The COVID-19 pandemic in Romania conspicuously altered the landscape of the music scene. While there is a strange and inexplicable feeling that something is missing, the post-pandemic experimental music scene in Bucharest has faced significant challenges, struggling with the inherent difficulties of operating independently.
Published April, 2025
With the ATOPIA collaborative residency, Rokolectiv Festival brought together Ukrainian musician Maryana Klochko and Bucharest producers Ion D and Inana to work on new music outputs. On this occasion, we caught up with Future Nuggets’ Ion D and Inana to talk about the Romanian music scene, pop, TikTok, and speculative philosophy.
Published July, 2023
PARADAIZ TAPE MAȘINA is a DJ duo based in Bucharest that exclusively plays original hand-picked muzică de petrecere and early Manele cassettes. Manele is a musical genre from the Balkans, also described as contemporary Romani wedding music.
Published October, 2019
“In Romania we have the advantage of oriental culture, it was close and everybody talks about it as if it was something bad. But it’s good, we have an advantage.
Published September, 2014
B0g - this great force by Easterndaze on Mixcloud Our Bucharest based bass buddie delivers another in our series of exclusive artist podcasts, by artists whom we like and who return our affinity (delusions of grandeur?) with sound pieces composed of their own recordings or as in the last podcast, by Piotr Kurek, an audio documentation of a journey to a concert. This time, it’s b0g, who was also featured on our second compilation with his massive Now I Want To Sniff Some Glue.
Published July, 2012
Minus and his glofi hymn, ideal for dancing on Sunday afternoon with your folks and stuff.
Published March, 2012
Tom Wilson is a British Bucharest based journalist, BBC radio correspondent and DJ and one of our connections in the city while we were there on our exploration journey in 2010. What’s the highlight for you in Romania’s music scene?The highlight of my year had to be either the Rokolectiv festival or Romania’s continuing global take-over of the charts with Europop artists like Inna, Radio Killer and Alexandra Stan.
Published January, 2012
Silviu Badea aka Montgomery Clunk is a Romanian beatmaker who arose from the Bucharest scene. With releases on Error Broadcast and the Russian hub Gimme5, the future looks bright for the 22-year old producer.
Published March, 2011
We’ re continuing our Romanian sonic adventures with the Romanian Miron Ghiu, a self-proclaimed Music, New Media and Cyber Culture Freak Gonzo Geek Enthusiast Manic Journalist Nomad“. His hypnotic audio journey leads us through the offbeat paths of Romanian experimental music scene composed of samples of legends like Iancu Dumitrescu and his wife Ana-Maria Avram or Mastino Surfers (kindly attributed from our compilation:) or the sixties Romanian rock band Phoenix.
Published March, 2011
Apart from the sampler and the events, we also recorded plenty of audio material on our journeys across the east. After spending some afternoons and evenings with our editing software, we have the first result - Romania.
Published March, 2011
Romanian project Makunouchi Bento creates music for non-existing movies. They played a great set at one of our gigs and here they are again, delivering an epic remix of another Romanian sound afficionado Sillyconductor.
Published February, 2011
[gallery] hipdiebattery: First Hipdiebattery Ep, Astronomico, Porsupuesto DOWNLOAD The Romanian artist and musician who goes under the name Hipdiebattery has just released her debut record.
Published January, 2011
Another live set recorded at our Easterndaze nights. This time by Bucharest-based sound afficionado Rochite whom we met during our Romanian expedition in July.
Published January, 2011
Anca Stirbacu is a young Romanian visual artist whose music project was born out of the need to complement her visual works with audio. Though experimenting with currently fashionable genres like witch house, she is planning to further expand her music project, so we are curious to see her future artistic development.
Published November, 2010
We have finally returned from our action-packed East Europen audio journey and are already missing the wonderful people we met, the places we’ve seen. Our exploration of the sonic topography of this region doesn’t stop there, however.
Published October, 2010
Photos from Romania developed & scanned. Check them at our Ipernity.
Published August, 2010
Check out this video by Vali Chincisan: Urban Tree from vcn on Vimeo. Vali also collaborated on other projects with Makunouchi Bento, Brazda lui Novac and others.
Published July, 2010
Even though Bucharest is among the larger East European cities with a population of around 2 million, the underground culture scene seems fairly small and interconnected. We witnessed one such moment of intersection when we met Anamaria Pravicencu, a prolific cultural evangelist who organizes the experimental listening sessions Sambata Sonora.
Published July, 2010
In the morning gnd’s beloved baby, his laptop died because of rain that got inside the other day. Deciding to wait till next morning to let it dry out, the rest of the day continued in a much better way - at the recently opened local organic “Kreuzkoelln” style café Omnivore’s Dilemma, we met Tom Wilson, a British Oxford-educated journalist and DJ who has been living here for eight years.
Published July, 2010
After spending half a day searching for a free place in local hostels we met with Mihaela Vasile who’s one of the promoters behind the seminal Romanian advanced electronica festival Rokolectiv. We talked about the local music scene, Romania, politics and corruption, about Bucharest being a really hostile city, about taxidrivers listening to minimal music or about legaly sold fake MDMA and the rise of the local drug scene.
Published July, 2010