by Alisa Chepel

One week ago, Brave! Factory Festival, Ukraine’s biggest and longest running fest of its kind took place. Organized by Closer Kyiv, this year’s event exceeded the expectations of all involved, drawing 10.600 people to the PJSC “Kyivmetrobud”. Starting on Friday at 20:00 and ending with the last track on Monday afternoon at 16:00, this year’s also ran longer than any previous edition.

Brave! Factory is an annual festival of electronic music and culture created by the team behind the renowned Closer art center. The event took place in Kyiv’s working subway enterprise PJSC “Kyivmetrobud” for the fourth time since 2017. It hosted more than 80 electronic music projects, live performances and art installations, including DMX Krew, Modeselektor, Blawan & Pariah, DJ Rush, Len Faki, Nastia, The Ghost and others on 6 different stages that provided different exclusive audiovisual experiences:

ANGAR - the biggest stage with the most exciting light performance hosted by BLCK BOX. Music: mostly techno artists. This time, ANGAR surprisingly worked 2 days in a row, which was different from all previous editions of Brave! Factory.

CEMENT - second-biggest stage, situated in the center of the festival, surrounded by food-court, bars and chilling areas. Genres: from jazz & hip-hop to experimental industrial techno.

TOPKA - tech-house stage.

TOKAR - concert and live performances stage.

DEPO - house stage with the longest timing, traditionally closing every Brave! Factory Festival.

GARDEN - slow dance stage with chilling areas.

For the fourth edition of the festival, the Closer team elaborated on every little detail of the event to provide comfort and safety to artists and guests as well as nice extra such as - every visitor could exchange their electronic ticket in advance at Closer club to be able to skip the line. On the territory of the festival, there was a possibility to take a drug and HIV test, get a massage, leave bags and jackets at the wardrobe, get a power bank with multiple cables for each smartphone and, in emergency cases, for the first time there were zones with vitamins, energy and detoxification dropper functions provided by professional medical care staff, as well as psychological help - everything safely and anonymously. Brave! Factory also provided 2 big food courts with both meat and vegan opportunities, several bars and chilling areas, which created the maximum comfort for every visitor.

Local lighting masters BLCK BOX created an unforgettable audiovisual experience at ANGAR - the biggest stage of Brave! Factory Festival where such artists as Blawan & Pariah, DJ Rush, Nastia and Len Faki performed, that made every dancer lose themselves in sound.

From the very beginning of Brave! Factory editions, the event was a space for debuts for new projects of local musicians. This time such projects as DER DIKTATUR - the new project of the singer and songwriter Kristina Luna and music producer Alexander Voloshchuk, as well as DISTRICT of Alina Pash and Trippsy were presented at CEMENT and TOKAR stages.

Moreover, the festival surprised the guests with such back 2 back performances of Closer residents as Timur Basha x Shakolin x Borys; Sasha Zlykh x Trippsy; Karine x Noizar x Pahatam, as well traditional back 2 back of Alex Savage and Anna Haleta.

With the variety of art, music, comfort, safety, top level organization and diversity of the local and international artists and guests - the festival united people from all over the world in Kyiv - the modern capital of electronic music scene.

Brave! Factory was constantly filled with an atmosphere of love, unity and madness that everyone was lacking during the lockdown in 2020.