CYKA, the debut album of Pussy Riot

Today marks the arrival of CYKA, the debut album of Pussy Riot and it’s founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, 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.