Flëur

Flëur
Flëur
	Olena Voinarovska (left) and Olga Pulatova
Background information
Origin	Odesa, Ukraine
Genres	Baroque pop, folk music
Years active	2000–2017
Labels	Prikosnovénie,; Paularis Music Group,; Lavina Music,; Nikitin recording company
Members	Ольга Пулатова (Olga Pulatova),; Олена Войнаровська (Olena Voinarovska),; Олексій Ткачевський (Oleksiy Tkachevsky),; Катерина Котельникова (Kateryna Kotelnykova),; Анастасія Кузьміна (Anastasiya Kuzmina),; Євген Чеботаренко (Yevhen Chebotarenko) Alex Kozmidi

Flëur

Ukrainian musical group

Flëur was a Ukrainian musical collective from Odesa. The collective was based around the two original members and frontwomen Olga Pulatova (Ольга Пулатова) and Olena Voinarovska (Олена Войнаровська) who wrote the lyrics, performed vocals and wrote most of the music. Although in later years, the whole collective took part in making music and arrangements, lyrics were still written solely by Olena and Olga. Flëur's musical genre is hard to define as it combines many influences. Flëur originated as cooperation of the two singer-songwriters and the music still bears a tiny resemblance to the genre, yet from the very beginning it was in a way different from typical singer-songwriter music. The first official releases also had a touch of neoclassic/ethereal music.

Quick Facts Background information, Origin ...

Because of the difficulties with picking the right term for Flëur's music, the collective itself created the term "cardiowave" (which later gave title to an independent recording label from Odesa which was releasing some of Flëur's sideprojects), but when it comes to more usual terms Flëur usually gets labeled as dream pop.

The texts of the label Prikosnovénie spoke of resemblance with Cocteau Twins, All about Eve and Bel Canto.^[1]

Band history

Flëur was formed by Olga Pulatova and Olena Voinarovska in Odesa in February 2000. In March 2000 flautist Yuliya Zemlyana joined them. According to an autobiographical story by Olga Pulatova, it was Yuliya who came up with "Flëur" as a title for their collective. On 17 March they had their first live concert in Odesa. During 2000 and 2001 they were joined by Kateryna Serbina (cello), Oleksiy Tkachevsky (drums), Vitaliy Didyk (contrabass) and Oleksiy Dovhaliov(keyboards).

The first official release was the CD "Touch" (which is English translation of "Прикосновение") released on the independent French label Prikosnovénie. Only the album's title was translated to English – all the lyrics and song titles in the CD's booklet are in Russian. One month later the Ukrainian edition of the album came out under the original title "Прикосновение". Two more releases followed on the Prikosnovénie label, but these were also the last ones on this label. After that Flëur was mostly released in CIS countries.

Currently Flëur has 8 officially released albums plus reissues of two early releases. The song "Шелкопряд" ("Silkworm") had the first place in "Chart Dozen" hit-parade of Russian radio Nashe Radio — Flëur was awarded the "Chart crack" prize as best new band of 2007.

From their inception Flëur's popularity continued slowly but steadily growing. Besides live performances in their hometown of Odesa and Ukraine's Kyiv, the collective also toured extensively in Russia from 2007 to 2012, including many live performances in Moscow which presented them with a full house.

Flëur has also performed live on radio several times, had a TV slot for the song "Искупление" ("Redemption") on the Ukrainian music TV-channel M1 (video directed by Yevhen Tymokhin (Євген Тимохін), musical arrangement made by Pavlo Shevchuk (Павло Шевчук) — the producer of Mumiy Troll band).^[2]

Two more albums were released in the following years: "The Awakening"^[3] in spring 2012 and "Storm Warning"^[4] in 2014.

In early 2017, the band announced^[5] that they would be breaking up after playing three last concerts in May. Following Flëur's dissolution, Pulatova and Voinarovska have continued working on their solo musical careers.