Estonian avant-pop culturologist
Who they?
Mart Avi blurs the lines between personal mythology and reality, crafting future nostalgic, synthetic pop recalling everything from new romanticism and latter-day Bowie to classic torch singers. His sixth album, ‘Vega Never Sets’, brims with widescreen electropop, which is a perfect reflection of Estonia’s progressive, post-Soviet existence.
Why Mart Avi?
Creating music, videos, fanzines under his AVICORP umbrella, Avi absorbs culture, history and sci-fi to craft entire worlds for his art to inhabit. This is high-concept stuff. Take for example his 2013 debut, ‘After Hours’, an exploration of Estonian folklore and the real-life tale of Count Paul von Sivers, the last estate owner of Vara, the village where Avi was born. ‘Vega Never Sets’ delivers the same big ideas in a package of accessible synthpop. Take ‘Firefly’, which describes his time in a childhood gang, living in their own fantasy world. The track romanticises a time when Western pop culture flooded through the Iron Curtain. The album sounds like 80s music filtering everything from tribal rhythms, IDM, drum ’n’ bass, dreampop, ambient, while never losing sight of Avi’s vision.
Tell Us More…
In the real world, Avi is a support teacher for children on the autism spectrum at Tallinn European School, the multicultural institution where he studied and started his first band Badass Yuki (electro-rock cult favourites in Estonia). Everything you find out about Avi opens up more intriguing lines of enquiry. He is no average basketball fan, for example, turning heads with his essay about the NBA in the context of an erotic sci-fi novel in Estonian cultural monthly Müürileht. Inside, and outside, of his music Mart Avi is an artist begging to be explored.
Mart Avi blurs the lines between personal mythology and reality, crafting future nostalgic, synthetic pop recalling everything from new romanticism and latter-day Bowie to classic torch singers. His sixth album, ‘Vega Never Sets’, brims with widescreen electropop, which is a perfect reflection of Estonia’s progressive, post-Soviet existence.
Why Mart Avi?
Creating music, videos, fanzines under his AVICORP umbrella, Avi absorbs culture, history and sci-fi to craft entire worlds for his art to inhabit. This is high-concept stuff. Take for example his 2013 debut, ‘After Hours’, an exploration of Estonian folklore and the real-life tale of Count Paul von Sivers, the last estate owner of Vara, the village where Avi was born. ‘Vega Never Sets’ delivers the same big ideas in a package of accessible synthpop. Take ‘Firefly’, which describes his time in a childhood gang, living in their own fantasy world. The track romanticises a time when Western pop culture flooded through the Iron Curtain. The album sounds like 80s music filtering everything from tribal rhythms, IDM, drum ’n’ bass, dreampop, ambient, while never losing sight of Avi’s vision.
Tell Us More…
In the real world, Avi is a support teacher for children on the autism spectrum at Tallinn European School, the multicultural institution where he studied and started his first band Badass Yuki (electro-rock cult favourites in Estonia). Everything you find out about Avi opens up more intriguing lines of enquiry. He is no average basketball fan, for example, turning heads with his essay about the NBA in the context of an erotic sci-fi novel in Estonian cultural monthly Müürileht. Inside, and outside, of his music Mart Avi is an artist begging to be explored.
‘Vega Never Sets’ is on Porridge Bullet
