people rush past you toward the building. You catch fragments of conversation: "I don't need a lab assistant job—I need to lie on a pebble beach." "Lyubochka, you don't pine over men in hideous shoes like those." Suddenly, a captivating voice over the speakers announces that they're about to play the call weirdo's mix for 5/8: radio — and your feet carry you forward, straight toward the Cultural Center. Because missing something like this is simply not an option.

Cloower Wooma — 5/8 : Radio #257

Cloower Wooma — 5/8 : Radio #257 by 5/8 : Radio

shtozh poigraem — 5/8 : Radio #256

You're standing on the embankment of an old town, pieced together like a construction kit from dozens of different places you've already been. Ahead lies a wide strait, where large cargo ships glide slowly past. On the opposite shore, veiled in a light haze, are the crimson lights of a TV tower and the sharp spire of a town hall, hemmed in on all sides by intricate old houses. You absolutely must get there. Against the sunset sky, painted in every shade of orange, seagulls circle noisily. In your hand is a crumpled paper ticket for the ferry, which stubbornly refuses to dock, though it's long overdue. Suddenly, from the cheap eatery behind you — where middle-aged men in loose shirts, sitting at plastic tables with empty shot glasses and unlabeled bottles of cheap liquor, are locked in a chess match — a mix by shtozh poigraem for 5/8: radio begins to play. And you want to stay. To listen to the music, to watch the waves break against the embankment stones, and to wait for the night to descend upon the city

Andrey Panin — 5/8 : Radio #255

Maybe it’s the pattern of the paving stones, or maybe it’s the design on a stranger’s scarf in the metro, but something suddenly reminds you of that apartment carpet. The very apartment that, not so long ago — just yesterday, it feels — was the very definition of home. With its old, creaky parquet in the hallway, the clothesline with multicolored pegs on the balcony, the sideboard from a city starting with a "B" (Bucharest? Budapest? Bryansk?), the terrifyingly gas water heater, and, of course, the big living room carpet. Now, it is home to completely different people. People who know nothing about the sideboard, or about how you used to love studying the patterns on that very carpet, watching the shadows of the towering poplars outside the window while your grandmother conjured up lunch by the stove in the kitchen. And doing so would have been a hundred times more pleasant with Andrey Panin's mix for 5/8: Radio playing in the background. That much is certain