Berlin art-pop and indietronica artist Gene Sophia Bogolepov release “Slow Down Your Burning” on 3 September 2026 through MYCELM, the label and archive Bogolepov run from the same city. It is the first single from “Dråma”, a nine-track album set for 11 November 2026, and it carries the darkwave and experimental edges that have run through the project since its move to Germany.

The album will be sold through Bandcamp, Qobuz and the MYCELM platform. It will not appear on Spotify in full. MYCELM states that the omission follows the artist’s ideological beliefs, so the album is being kept off the largest streaming service by choice rather than by a licensing gap.

“Dråma” was assembled by a small group. Diego Ferri handled guitars, production and engineering, Volodymyr Nestryga played drums and percussion, Dimitri Klochkov contributed guitars, bass and synths, and Scout Hansen co-wrote. Piano parts came from Andrian Lebedev, who died in 2021.

How ‘Dråma’ began, four days before the invasion

On 20 February 2022, four days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bogolepov was in the studio with Scout Hansen, working while anxious about what was coming. “Serpent Song” came out of that session, written from inside the mind of a psychopath, and the rest of the album grew around it over the four years that followed.

MYCELM describes the result as “an album about faith, justice, violence, and what happens when catastrophe becomes ordinary.”

The 2017 song “Mother Russia” drew enough hostility in Russia to push the artist into exile, and the move to Berlin reset the project. “Art Brut” followed in 2021.

Onstage the current line-up is a duo: Bogolepov with Diego Ferri, a Berlin musician and sound engineer who played guitar for and produced the Canadian lo-fi act Michelle Gurevich, and whose other credits take in BBC1 and work with Martin Bisi, the New York producer behind records by Sonic Youth and Swans. Recent appearances include Ms Artville Festival in Hamburg in 2021, Noorderzon Festival in Groningen and WORM in Rotterdam in 2022, Berghain in 2024 and LARK in Berlin in 2025.

MYCELM has also submitted the album to Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2027. No 2027 WGT line-up has been announced, so no booking is confirmed.

About Gene Sophia Bogolepov

Gene Sophia Bogolepov grew up in a working-class household in Saint Petersburg, surrounded by family instruments, and first performed in 2003. The early electropunk project T-Lazarus came out of that period, followed by the electro-rock band Gender ID, which played across Russia and Europe on bills with Ladytron, Placebo, Editors, Sparks and Apparat Band. Two further projects, Dukes of Betelgeuse and Ego Collider, ran alongside them.

In 2013 Bogolepov adopted the name 1314 and turned the work towards living with HIV, anxiety and queer isolation. The 2017 anti-authoritarian song “Mother Russia” produced a backlash that led to exile, and Berlin became the base from then on. “Art Brut” arrived in 2021, and the catalogue collected on the MYCELM platform now runs from “Ultrawhite” and “Home Kids & Bathroom Romance” through “[bodies] EP”, “Deviant Comedy”, the 1314 LP, “Art Brut”, “Long Awaited Silence Of Mind (坂本龍一に捧げる)”, the “Titanium” EP and the “Art Brut (Mycelium Edition)” reissue.

MYCELM itself began as Mycelium, a paywalled discography archive, and relaunched under its current name in February 2026 as what Bogolepov describes as an archive, community and label for underground and unsigned artists, most of them queer. It publishes as Mycelm Records and Mycelm Publishing out of Berlin, and it now handles both “Slow Down Your Burning” and “Dråma”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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