Aircraft is a one-man band that started as a side project of the Ukrainian musician Daniel Merkulov. It was founded back in 2011 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Aircraft started off with a mixture of minimal shoegaze and dream pop. Being simple but sophisticated, Aircraft’s music was created with a drum machine, guitar, and vocal only. The first Aircraft gig took place in Odesa in November 2011. The first music video of the band and its eponymous single titled Heavens Machine came out on MiniDisc. Step by step, the band kept evolving into something more than just a side project. In 2013 the debut album Ultralow was released. Aircraft started touring with the album and performed at a number of music fests all over Ukraine, including Gogol Fest. The next album, Aeria, came out in 2015. It was marked with a drift toward the synthpop sound. Apart from the digital release, the album’s limited edition came out on cassettes. Over the past 12 years, the band has released six LPs and a number of singles. Back in the summer of 2022, Aircraft started touring abroad for the first time and performed in Berlin, Copenhagen, and at the Swedish fest Kalabalik. The band’s second music video for “Useless Comfort” was released in 2022. The video was made back in 2021 but came out by the end of 2022 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that messed everything up for the entire country. “Useless Comfort” became one of the tracks in the fifth LP titled 2011 in commemoration of the year Aircraft was born. It took almost three years to complete this album. The LP made the best of the previous experiments with the sound and demonstrated a thorough concern for production. The lo-fi sound is combined with gentle vocals, sometimes reminiscent of early Depeche Mode, warm and brooding guitar motifs and the classic sound of drum machines and synthesizers of back days, echoe Cocteau Twins and A.R. Kane. From light irony of John Maus, the vibe can switch to the depressive and gothic like This Mortal Coil, revealing the most hidden places of Aircraft's creativity, which can best be heard in the latest album Sadhu (2023). The Aircraft’s music can be found in various Spotify playlists and is in great demand on TikTok, where the band’s track Aeria went viral. Aircraft goes beyond just recording music and performing it live. It is known as a DJ project that takes part in various events all over Europe. Currently, Aircraft is based in Berlin. Wide open for new turns in its music career.
