By Inge Colson, Gold Atlas Promotion | Standing in arms with our fellow musicians! Today marks the arrival of CYKA, the debut album of Pussy Riot and it’s founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, who was always destined to make fourteen years of protest, imprisonment, surveillance, exile, and sheer survival crystallized, distilled into one single, searing record.
This album might sound sad at times, because it is. 2026: Russia is the world’s largest exporter of death and destruction. It’s the fifth year of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Nadya Tolokonnikova says: “Me and my countrymen could have prevented it, we just had to fight harder for our dream of a peaceful democratic Russia. I live in exile, like a rat. Everything I loved was taken from me; my entire country was stolen. My mother died of cancer in Moscow, and I couldn’t be there to say goodbye. The father of my daughter nearly died after being poisoned with a nerve agent by the FSB. My friend Alexey Navalny was murdered in jail. And I no longer know whether I’ll ever be able to let people get close to me again – being torn away from everyone I loved cost too much. Vengeance is what forces my eyes open in the morning, and what keeps me going. “OUTRO” is dedicated to my mother and my love to her.
Vladimir Putin is even listed as a contributor on the album (please check the DSP liner notes) and make of that what you will.
Pussy Riot launched their debut album with an explosive protest at the Venice Biennale, the so-called “Olympics of the art world”, timed deliberately to coincide with Russia’s controversial return to the event. The stunt made headlines globally and sent exactly the message intended: we see you, we hate it, we brought cameras, and we declare “DISOBEY”.
Nadya explains the album further, on the opening song “GODSLEFT”, she adds: “As I’ve been writing and producing the song, had in mind a vision of a world three years after a nuclear war, as scarse remnants of humanity surviving a nuclear winter: “третий год небо в ночной пелене, все что любила утопло в огне” (English: “For the third year, the sky is shrouded in a nocturnal veil; everything I loved has drowned in fire”). Its a song about how god left this world to find a new one, as they were feeling hopeless about humanity. It’s a cry for hope maybe one day we will find a new world, but the current one feels destroyed beyond repair. My dreams travel far beyond my death – I know i will die before all these probelsm are fixed, but at least I can hope in something else – maybe even in the darkness. When I wrote “my dreams travel far beyond my death,” I was thinking of all my colleagues and friends I lost in this seemingly endless fight with Putin.
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“CANDY DOPAMINE (ft Avenged Sevenfold)”: “This song is kind of a love & hate song to prescription and designer drug culture. It started with my dependence on anti depressants, but it’s also looking at everyone now mentalhealthmaxxing and looksmaxxing via pills and injections. It’s not a judgement, it’s just an observation and my personal experience with these things is that I have to be in a long term relationship with them for my PTSD and depression.”
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Next, Pussy Riot will bring the apocalypse live to Paris at the BEYOND THE STREETS exhibit in Grande Halle de la Villette on Saturday, June 20th. More live shows to be announced.
Pussy Riot declares: All these old men ruining the world right now act tough – but we see thru their fragile egos – and I’m not afraid to call them out. They are, in fact, pussies. . . .
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About Pussy Riot / Nadya Tolokonnikova: . . .
Among her accolades, including Time Woman of the Year, the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, LennonOno Grant for Peace, Woodie Guthrie Prize, and an Honorary Doctorate from RISD, Nadya also wears as a badge of honor the 2025 designation of Pussy Riot as an Extremist Organization by the Russian Federation.
She dreams of a day when the world will wake up to the news that Putin has died and that Ukraine is victorious. She currently lives in exile and chooses to remain geographically anonymous.
Follow:
https://pussyriot.love/
https://www.instagram.com/pussyriot/
https://www.instagram.com/nadya
x.com/pussyrrriot
https://zona.media/ = Pussy Riot’s independent publication focused on Russian courts, law enforcement, and the prison system.
For more on Pussy Riot, please connect:
Gold Atlas – Inge Colsen – inge@goldatl.as – 212-203-5240
Photo: Courtesy of Pussy Riot – “Candy Dopamine” | Credit: John F. Caldwell (with permission)
