Interview: Cishynia Uspaminau

In the ever-evolving world of ambient music, some artists create more than just soundscapes, they build entire emotional universes. In this interview, we speak with Cishynia Uspaminau, an artist whose work blends atmosphere, memory, and introspection into deeply immersive listening experiences. We discuss creative inspiration, the stories hidden within the music, the tools behind the sound, and the personal philosophy that shapes the project. Join us as we explore the world of Cishynia Uspaminau and discover the thoughts and emotions that resonate beneath the surface of the music.

General info

Artist Name: Cishynia Uspaminau

Real Name: Yana Klindukhava

Age: 22

Location: Wrocław, Poland

How long have you been making music? 2 years

 

Social Media / Music Links

https://www.instagram.com/cishynia_uspaminau
https://www.facebook.com/share/18vMBD9mfQ
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6w9cB1IWIrF4WS3THKqage
https://cishyniaspaminau.bandcamp.com
https://music.youtube.com/@cishyniauspaminau
https://youtube.com/@cishyniauspaminau
https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/cishynia-uspaminau/1896257249

 

Do you release music under a label or independently?

Independent

 

Creative process and inspiration

What drew you to ambient music in the first place?

What has always drawn me most to ambient music is the feeling that it expands reality rather than escaping it. I work professionally as a graphic designer, and even though I love many different genres of music, I chose to create in the space between ambient and folk because the process of making ambient feels deeply similar to design itself.

The more I worked on music, the more parallels I began to notice. Instead of a color palette - musical modes and harmonies. Instead of shapes - instruments and textures. Instead of the balance between content and white space - composition and silence. Ambient music started to feel less like “writing songs” and more like building emotional landscapes.

In a way, I wasn’t really starting from zero at all.

Can you describe your creative process when starting a new track?

Because our music isn’t always purely instrumental, there are usually three different paths a song can take. The first begins with my husband, Aliaksandr, whom I create this project with. Sometimes he writes the lyrics first, and as I read them, I can already hear the melody forming in my head. We work in a strange kind of emotional synergy, understanding each other almost instinctively.

Other times, the melody comes before anything else. At the very beginning of working on a track, an image appears in my mind - a place that doesn’t exist in reality. A landscape, an atmosphere, sometimes almost like a memory from somewhere impossible. Then I try to translate that feeling into music.

That’s one of the reasons we named our latest album Mižśviety, meaning In-Between Worlds. Every track created its own unreal world in my imagination, and my goal was to let the listener step inside it, even for a moment.

What kinds of experiences or environments tend to inspire your work most?

I draw inspiration for music mostly from the beauty of nature. Going to the mountains at least twice a month is one of the few things that keeps me sane in this world. To me, nature feels like an incredible gift from above - something many people consciously choose to replace with weekends in clubs. And honestly, no judgment at all, we’re all different. I just personally can’t relate to it.

What feels strange to me is that some people in the folk-ambient scene seem to become so deeply moved by nature that they eventually decide this must make them pagans, and begin mixing spirituality and religion into it. Meanwhile, I see the awe of mountains, the irresistible urge to touch moss, sit by a fire, or dance around it as something completely natural and human on its own.

You don’t need to believe that an oak tree loves you back in order to love the oak.

What atmosphere or emotional space are you trying to create with your music?

As someone who has lived through a difficult life, I found the greatest comfort during hard moments in melancholic, trance-like music, the kind that slowly pulls you inward and allows you to breathe again. That is exactly the feeling I want to give to listeners through our music: the sense of a safe place, somewhere you feel understood without needing to explain yourself.

Our lyrics are often sad, but never sad just for the sake of sadness. There is always an underlying message about enduring, surviving, and continuing forward no matter what happens. That reflects my own attitude toward life. I can end up crying on the floor and then eventually stand back up and tell myself, “Alright then. Let’s keep going.” No one ever promised this life would be easy.

What moment made you feel like you had truly found your sound?

Strangely enough, it was during the period when I felt the worst that we finally found our sound. I became seriously ill with an autoimmune disease when most of the album had already been recorded. But something about the songs still felt incomplete, and I couldn’t fully understand what was missing.

Then, at the moment when I most desperately needed a way out of grief and despair, I started re-recording the vocals despite the pain. We began reshaping the instrumentals, changing the production, rebuilding the atmosphere of the tracks piece by piece. And somehow, through that process, everything finally aligned.

It felt as though the music stopped being just a collection of songs and became a real place - something warm, comforting, and emotionally safe. A space where the listener could disappear for a while and feel less alone.

How important is storytelling in your work?

Storytelling is extremely important in every song we create. Music for the sake of music alone has never really been our approach. The purpose of our art is to immerse the listener in another world, to make them feel something and reflect on it.

The conclusions and interpretations people take from our songs may not always match our own intentions and that’s completely natural. But one thing is certain: you definitely won’t find “background music for the gym” in our work.

What makes a track feel “finished” to you?

A track feels truly finished when both the technical side and the atmosphere come together to create a space rather than just a sound.

I often experience this both in design and in music - moments when everything seems technically correct, yet something still feels unsettled. In those situations, the best thing you can do is force yourself to step away from the work and return later with a clearer mind. Otherwise, you can keep endlessly pressing keys and changing details for hours without getting anywhere, simply because your perception has become too blurred from staring at it for too long.

Which artists (or even non-musical influences) have shaped your artistic vision?

If we’re talking about what shaped the style of our music, then my professional deformation as a designer probably played a role here too. I don’t just subconsciously absorb moods and atmospheres - I also consciously listen very closely to music I consider brilliant and ask myself: what exactly is affecting me so deeply here? How was this feeling created?

I sincerely admire the sound of Dead Can Dance, especially considering that much of their early work was created long before modern digital sound processing even existed. Among contemporary artists, I especially want to mention Wardruna for their melancholic and mist-like soundscapes, Gealdyr for creating songs that feel both deeply atmospheric and emotionally alive, and Vigundr together with Heilung for music that instantly pulls the listener into a euphoric trance. I also deeply admire Runahild because of how openly and honestly she expresses the captivating energy of strong women, and honestly, I sometimes feel we share a similar spirit.

So after immersing myself in Nordic folk ambient and the traditional Balto-Slavic music I grew up around, new songs naturally begin forming in my mind. I never really sit down thinking about genre labels while writing. I’m self-taught, and this is simply the only way I know how to create.

We’ve had people call us “posers” a few times, and I laughed for a long time afterwards because my genuine reaction was: sorry, but what exactly are we supposedly pretending to be? We write the music and lyrics that genuinely come to us. I create visuals and aesthetics that simply feel beautiful and authentic to me. We make videos and photographs that match the worlds we imagine.

Cishynia Uspaminau exists only to be Cishynia Uspaminau, not “the Slavic version of Dead Can Dance with a tagelharpa in hand.”

 

Gear and setup

Are you using hardware instruments, software, or a hybrid setup?

We use a hybrid setup. We record a real tagelharpa and layered live vocals, sometimes with many vocal tracks stacked together to create a more immersive and ethereal atmosphere.

For most of the remaining instrumentation and sound design, we work with software and plugins. A huge part of our process is building textures, spaces, and atmosphere inside the DAW rather than simply recording instruments in a traditional way.

What's your favorite piece of gear or plugin, and why?

Our favorite plugin library is probably GROTH. We absolutely love how versatile and atmospheric it is. It has an enormous range of dark synths, textures, drones, and cinematic sounds that fit perfectly into the worlds we try to create with our music.

What piece of gear completely changed your workflow?

At this point, we use something from GROTH in almost every track. It’s one of those rare libraries that instantly inspires new ideas the moment you open it.

 

Challenges

What's been the biggest challenge so far in creating ambient music?

For me, the biggest challenge in creating ambient music is finding the right balance between sonic richness and the length of the composition. And honestly, I think this is a challenge not only for beginner musicians like us.

Even with well-known artists, you can sometimes hear a 15-minute track where seven of those minutes feel artificially stretched out, to the point where you want to skip ahead. Or the opposite happens: a track only just begins to unfold and suddenly - the song is already over.

How do you stay motivated or inspired when you're in a creative rut?

What keeps me motivated is the sincere belief that my music carries something good - that it can comfort someone, bring them joy, or help them endure a difficult moment. I don’t believe this gift was given to me for no reason, and I don’t want to waste what I’ve been entrusted with.

When I hit a creative block and no new music seems to come to mind, I shift my focus to other parts of the artistic process instead: sound design, visual work, editing graphics, or imagining the stories and scenes for future music videos.

How do streaming platforms affect the way you release music, or what is your relationship with those platforms?

There are definitely some frustrating aspects to streaming platforms. Sometimes the algorithms feel almost completely random, and it can be strange seeing AI-generated music placed alongside work that people spent months or years creating emotionally and manually.

At the same time, I can’t say we’ve experienced some dramatic “the algorithm completely ignored our release” situation. Our music has still managed to find listeners, and honestly, we’re grateful for that.

I think streaming platforms are a bit chaotic for everyone right now. You can’t fully rely on them, but they still give independent artists like us the opportunity to reach people from completely different parts of the world, and that part is genuinely beautiful.

What are your thoughts on AI's impact on music and art? Have you, in any form, used it in your approach to creating and shaping ideas?

In the hands of someone who wants to deceive people and make money out of thin air, AI becomes a tool for a scammer. But in the hands of a young musician, AI can be an incredible teacher.

Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to instantly get answers to questions like: "Does this note harmonize well with this one?", "How do I achieve this plugin sound?", "What time signature would fit this musical idea?" Back then, finding answers often meant spending hours scrolling through forums and tutorials.

I’m genuinely glad I started my musical journey in a time when knowledge can appear in front of you within seconds. I believe AI should exist as a creative and educational assistant, not as a replacement for the composer.

How do you see AI evolving in music and art? Are you cautious about it, or do you think it will increasingly function as a tool within creative workflows?

Honestly, I think young musicians suffer more from AI hysteria than from AI-generated music itself. I can handle criticism calmly - everyone has different tastes and opinions. But comments like “AI garbage” under my music instantly drive me insane because of how absurd they are.

Do people genuinely believe AI would come up with a nine-minute Slavic ambient folk ballad mixed with doom metal and structured in four acts? That kind of strange, overly ambitious idea is something only a human would create.

And honestly… probably a very specific kind of human...

What are you currently working on?

We’ve just released our album, so right now we’re heavily focused on promoting it. At the same time, work on the next album has already begun. Honestly, I keep trying to balance the emotionally heavy compositions with lighter ones, but somehow everything still turns into something soul-crushing in the end. I suppose that simply reflects the period of life I’m currently living through.

We’re also planning more experiments and collaborations with artists working in Nordic folk ambient. One collaborative track is already in progress. We have a lot of exciting ideas, and I truly hope that my health improves and life becomes a little more stable, so we can fully bring all of them to life.

What advice would you give to new ambient artists?

This may sound strange, but trust your ears more than your meters, and trust your heart more than trends. Let inspiration guide you.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Our project was never originally planned as something serious, and we certainly didn’t expect anyone to actually listen to us. But somewhere along the way, we realized that creating this music absorbed us so deeply that it allowed us to escape from all the chaos and problems around us.

Even when our recordings were still low quality, there were already people who genuinely connected with what we were doing. And together, those things made us realize that this was worth developing further, not just as a joke or a random experiment anymore, but as something real.

And now, somehow, we’ve built a small audience, become recognizable within the Belarusian scene, and started collaborating with artists whose music we ourselves used to admire as fans.

I think the soul naturally tries to find the place where it truly belongs, almost like a puzzle piece searching for its position. Don’t resist that feeling, and life begins to feel far more meaningful.

 

The sound of Cishynia Uspaminau