This beat is Mirosonic

After an extended musical sojourn, West Australian techno artist/producer Mirosonic, AKA Myroslav Gutej, has returned to the electronic dance music world with the release of the compelling CATWALK TRANCE!!! and CATWALK TRANCE!!! (Galaxy Club Mix). He chats with BOB GORDON about his diverse musical life and his passion for electronic music.

It’s been a long and winding creative road for Mirosonic, who has led a life rich in culture and music. From the beloved traditions of his family background (his father was from Ukraine and his mother from Slovenia) and the artistic fabric it brought to his life, to his mother and father encouraging him as a young boy to play accordion and then to very seriously undertake study in piano, practicing some 10 hours a day as he went into tertiary education and continuing to do so into his thirties.

“I was not a natural; I worked my butt off. I’m no (virtuoso classical pianist) Vladimir Horowitz, but I’m pretty good,” he laughs.

The nature of the man and his creative processes are woven together by a love of music along with a fascination for the future and the infinite possibilities of space.

A classically trained pianist and gifted accordionist, Mirosonic has for many years composed and performed at venues all around WA across a wide diversity of genres, from classical to jazz, rock to traditional Ukrainian, European and Gypsy music, then back again and beyond. He studied piano at the University of Western Australia and WAAPA, but an academic approach to music was not for him.

Of all the genres he had played and enjoyed as a professional musician, it took a seemingly random occurrence to sway Mirosonic towards the music that captivated him and has now brought him back to an active musical existence following a decade of ill health.

Way back in late 1992, techno music bombarded him from a passing car as Mirosonic stood on the corner of William Street and Roe Street at the bottom of Perth’s Horseshoe Bridge on a Friday afternoon as he waited at a red light. He didn’t yet know it, but the light was about to turn green on his electronic dance music journey.

“When I heard the sound, I was ecstatic,” Mirosonic recalls. “I asked the guy next to me what kind of music it was, and he told me that’s what they were playing at clubs. I suddenly wanted to write that stuff. It was just immediate.”

The track being blared was Timezone by 2 Unlimited, as Mirosonic soon discovered when he began visiting the clubs in Northbridge where legendary DJ Simon Barwood was king. Mirosonic was spellbound by tracks such as Workaholic, Human Resource’s Dominator and L.A. Style’s James Brown Is Dead. He was obsessed, and as a composer, he had the ability to write a cavalcade of scores for new techno pieces on sheet music, even though it would be a long time before he had the instruments or equipment to create such tracks. He would then visit Kosmic music store to practice the melodies he’d written.

Eventually, Mirosonic built up a collection of equipment and was able to produce his techno and rave tracks. His early techno/rave scores from 1993–96 were arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs and folk-dance melodies, but by ’96, Mirosonic became fascinated by images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that appeared in Time Magazine. He contemplated space and its frontiers and pondered when humans could make regular space travel a normality. He declared that it would be in 3002 AD and recorded tracks united by that theme throughout the mid-2000s.

Galactic notions fed into his music, with those images of space continuing to fuel the melodies he created. Futurism would abound on both the dance and Ukrainian techno/rave tracks he composed. His thirst for the future-esque would ultimately guide Mirosonic in differentiating his music from what else was out there in the techno world and throughout clubland. With club music constantly evolving, he decided that he didn’t want to keep up; he wanted to go forward.

“That’s when I decided to go futuristic,” he says. “I would be that far ahead that I would never fall behind. That’s actually what happened in my head. I would look at the Hubble Telescope images, and melodies would flow from it. That’s how I did it.”

As with all music careers, there were stops and starts. Then Mirosonic really stopped. Some 11 years passed as he put his health and well-being first, but in early 2023 he was ready to return. The motivation was back, the ideas were free flowing, and so it was that Mirosonic decided to return to a track called Catwalk that he first began composing in 2009, “for people to have fun at catwalks and dancing at clubs.”

This time, however, following a recommendation by Pro Copy’s Mark Whitehouse, Mirosonic approached acclaimed WA vocalist Tania Martin and her daughter Freya Betts to collaborate on vocals and lyrics. The song has now evolved into its new and fully realised 2024 incarnation, entitled CATWALK TRANCE!!!.

The track itself is an exercise in drama and tension, building beat by beat and evoking the steps on any catwalk—or indeed, dancefloor—around the world. Martin and Betts’ vocals and lyrics bring what was already an epic piece of music to new heights.

CATWALK TRANCE!!!, which debuted at #25 on the World Indie Music Charts, is accompanied by a music video produced by Whitehouse, which evokes both fashion and futurism. International distribution is being handled by radio promotion and production company Musik and Film Records. Mirosonic will continue forging into 2024 with a series of new singles.

For an artist inspired by all things futuresque who is emerging from a period of silence, the future indeed looks bright. That feeling of ecstasy that washed over Mirosonic when he heard techno for the first time on that street corner all those years ago is still there. However, he’s not kidding himself that it’s easy fun and games. What’s that quote about inspiration versus perspiration again?

“I get inspired, but there is a work ethic,” Mirosonic states. “It’s hard work at the same time. It’s not pure joy or anything like that; you’ve got to think, and you’ve got to keep on changing. Once you’ve got something you like, you can enjoy it, but the process can actually be a bit of a chore (laughs).

“There’s definitely perspiration, I can promise you!”

Check out Mirosonic on Spotify.