LUCH

At the heart of luch is a children’s glockenspiel recorded through two vintage Soviet microphones: the condenser Oktava MK-13M and the ribbon Oktava ML-16.
Each microphone captures a different side of the instrument — the clarity of the strike and the softer body of its fading resonance. Together they create a sound that feels close, natural and slightly imperfect, like a small instrument played in a quiet room. Nothing was overly polished, allowing the character of the performance and the space to remain intact.

The acoustic recordings form the starting point, but luch slowly opens into a wider palette of sound. Evolving textures were created on classic Soviet synthesizers such as the Ritm-2 synthesizer and Elektronika EM-04. Instead of static waves, these layers gently shift and breathe beneath the glockenspiel tones. The result is a subtle sense of movement, like light slowly changing across a room.

Some of the sounds were further shaped through vintage Soviet recording equipment, including the wire recorder MN-61 wire recorder and other analog processors. Passing the recordings through this hardware adds soft grain, gentle compression and small imperfections that digital processing rarely produces. These traces of the signal’s journey were intentionally preserved. They give the instrument a warm, slightly aged character — as if the sound had travelled through time before reaching your DAW.