Breathe

I originally wrote this music back in Noteflight, in June of the far-off 2014, and the occasion was a sad one — a tragedy in a relative’s family. Breathe is both the breath of the June wind and the plea: breathe, please, just breathe. At the time I planned it as part of a “Seasons” cycle (because why not go for the laurels of Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi?).

I re-recorded it much later, for an instrumental album on the life and achievements of Fyodor Konyukhov. (The album is instrumental apart from one title track, so I released it simultaneously as GENERATED - Vagabond on the Western services and as Полуживые - Скиталец: по следам Конюхова on Yandex Music. I think the latter has already taken it down.) The ending came out different from the original notation, and, I think, much stronger for it.

In the “reimagining,” this song is about Konyukhov’s famous round-the-world balloon flight, and Breathe is the breath of the wind. In the Russian “localization” it is called Повелитель ветра — which is the name of both the book and the film about that flight.

Fun fact: the album cover was generated by a Flux model trained on Konyukhov’s own paintings:

I even wrote to Konyukhov’s son — “no requests, really, I just thought you might find it interesting” — but never got an answer (which is probably to be expected; AI music is a polarizing thing).