From Moscow screamo basements to shipped games & plugins.

When I think of Lowkey Audio, I think of me. There's no company behind it. For as long as I can remember, music has been my biggest source of inspiration: making it, listening to it, dreaming about making it, being sad about not being able to. That urge to create moved from music into sound design and mixing, and eventually into building the tools myself.

Just a disclaimer: I'm going to talk about everything at once and nothing in particular.

01 — THE BAND YEARS 2012 – 2020 · MOSCOW

EIGHT YEARS WITH MY FRIENDS IN TOLUCA.

One of the biggest gifts I've had was the time with my friends in TOLUCA, a screamo / post-black band from Moscow. I played guitar in it from 2012 to 2020. We had no label and no agent, recorded and released everything ourselves, and put out four records and a split. The last album was SORAS, in 2019. The band ended in 2020, when the pandemic closed the venues.

We had some wonderful collaborations and got to play with some of the big names, at least in our genre: The Black Heart Rebellion from Belgium, Heaven in Her Arms from Japan, Rosetta from the US, Harakiri for the Sky from Austria, Hexis from Denmark, Esazlesa from the Czech Republic. It made me a better songwriter, I guess, and a better collaborator and friend too.

02 — THE PIVOT 2018 – 2023 · FROM BANDS TO BRIEFS

JUST ME, NOT A BUNCH OF GUYS.

In 2018 I started releasing neoclassical and ambient music as VHEISSU. The motivation was twofold. I wanted to shy away from guitar-driven music, and I wanted to make an album entirely by myself. Bloom & Wither came out that August. It was my first record self-produced from start to finish, mixing and mastering included, and I learned a lot making it. The Automation EP and the Axiom II soundtrack followed in 2020.

The same year I started learning sound design properly. In a way I'd been doing it for a long time already, tweaking pedals, torturing guitar, using my own voice, things like that. I did have vision, I just didn't have the skill at the time, and I filled that gap by learning.

Then there were years of trying to find a job in the game industry. In the meantime I worked with some very talented people and great studios, doing sound design for ads and cinematic videos and sometimes writing the music for them too, which was a particular joy. A few of my compositions were licensed to TV. VHEISSU also got me the chance to score a film, which unfortunately hasn't been released yet, because of COVID and everything else that's been happening in the world.

03 — THE GAME SLIPGATE IRONWORKS · 2025

SOUND DESIGN FOR TEMPEST RISING.

Eventually it happened: a full-time job as a sound designer at Slipgate Ironworks, working on Tempest Rising. It's a classic-style RTS, the spiritual successor to Command & Conquer, with a soundtrack by Frank Klepacki, the original C&C composer. It came out in 2025.

Game audio is a very different experience. It isn't focused on music, but artistic vision still matters, and I learned to tackle new challenges there: how to make things sound cohesive and organic at the same time, and still impactful.

"Something that makes sense, something that doesn't distract, something that just works. You don't really think of that, but once you start thinking of it, you realize it's doing its job very, very well."

04 — THE LEDGER THINGS ACTUALLY SHIPPED

2012 ACT I EP GUITAR — TOLUCA

2014 MEMORIA LP GUITAR — TOLUCA

2016 DARVO LP GUITAR — TOLUCA

2018 SPLIT W/ FUNERALBLOOM SPLIT GUITAR — TOLUCA

2018 BLOOM & WITHER EP AS VHEISSU — NEOCLASSICAL

2019 SORAS LP GUITAR — TOLUCA

— SHORT FILM SCORE SCORE COMPOSER (UNRELEASED)

— TV LICENSING SYNC COMPOSER

2025 TEMPEST RISING GAME SOUND DESIGN — SLIPGATE IRONWORKS

NOW LOWKEY AUDIO PLUGINS FOUNDER / EVERYTHING

MY CREDIT ON EACH ONE.

05 — THE HOUSE WHAT ALL OF IT BUILDS TOWARD

THE GEAR I'M USED TO, IN THE BOX.

At some point I started learning C++, which took a tremendous amount of time, and by then I couldn't keep this in any longer. I make my own music, I help other people make theirs, and I use plugins, free and paid, and hardware. I'm very subject to GAS, gear acquisition syndrome. I own dozens of pedals and I've plugged into dozens of amps, cabinets and setups. I'm a bit of a gearhead junkie.

In recent years I've been travelling a lot and had to downsize. I still wanted things I'm used to, things that work and are iconic for one reason or another. Often that gear is out of reach because it's super expensive, or it's old and hard to find in working condition, and even a working unit is prone to breaking and awkward to wire into a modern setup. So many of us work in the box now, and it's just easier to offer something that works there, without the headache of plugging in hardware and praying it works.

I remember that feeling when you plug into a new pedal you've been waiting a long time to play, and it rewards you with this sound. It could be imperfect or perfect, quirky or just weird. Sometimes I'd get so suddenly inspired that an entire song was born out of a sound, and the result was something fun, exciting, worth developing further. I've kind of accepted that my music may not be heard as much as I'd like. But I'm not ready to accept never having tried to give people that spark.

I don't have the skill to create something tangible yet. I'm trying. For now, plugins are the best I can do: everything I know, put into the instruments and effects people like me would love to have, so they can stay creative in these modern days, which are extremely overwhelming and sometimes uninspiring. It isn't against something. It's in favor of a big change, perhaps even being happier.

$0 – $29, NO SUBSCRIPTIONS. SKIP A FEW BEERS A WEEK AND YOU GET YOURSELF A GREAT PLUGIN.

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