Zhenya Wind — The Earth is Moving (Self-released, 2025)
In her fourth album, The Earth is Moving, St. Petersburg’s multi-genre artist Zhenya Wind steps fully into the role of musical storyteller, weaving a soundscape where ancient folklore converses with modern sensibilities. Known for her work in bands such as Myshi, Plavnost Minut, and Zoloto, and for her collaborations across the Russian alternative and folk scenes, Wind here delivers her most self-produced, arrangement-driven project to date.
The album opens with “Чей-то конь” (“Someone’s Horse”), setting a cinematic tone that blends raw folk energy with subtle contemporary textures. “Дубровушка” follows, its melodies carrying echoes of ritual songs and village gatherings, while the remastered “Колядка” infuses an ancient Christmas carol form with luminous string work.
Tracks like “Дрема” (“Drowsiness”) and “Космонавты” (“Cosmonauts”) show Wind’s gift for balancing stillness and movement, the former steeped in dreamy, almost hypnotic pacing, the latter gliding between cosmic metaphor and earthbound warmth. “Обрякуся” (“Ritual Dance”) bursts with percussive vitality, a reminder of her deep connection to living folk traditions.
The title track, “Земля движется” (“The Earth is Moving”), becomes the album’s thematic axis: a meditation on transformation, and the enduring rhythms that bind humanity to nature. The intimacy of “Алешка” offers a more personal narrative, while “Што ми е мило” and “Кавал свири” nod to Balkan folk heritage, expanding the album’s geographical and stylistic reach.
The closing “Они заколочены” (“They Are Boarded Up”) is Wind’s own favorite, it’s a powerful reflection on humanity’s place in the cosmos, where ocean depths, plant roots, and the spiral arms of galaxies share the same ornamental logic.
What makes The Earth is Moving remarkable is not just its fusion of Russian, Balkan, and baroque-tinged folk with contemporary arrangements, but its sense of authenticity. Recorded with a focus on live performance, minimal electronic layering, and organic imperfections, the album breathes. It feels like stepping into a series of “fairy-tale rooms,” each with its own atmosphere, yet all part of a cohesive journey.
Zhenya Wind invites her audience to pause, listen deeply, and rediscover the magic in cultural memory.
Buy The Earth is Moving.
Author: Daryana Antipova
Daryana Antipova has been working as a journalist since 2001 and is involved in radio (Scythian horn program), print (The Moscow News, Russia Beyond the Headlines, Fanograf) and online media related to world music. Drummer in Vedan Kolod folk band, director at Scythian horn agency and label. Her main focus is on traditional folk music, Siberian music and Russian world music in general.