Balaklava Blues is the brainchild of Mark and Marichka Marczyk, creators of the multi-award winning guerrilla-folk-opera Counting Sheep and leaders of the mighty Lemon Bucket Orkestra, Canada’s notorious 12 piece balkan-party-punk-massive. They are joined by friend and musician Oskar Lambarri. Falling somewhere between a traditional song cycle and a full blown multimedia techno show, they fuse Ukrainian polyphony and other folk traditions with EDM, trap, dubstep, and more as a launching pad to explore the seemingly never ending blues that have long emanated from the Ukrainian steppe.

Mark and Marichka met in Kyiv during the 2014 revolution of dignity and ever since have dedicated their creative energy to telling the stories of their home country to the world. Their experiences of war coupled with their unique knowledge of the polyphonic blues of the Ukrainian plains explodes into an ethno-bass live set with astounding vocals accompanied by equally compelling documentary footage from the front lines of the war, black and white archival material from the region, and popular Soviet cartoons.

“Balaklava Blues music is a reclamation of the violence perpetrated on my home country."