"Cukor Bila Smert’ (trans: Sugar — White Death) was a band formed by three graduates of Reinhold Glier Kyiv Academy of Music following the end of their studies in the summer of 1988. It was notably the maiden vehicle for Svitlana Nianio - then known as Svitlana Ohrimenko - with classmates Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi and Tamila Mazur, soon to be joined by guitarist and artist Eugene Taran, who would help shape the group’s conceptual and aesthetic thrust toward enchanting forms of folk-pop psychedelia.

As revealed here for the first time outside Ukraine, Cukor Bila Smert’ would pursue a deeply uncanny sound, at once frothy, piquant, but unsettling, and largely defined by Svitlana’s distinctive soprano, singing lyrics penned by her and Eugene Taran over delightfully rickety drum machine rhythms and tremulous, bittersweet synths and keys in a style that evokes soundtracks to imaginary Soviet cosmonaut animations or the febrile dreams of young conservatoire students readying for exams. [...]"