Vadym Matuzenko is a senior manager at Deloitte and is responsible for the Software Development team of 100 people. Two years ago, he and his brother Myron created a band, and recently released their debut mini-album and first music video.
Vadym Matuzenko is a senior manager at Deloitte and is responsible for the Software Development team of 100 people. Two years ago, he and his brother Myron created a band, and recently released their debut mini-album and first music video.
The two Matuzenko brothers are opposites in everything. Myron — a student of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy — prefers indie, pop and folk music. He likes to sing and write lyrics: at the age of 21, he already published a book of poems and wrote dozens of song lyrics.
Vadym, on the other hand, likes rock and metal, loves the technological aspect of «production», which is the most interesting part for him.
«How much equipment and software should be used to obtain a product now! It’s just a thrill to figure it all out,» Vadim said in an interview with dev.ua.
Two years ago, the brothers decided to create a band. It all started simply. One day, Vadim said to his brother: «I can play the guitar, and you can sing and play the piano. Write songs and we’ll be a band.»
Although Vadim has been involved in music since he was 6 years old and played in bands since he was 14, to implement the project he had to study sound recording, programming synthesizers and other instruments, mixing, mastering, video shooting, working with light, editing and coloristics.
«The most difficult skills are those that do not have consistent results. Yes, any song can be mixed differently by different mix engineers. And every such option can be good. Therefore, the presence of a mentor is a mandatory condition,» noted the citizen of Aitiv.
Myron also studied at a music school, but in the piano class, he studied vocals and composition. Despite some experience, he says that the most difficult thing for him was to learn to write good songs, to find the right phrase, chord or instrument.
«Until you start making music yourself, you don’t even imagine how difficult it is: to write a song, record a minus and release it. And so that it all sounds organic,» Myron explains.
The band was named Ion Iris — a choice based precisely on the opposites between Vadim and Myron.
«Our background with my brother is very different. Including musical. So, we had to meet somewhere in the middle. Our name is precisely this meeting. Ion Iris are two heroes of Greek mythology. It is also a flower and a particle of a molecule. And the color. This name has a big cloud of meanings and we will learn about some of them in the future,» Vadim explains the name.
On November 7, the brothers released their first mini-album «I» and the clip HOLOD.
«Our first EP (mini-album) is a diary of my emotions for 19 years. Then every day, good or bad, seemed grand. I think this inspired our «epic» sound. I often felt lonely then. So in many ways this EP is about loneliness. Hence the name — «I» («One») «, — said Myron.
The clip for the song HOLOD, one might say, came out by accident. The brothers booked a studio for a couple of hours and wanted to shoot a music video for a song that will be released in 2025. But already on the way to the shooting, all plans were changed.
«How angry my internal manager was then! You can’t change plans so abruptly! Half a year passed after the shooting, and when I sat down to edit, I realized that I had made a lot of mistakes that day. But it turned out better than we expected,» Vadim admitted.
According to Vadim, the most important thing is that they were able to maintain the pace and produce stable results for a long period of time.
«In the work of the band, this is one of the most difficult aspects — to be able to run a marathon, not a sprint. In addition to the EP with our songs, we have already released more than a dozen covers with a video series, — says the native of Aitiv. You can listen to them on the group’s TikTok and Instagram .
«The nice aspect is that you can start creating something with a minimal investment of money. And for $20,000 you can get professional quality recordings without compromises and limitations. (Although there is also room to invest hundreds of thousands). And I encourage everyone to try to make their first track! But the biggest investment is time investment. I have been playing music since I was 6 years old and I have been playing in bands since I was 14. I still know much less than I would like. You can get into this hobby only if the process itself fascinates you,» says Vadim.
The brothers oppose piracy and all licenses must be paid.
«This makes it easier to understand what you have paid for, rather than downloading 100 plugins from a torrent tracker and not knowing the nuances of any of them,» says an Aitivite.
Both music and programming have a large mathematical part, Vadim believes. And with the development of software, creating music becomes very similar to development in many ways. In addition, the brothers use IT managerial approaches in their project.
«We have Jira, status meetings, weekly planning, strategic planning for a year or two ahead, and of course retrospectives. So if you’ve never played music but are a software developer, you might be surprised at how much you already know about creating rock songs,» Vadim said.
Full Stack Developer Andrii Motko noted in the comments to the post about the premiere of the clip: «Now it is clear where the inspired algorithms come from.»
The main plan is not to stop.
«Write new songs, develop our social networks, so that more people hear about us. It would be incredible to collaborate with other Ukrainian artists. We even have a dream — to write a soundtrack for a film or TV series, I think we are ready for it. But the most important thing is to present our listeners with new songs (of which we have quite a few!)», Myron shared his plans.
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