ELENA'S SANDCASTLE is the main project I'm having at the moment. The name of the project is borrowed from the title of Iris Murdoch's novel "The Sandcastle". A dream made of sand, beautiful and fragile at the same time, easily destroyed by wind, water and people.

Several gigs were done with GOTHIC LETHARGY, the most important one took place in Moscow in January, 2001. Two larger solitary gigs I played at the local Rock Festival in Orel, together with bands S.C.A.L.P. and GOTHIC SKY, years 1998-1999. Though later I gradually grew disappointed in the idea of performing alone on the stage. The "new" SANDCASTLE has never played live for a large public, I don't count a number of small live performances for friends. In order to play live I would need at least two additional session musicians, a sound technician with good nerves and much stage equipment :)

It goes without saying that the Internet has made music more available. Sometimes you can make several discoveries per day - it has never been so easy before. On the other hand there are always people who abuse this remarkable way of getting music.

And why not?!

The very idea of SANDCASTLE appeared in March, 1999, with the new material that sounded more progressive and melodic than old GOTHIC LETHARGY works. This new stuff couldn't be recorded properly in a very small and poorly equipped home studio. For almost 4 years the only member of ELENA'S SANDCASTLE, born and raised in a provincial Russian town, had to deal with extremely bad social and technical opportunities for realizing her ideas. Inspite of this fact she continued to record the new music from time to time and stored it on tapes that are a bit more reliable than memory. Some of these interesting, but almost destroyed recordings were used on SANDCASTLE's first instrumental album "Per Aspera Ad Astra" that was recorded between years 2003-2004 in Sweden. Here belong new versions of "Breathless" (1998) and "Rope-dancer" (2001).

These bands have either been influencing or inspiring me: LYCIA, COCTEAU TWINS, LIZA GERRARD, ARCANA, THE GATHERING, AMORPHIS, GODGORY, THIS EMPTY FLOW, THE CURE, SAMAEL, NIGHTINGALE, AYREON, DEPECHE MODE...

I have several, but I'm not sure that someone else would find them attractive. It's not the places that matter - the feelings connected with them are of greater importance.

A big secret about the small home studio! Though there is no secret about the studio's name - Fiery Lake Home Studio.

New music from ELENA'S SANDCASTLE is going to contain vocals. If you are curious about what kind of vocals - you can listen to an mp3 fragment from "Destiny In Black" that you will find among the song fragments published here. It's possible that male vocals will be introduced into some of the songs in future - there is already a pair of singing beer-drinking vikings who are willing to do this special job.