My name is Yegor Cherabaiev.

I was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, into a warm, loud, adventurous family where music was never background noise. Love was always the key to everything. Every car trip felt sacred and important. Every small moment together mattered. We appreciated being with each other in a way that I only truly understand now.

My childhood was amazing. The strange thing is, I barely remember most of it clearly. It feels blurred, like looking through an old camera lens. But the moments I do remember shine brighter than anything else.

The brightest memory of my very early childhood will always be the sea trips with my mom. We used to go to Crimea, to the Black Sea. I can still see it perfectly. I am running down the beach toward her. She is holding the camera, laughing behind it. You can hear her voice in the background. I am running into the waves, stepping into the cold water, smiling with the biggest smile on earth. Completely happy. No fear. No heaviness. Just pure joy.

The cover of my album “Last Memory” is a screenshot from that exact video. That frame is not aesthetic. It is documentation. It is proof that that version of me existed.

At home, music shaped everything. My mom loved pop — Britney Spears, Taylor Swift — the kind of songs with massive choruses and emotional clarity. My dad loved Russian chanson — deep voices, dramatic lyrics, songs about pain and survival. They would playfully compete over the speakers. Britney blasting from one room, my dad waiting for his moment to insert one of his CDs.

I grew up between those two worlds.

My father was always my example of strength. He was the type of man who knew how to solve things. Something broken? He would fix it. Something complicated? He would figure it out. He was kind and smart. He tried to help me with math for years. It usually ended with him losing patience over my stupid mistakes and me feeling frustrated. But now I love even those memories. I love that he cared enough to try.

He was the one who taught me how to program. How to build a basic HTML website. How to create accounts on Google and Facebook. How to play games and understand how computers work. He was a computer genius in my eyes. Everything electronic in my life started with him.

My mom is different. She is the true sorcerer of love. She is my best friend and always will be. She is my example of emotional strength and self-determination. She taught me to fight for my feelings, my thoughts, my ideas. She taught me that being sensitive is not weakness.

Between 2013 and 2016 was probably the warmest time of my life.

We were a big friend group of six kids — four boys and two girls — and we were wild. It honestly felt like we were living inside a movie. We explored every single corner of our neighborhood. One of my friend’s families helped us build little bases, like tree houses made out of random bricks and leftover wood panels from newly built houses. We gathered at each other’s homes. We helped each other learn how to ride bikes. We learned how to use small mobile phones. We yelled through windows to call each other outside. Summer days felt endless.

I still think that was the happiest I have ever felt. I have never felt that kind of simple happiness again. It was warm. It was loving. It was pure.

Sometimes our parents didn’t even know exactly where we were. They trusted us. They were proud that we were outside living. They were a little scared too, because even then the conflict in eastern Ukraine was rising. But we were too young to fully understand it.

Around 2012, another thing entered my life — childish and simple, but powerful — Minecraft.

I went to a friend’s house and saw her building a rollercoaster in a block world. But what caught me was not the structure. It was the music. I stood there completely absorbed. I ran home and asked my dad to download it immediately. He did.

Soon I was sitting in a small cobblestone-and-dirt house, staring at the square-shaped sun, listening to Subwoofer Lullaby. It meant everything to me. My father even built a homemade Minecraft server so we could all play together, even though we lived next to each other. The computer had a small label on it: “Yegor’s friendly server.”

At the time it was just sweet. Later it became sacred.

Music was shaping me long before I understood it. I remember my dad showing me how to open YouTube on his old iMac. The smell of the warm computer. The sound of the hard drive spinning. The first time I found Kesha’s “Kiss n’ Tell” and felt like electricity ran through me. I jumped on my parents’ bed with the volume all the way up. My parents replaced mattresses because of me.

I discovered Katy Perry. I remember running to the CD section after hearing “Teenage Dream” in a store commercial. I played it on repeat for hours. I discovered Taylor Swift. When “Shake It Off” dropped, it felt like fireworks in my body. When “1989” came out, it somehow belonged to all three of us — my mom, my dad, and me.

Then I discovered who was behind those songs. I started reading credits. I kept seeing one name: Max Martin. It felt like discovering the architect of my childhood. That moment changed me. I started producing seriously. At twelve, I released my first electronic album. I signed contracts without fully understanding ownership. I just wanted to create.

Then 2021 came.

My dad died of cancer.

It was harsh. It was confusing. How can someone just disappear? One moment he seems fine to you, and then he’s gone. I still remember every word he told me. Every piece of advice. I still hear his voice sometimes when I make decisions.

Two weeks after his funeral, I found the old Minecraft server PC. The one labeled “Yegor’s friendly server.” I turned it on. Logged into the old world. Subwoofer Lullaby started playing.

I broke down completely.

It was painful and healing at the same time. Every memory came back at once.

In the months after, my friends and I created a new server together. It helped me slowly stitch my heart back together.

A week before the war began in 2022, my whole childhood crew met again after a long time. We were lying on the grass, talking about “what if this actually starts?” We hugged each other and promised we would stay in touch.

Then it started.

When the war began, I left Ukraine. I remember sitting in the back seat of my grandfather’s car, watching the streets of my childhood disappear. Music was playing in my headphones. It felt like a supercut of my entire life.

I moved to Salzburg. A small but beautiful city. I studied in a boarding school with people from different cultures and countries. At first, it was confusing. Sometimes it felt like I had to change myself to fit in. I was still young. I didn’t fully understand everything that had happened to me before — losing my father, losing my home, losing normality.

At some point, I felt like I was losing myself.

But after a year, something shifted. I didn’t become someone new. I stayed true to myself. That is what matters most.

I am deeply grateful for Salzburg. For every person I met there, even the difficult ones. Especially the headmaster who pushed me. He taught me how to adapt while remaining myself. My literature teacher made me love literature in a way I never had before.

At the same time, I was fighting to reclaim my music rights. When I was younger, I signed a contract that meant I didn’t own my own music. After years of patience, I finally exited that contract. Reclaiming my rights felt like reclaiming my voice.

Now I live in Vienna.

It feels like starting from scratch, but with a full hard drive of memories. I carry the sea, the streets of Dnipro, my childhood crew, my father’s voice, my mother’s strength, every song that ever shaped me.

I love it here. I love what’s coming. I love the uncertainty. I feel grateful every single day for the chance to begin again.

Yes, sometimes I miss that boy running into the sea.
I miss that boy yelling through windows to call his friends outside.
I miss that boy sitting next to his dad in the car, singing along to 1989 like nothing could ever end.

But that boy is not gone.

He is the reason I am still here.

My past did not break me. It built me.

Everything I lost taught me what matters.
Everything I kept taught me who I am.

We will see what’s coming next.

And wherever life takes me — whatever city, whatever stage, whatever version of myself —

I will always carry the sound of those waves.