Nazira launched ZVUK in August 2016, following stints working with minimal techno party Vzletnaya and the genre-mashing Bass Place. ZVUK has become a vital hub for experimental sounds, showcasing artists starved of opportunities to perform amid the glut of karaoke bars and commercial clubs dominating Almaty.



“You know how when you go to a club in Europe, it's not just music, it's culture? People don't think of clubs as a cultural phenomenon in Kazakhstan,” says Nazira. “With ZVUK I want to form this experience, so people see the difference between going to get drunk, and going to listen to good music.”

Although she refers to ‘clubs’, ZVUK is a DIY operation that involves hiring a sound system to pack inside non-traditional locations. “I'll be honest, it's on the ground of being illegal,” admits Nazira. This is a symptom of the lack of credible nightspots in Almaty willing to host an event playing avant-garde electronic music. It’s also an aesthetic choice.

“When you are trying to form a culture you need a clean canvas. If you go to a club with leather chairs that was playing Britney Spears songs the day before, then you cannot really put on something different - people will not understand that it's different,” says Nazira. “But when you have a space which is unused then people can actually feel that it's something different, you can do whatever the hell you want there.”