Backdoor Market: Chapter One

El S**u**eno Me Decía

A fashion film by Nikita Popkovs and Riga-based Backdoor Market streetwear commune, showcasing the garments from “PAIN, UNCERTAINTY & CONSTANT WORK”, captured by Panorama Production. Love, grit, rage and beauty – everything’s in our new sound work.

ORIGINAL MUSIC & SFX

Backdoor Mar**k**et: 
Ch**a**pter One

El Sueno Me Decía

Apex Leg**e**nds Tribute

THE DREAM S**A**ID TO ME,
I WI**L**L LET GO OF YOUR BODY

El sueno me decía, soltare tu cuerpo. 

Nubes grises atravesaron mi mirada, relámpagos al desconectarme, mi frente girando sin control, estomago lleno, aire saliendo, resequedad en los labios, frescos aromas irritando mis conductos. 

Despierto, pregunto en voz alta, que hacemos aquí? Gris del otro lado de la ventana, una voz me dice, tu ya sabes que hacer. 

Así es el trabajo.

Observo a mi alrededor y me digo, cuando sucedió todo esto? 

Quiero ver flores. Quiero ver flores. Quiero ver flores. 

Polen en el aire, dice la canción. El olvido de las estrellas al respirar. Tierra convertida en polvo. Polvo convertido en contaminación. Agua convertida en humedad. Humedad en moho. El aire esta lleno de todo. 

Como mis ojos se llenan de ti linda flor de mañana, fuerte flor de medio día, misteriosa flor nocturna, quiero resistir y escribirte mas poemas para que nunca te marchites, pero mis palabras callaran y tus petalos caeran, se convertirán en ese recuerdo tan hermoso que una vez brillo, que se escucho, el golpe de tus pétalos entre si, el susurrar de las abejas al volar.

Me abrazo, y grito despacito con el corazón: 

Resistencia. Resistencia. Resistencia.

ORIGINAL MUSIC

Apex Legends

Ha**i**er TVC

ALT**E**RNATED GAME M**U**SIC FOR APEX LE**G**ENDS

Far away on the fringes of the Frontier, Even Like This appears in the Apex Legends universe, an iconic battle royale game developed by Respawn Entertainment. As ELT’s first spec project and game audio case, we designed an entire music pack for the game, based on an original soundtrack by Stephen Barton. We integrated our music to the original gameplay, so buckle up, and enjoy your flight to the borderlands.

Since 66% of ELT team have played Apex Legends for a while, this artwork became more than just another project for us. To get a better match with the original vibe of the game, we started our sonic construction using the signature mnemonic melody of Apex Legends:

As a continuously emerging and self-revealing universe, Apex Legends presented every new season with a completely different soundtrack. Even though the key feature of all Apex music is a classic cinematic soundscape with signature guitar tones, each season could be sounding like a chilling science fiction story, a cinematic ballad dedicated to ‘ye olde good days, or even like a raving ommage to the techno culture.

We decided to discover the ever-evolving potential of electronic game audio, turning the story to a more murky key full of completely new timbres. So, our next essential task was to build an organic asset of sounds, which would match seamlessly with Apex’s sonic world.

To do this, we combined the ultimate power of digital synthesis with raw analog sounds:

The next step is befriending cinematic instruments, like orchestral drums and strings, with the asset above. By recreating the original Apex Legends signature synth, we could successfully set up the foundation of the soundtrack’s sustainability inside the Apex universe. 

After that, we could tone down a bit and use this powerful synergy in lobby music. This is the most measured part of our soundtrack and still the most important one as it becomes the “glue” of the whole composition, that ties all the incarnations together. Also, as a mezzo-forte asset of sounds, lobby music might be a great pivot point for further development of a music pack for any game.

Get ready. As the rhythm gets quicker and the bass becomes filthy, you are free to pick your favorite hero to step into the maelstrom of battle. Cinematic moods meet the ruthlessness of modular synthesisers – so that you don’t forget: there can be only one winner!

Of course, nobody can win all the time – there should be a way to learn from your losses. 

But if you do, you know for sure that a reward of a champion tastes like nothing else. The top-1 mini-track triumphantly closes the constellation of our sounds for Apex.

Stay tuned to listen to the forthcoming case studies from Even Like This.

Haier TVC

REST

THE IMMERSIVE SO**U**ND 
OF EX**T**ENDED BEAUTY

How to befriend blossom, hyperspace and serenity? Even Like THis took an immersive challenge to create a whole new sonic world where all the three natures become one inspiring flesh. A commercial for Haier by Ilya Cherepitsa – with ELT’s inimitable blend of classical music, synth-wave and ambient belltone eternity.

Rest

Sigur R**o**s Andrá

A tale of a bleak perspective of life directed by Edwin van der Sande, based on an excerpt from Anton Chekhov’s Dyadya Vanya play. Even Like This turned the amp all the way up to draw a finishing musical stroke to the cold and mesmerizing dreaming of the hereafter.

Sigur Ros Andra

OPPO RENO 7

H**U**MAN STORIES 
BEHIND MUSIC OF SIG**U**R ROS

What happens to us while we are listening to music that’s special for us? The official video of “Andrá” by Sigur Rós finds the answer. The documentary celebrates the way in which Sigur Rós captures and channels the humanity that unites us all. Alexey Krupnik and Katya Gimro, the directors, asked to tell how the music of Sigur Rós influenced their lives and captured their emotions from listening to their new track from the 2023 album “ATTA”.

AUDIO POST PRODUCTION

Oppo Reno 7

KIA R**E**D

For Oppo’s flagship Reno7 Z 5G smartphone, Even Like This developed a dynamic, progressive, breakbeat-inspired music theme which completes the modern ease of usability with modest but driving sound.

In attempt to catch the right vibe, we started with a simple disco draft as an example of an organic synergy of classics and modern.

As the things moved on, and the overall tempo has increased, we decided to reconsider our vision of the initial concept by tweaking the drum section to sound closer to classic breakbeat.

To reflect the diversity of a modern smartphone’s functionality, we created various melodic one-shots that focus listener’s attention on different features of Reno7 as well as the main character’s movement.

KIA RED

BALMAIN WILD

Our love of sampling breaks can never go away, as well as our search for love between analog timbres and whatever else one finds here. A director’s cut of a KIA Red performative commercial directed by Ilya Cherepitsa: harsh, sharp – and simple.

Balmain Wild

QAT**A**R 2022

Even Like This collaborated with Cat With Knife, a young directors duo, in an eclectic spec commercial for Balmain, discovering a parallel meaning of ‘mixed media’ in terms of sonic world.

Qatar 2022

100 YEARS OF BENTLEY

One of ELT’s earliest works and our undoubted highlights – a dream of a Qatari boy in a breathtaking, mesmerizing teaser of FIFA World Cup 2022. 

Initially, the main melody quickly became our jumping-off point for rolling out the whole sonic storytelling. Although, the question of an instrument’s choice turned out to be even tougher than generating the music core itself. At last, we came out with the most signature yet universal solution we could ever imagine – the cello and arabic-sounding plucks.


World music may bring tricky challenges to sound production, especially when it comes to chasing a distinguishing timbre (or timbres) of Middle East. That’s why the choice of percussion and drum section sounds deserved the most careful attention in this case. Switching between 3/4 and 4/4 rhythms helped to maintain progression and dynamics.

Besides the 2022 video teaser, Even Like This designed Qatar’s sonic world at a special ‘Qatar Majlis’ event, which was held during the World Cup-2018 in Moscow’s Gorky Park. The multimedia installation ‘Qatar Elements’ depicted the successor host of the mundial through the prism of contemporary art. The challenge was to find a perfect balance between traditional Arabic sounding and modern minimalistic flow. Result – deep ‘almost-drum-and-bass’ rhythmics accompanied with authentic percussion and flute tones.

Bentley 100 yrs

Yandex - Tours To Cultures

A car is an embodiment of speed and motion; but Bentley is the one that lets you concentrate and feel the moment. With DEPARTÁMENT event agency, Even Like This composed a neoclassical piece for a theatrical art installation in honor of Bentley’s 100th anniversary.

Yandex Tours To Cultures

Coca Cola HBC Rich

Calmness is a way no money can buy: in collaboration with Yandex and Arzamas, Even Like This took part in a fabulous trip to cultures, which united more than dozen of nations inside Russia in the most calming style of music ever created – a lullaby. 

“We asked: can one find calmness in traveling, delving into the culture of nations that live in our country? Admiring nature, architecture, wandering the wild, boating, riding, tasting local treats, solving the riddles of patterns, listening to lullabies – isn’t it meditation? That’s how we came with Tours to Cultures” 
– Yandex


WIth help of Arzamas project, Yandex found traditional lullabies from 15 nations across Russia, and asked local artists, including Bayaru Takshina and Synecdoche Montauk, to perform them. Even Like This handled the full cycle of audio production from art direction and music composition to mixing and mastering – releasing a full-format, long-play ambient album, depicting the spellbinding cultural diversity using national musical instruments. Our sound producers came up with compositions for each nation, including tatars, karels, komi and many more, provided with commentaries by Alisa – Yandex’s voice assistant.

To promote the project, Stereotactic shot an inspiring and soothing video ‘Cultural Dreams’, where our team blended different local tones into a colorful sound palette.

Tours to Cultures gained massive support from online community, raising interest to local culture and traveling. Hitting around 1 million plays on Yandex.Music, the album has given birth to more than a dozen of modern interpretations of traditional songs, some of which has never been heard.

New Star Camp

Back in early 2000’s, Multon introduced a TVC of ‘Rich’ juice that rapidly became canonical in Eastern Europe, having inspired numerous watchers and listeners, including our crew. 

Later on, in 2019, we were honored to receive a call from Coca-Cola HBC to rework the iconic soundtrack of Rich. Back then, captivated by the beauty of modern soul and neo-jazz sounds, it seemed even like then we knew exactly what it’s going to end up with. The challenge was to reinvent the original melody by bringing the contemporary vibe – but without turning to vivid and over-saturated electronic sound that is more likely to be associated with ‘modern’ one.

Although the message had changed a bit since the original ad’s release – ‘life’s good’ became ‘life’s inspiring’, Rich’s brand value remained the same: life is here to get pleasure from it. 

First of all, we started with a rough demo, brave enough to take a step farther from the core melody, but not from scratch: masterpieces like the early ad’s OST need to be handled with care. Double basses were quickly replaced by a bass guitar, acoustic piano – by Rhodes keys and so on.

Soon, Even Like This was lucky to set up a new, modern and refreshed direction of Rich’s sonic identity, which appeared in subsequent Rich commercials for the last years. 

New Star Weekend

Nike Wi**n**terized

Spectacular landscapes and enchanting motion graphics in a Cannes-winning collab of Sila Sveta, Stereotactic and Even Like This for Quiksilver’s New Star Weekend seasonal event. The conciseness of modular synthesis meets the grace of light and mountain landscapes.

Nike Winterized

Harper’s Bazaar Sevdaliza

At some point, we noticed that the vast majority of sports brands' commercials preferably sound either too classic or too edgy. Staring at another pair of boots beyond your lovely screen, you might hear a good old casual hip-hop beat – or another future bass masterpiece with full metal brass. Even Like This takes a step in an attempt to change the game: heavy and ominous flavor with a pinch of modern neuro-bass sound for Nike and Street Beat collaboration. 

Sevdaliza

Blu**e**print Mer**m**aids

Backstage stories are good, and good backstage stories are fire. Eventually made from a single noise sample, Sevdaliza’s video portrait for Harper’s Bazaar – shot by Fedor Bitkov – has become one of our core art projects, manifesting our own vision of structured chaos (or a light-weight version of it). Featuring Even Like This and our infernal modular machines.

Blueprint

Rakuten

“A red lipstick is a win-win. But sometimes you want something more”. Exploring the transformative power of makeup and its impact on the perceptions of those who wear and observe it, Even Like This comes up with an organic lo-fi soundtrack for a Blueprint’s short guide of a “festive makeup 2.0”. 

ONY Sho**w**reel

Eclectic, changing sound full of electroacoustic timbres reflects the difference of things that mean the most to us. Realizing our dreams in a Mutter & Vater Production’s commercial for Rakuten, featuring a German football player Lukas Podolski. 

ONY Showreel

Re**v**it! Dark SS22

Our oldest clients, eminent creative minds of graphic design and typography and East-European trendsetters of visual esthetics, ONY agency presents its brand new showreel accompanied with full power of mind-blowing sonic distortion by Even Like This.

Revit

Prom**a**x A**w**ards 2019

If any kind of motorcycle (equipment? vehicle? etc?) advertisement is tend to be traditionally associated with rock-n-roll and howdy-hey vibes, our track for REV’IT! new DARK collection takes a way farther look through, to classic analog timbres and warm distortion at noise’s edge. Our cinematic vision on one of the most recognized motorcycle brands around the world constructed of analog sound classics. Drive responsibly, and don’t forget the helmet.


Promax Awards 2019

Ve**e**am Bring It On

WHAT D**O**ES IT TAKE TO CREATE AN I**D**EA

Every year, marketers and creatives from Europe’s leading media brands gather to honour the campaigns from the past year that delivered audiences, created unforgettable moments, and helped convert viewers into passionate fans. The intro of Promax Europe Awards, the industry’s top prize for outstanding achievement in entertainment marketing and design, sounded Even Like This in 2019. 

Veeam

N**U**MBERS

For those who love it rough: our driving and filthy sonic decision at the edge of massive distortion for Ilya Cherepitsa’s commercial for Veeam. Back in 2018, Even Like This delivered an alternative vision of ‘motivational music’ by this short piece, full of shrill and harsh tones for a story of one’s fight for leadership. Cinematic moods meet modern bass timbres: bring it on!

Numbers

DIGI**T**AL PRESSURE
SORRY I’M N**O**T

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827

Sound designed by Even Like This.


Sorry I'm Not

NIKA**K**IBI

In the era of chaos, before the brightest sunrise above the horizons, may the noise be an obedient attendant of thou. Directed and shot by Anton Reva and Dmitry Stukovnikov (A$AP Rocky, Pharaoh, Tabber), Digital Pressure 00 has eventually become one of the first forerunners of the looming digital/analog transformation in mass visual arts, where Even Like This tells a story made of never-ending refractions.

Nikakibi

Atte**m**pt Two

Grunge, texture and youth: the Latvian clothing designer NIKAKIBI’s first mood video accompained by Even Like This.

Attempt Two

This story is dedicated to everyone who is fighting everyday battles – battles that we can hardly notice. Yet, those who struggle are the most courageous people – being surrounded by our blistering ignorance and constant judge, they keep on striving. They fight for themselves. Even Like This introduces eerie ambient tones to Leonid Kim’s short film about panic attacks.