There is a sound that comes from afar, from the worn folds of memory. A faint crackle, like time breaking down quietly, no longer something to be measured, but simply a trace. That sound carries the name of Mike Lazarev: a craftsman of nostalgia, an architect of sonic stillness. Born in Ukraine, raised in the United States, now settled in London, Lazarev has always approached music as something intimate, essential. His is a discography made of small, self-contained worlds, assembled patiently in the quiet hours, often in the dim solitude of his own living room. Classically trained yet instinctively ambient, he has long chosen the path of subtractions, space over density, essence over display. He calls it “spatial and reductionist pianism”, a self-coined label that perfectly reflects his devotion to sound as breath, not performance.
With Tarnished Tapes and Saturated Signals, released by Dronarivm, Lazarev opens a new chapter in his sonic journey. A natural continuation of Sacred Tonalities (Past Inside the Present, 2023), this latest work reaches for wider cinematic breadth, yet carries an even deeper melancholy. The title itself is a poetic declaration: tarnished tapes, saturated signals, it evokes a memory already half-erased, a time warped by heat and wear, yet still singing softly in the background. These tracks move like old cassettes forgotten in the glove compartment of a car, found again during the last summer you didn’t yet know would be your last. Lo-fi here isn’t an aesthetic choice, it’s a form of emotional truth. The noise, the breathing, the apartment hum: none of it is a flaw. All of it is presence. Every piece feels like an attempt to hold on, not to a sound, but to a feeling already slipping away.
Lazarev writes with memory more than with hands. Each note and silence is a small confession, every resonance a way to say what can’t be spoken. His piano, a carefully chosen W. Hoffman upright, is never forced, only listened to. It becomes a vessel, a partner in dialogue. There’s no virtuosity here, no narrative arc. Just a fragile connection between fingers and time, tone and void. Throughout the album, you can feel a tension between the desire to preserve and the inevitability of loss. The music doesn’t try to escape time, it inhabits its decay. Like faded photographs, these pieces reveal their beauty through wear: a sonic patina, an audible vulnerability. You don’t just hear the music, you overhear it, as if it were unfolding in the next room, half-aware of your presence. The mastering, handled with care by James Murray, enhances this delicately imperfect texture. Nothing is polished; everything is left exactly as it should be, touched, lived, true.
Listening to Tarnished Tapes and Saturated Signals is a quiet act of surrender. It’s like entering a room where an old tape recorder has been left running, catching fragments of dreams, stray thoughts, the residue of love and solitude. There’s no clear message here, only a deep, patient intention: to share the unease of being human, and the gentle weight of remembering. Lazarev doesn’t try to hold on, he gives back. He offers no answers, only space. And in this generous absence, we find something rare: not a story, but a feeling. Not clarity, but resonance. A record to be heard in darkness, in the hour before dawn, or deep in the night when everything else has gone quiet. With the right headphones, and a slightly unbalanced heart. A work that asks for nothing, and gives everything.
In an age that confuses noise with presence, Mike Lazarev continues to speak in a whisper. Only those who know how to be still will truly hear him.
Words by Mirco Salvadori. Originally appearing on The Lo-fi of the Invisible.
Republished on Headphone Commute with permission of the author.
