Review Summary: I will remain unhealed.
What is it with humankind’s obsession with anniversaries and round dates? A few years ago, I gave a friend a big, valuable present for his 29th birthday, because I knew that he’ll be showered with gifts next year for the round date, but 29 is a number that people consider incomplete and unworthy of any special attention. Which is lame. Meanwhile, 2026 marks a sad anniversary for the whole Ukraine that would have received more nation-wide attention if we weren’t facing some much more pressing issues at the moment. However, it was an anniversary that DK Energetyk specifically could not ignore.
This April marks exactly forty years since the fourth reactor of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up and the biggest nuclear disaster in human history happened. As it stands, a lot of DK Energetyk lore is connected directly to that monstrous event. If you’ve read my review for their first album, you might remember that the band’s name comes from a historical building in Prypiat, a companion city to Chernobyl, abandoned after the catastrophe took place. The band also contributed some songs to soundtrack to the latest installment of Stalker video-game series, a move that according to the band members themselves boosted Dk Energetyk’s popularity and connected them to “the part of our target audience that didn’t know they were our target audience.”
So, for this big anniversary the band must have felt that they have to release
something, but they clearly did not have enough material for a full-length. That’s where this obsession with round dates must have played the part, much to my chagrin. This EP shows enormous potential and aptly explores a very rich topic, but it could have been
so much more. If the band just took more time and developed an LP with the same concept, we could have had a masterpiece on our hands. But, I guess, a 41st anniversary just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Which is a shame, precisely because “86.4 FM” is a damn fine EP even at just four songs!
First of all, the concept is interesting, as it is not just some blunt description of the events that led to the disaster or anything of the sort. The band explains the idea behind the EP as the sound of a radio station transmitting “radio-waves of tragedy” to show the catastrophe from the point of view of the power plant itself and people witnessing it. The band deliberately used an old Soviet “Polifox” synthesizer to add some “industrial dirt and that particular radioactive tension that is hard to reproduce by modern means” to the music.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the two songs in the middle of the EP are the ones that show the human point of view, mostly talking about the incompetence of Soviet bureaucrats in their clumsy handling of the tragedy’s aftermath, including holding a big parade in Kyiv on the 1st of May when not so far away the reactor kept releasing radiation into the air and the ground. Musically, both “Fish” and “People like Ships” are nice, infectious new wave numbers that would have felt exactly at home on the band’s previous LP “Squares.” However, it is the bookends that are the EP’s main selling point.
The first song “Melting” definitely portrays the point of view of the Nuclear Power Plant as it feels its own disintegration from the inside, which also serves as a metaphor for a human mind gradually descending into madness. The song unfolds carefully, starting with a long instrumental intro, which is one big juicy synth soundscape that sees the band finally moving beyond the usual synth pop route that a rock band normally takes when it delves into electronics and experimenting with some more “serious” genres of electronic music (“minimal wave” or “chillwave” maybe, but don’t quite me on that). On top of that, Yakiv delivers his most vulnerable and tortured performance, while the electronic sounds are expertly interspersed with recorded snippets of prayers, radio broadcasts, and scratchy noises. The whole song sees DK Energetyk moving well beyond their post-punk foundations and creating something barely classifiable. The final song “Unhealed” follows the same template as the first one with one more synth soundscape serving as a basis for other musical and non-musical sounds to be put on top of it. Yakiv’s singing is more reserved this time, but the synth melodies are even glitchier and weirder than on the opener.
All this is actually the cause of a mild frustration for me. This subject deserves deeper exploration. This sound deserves further development. And DK Energetyk is certainly a band that could have done it, if they haven’t been so determined to release something specifically for the 40th anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster. Taking their time and releasing a full-length with the same concept on the same date but one year later might have been beneficial for the band, but alas. Then again, can anybody in Ukraine afford to plan anything that far into the future? Maybe the band just released some music while they still can do it. It is increasingly hard to let go of the summer this year, because I really am not sure if I’ll see the next one.
