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Ilya Lagutenko about V-ROX 2014 Festival: “The idea of ​​the V-ROX festival — was idea of discoveries: people should discover interesting things around, themselves, rather than relying on someone else’s opinion. We want people to see what is happening around and open themselves. In this case we are talking about Vladivostok and Far East region, which, despite their geographic proximity, are not enough adapted to thriving new asia cultural environment.

Vladivostok is a young city, and the most part of citizens are young people, there is something definitely going on, but people lack the basis for understand why. Amplitudinous creative laboratory — the only thing that could make this boiler of ideas to seethe, bring some interesting things.

I have neither the desire nor the financial resources to work with international headliners at the V-ROX festival. Much more interesting is to open a “regional heroes” for the public. Boy, whose guitar songs you love to listen in your backyard, with our help can go to the bigger stage. Whose dj sets you “likes” on the Internet, one day should try himself with a live audience. Group, popular in native country, may come to taste in other countries, despite the fact of language differences.

I would call our festival the “Festival of Discoveries.” But it is in any case not a competition, not a talent show , it is a place of meeting not only for creative people but also for independent and self-motivated.”

August 22-25th was the beginning of a new period in music for Vladivostok and all of Russia in general — international showcase-festival and creative conference V-ROX (Vladivostok Rocks) took place during those 4 days. Initiated by festival founder Ilya Lagutenko ( “Mumiy Troll” and production center IKRA.tv) more than 250 musicians, music industry professionals and journalists from Russia, Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and USA have visited the seaside capital. All participants lived on the territory of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), which is considered one of the best in Russia and in the world. All transportation expenses were taken care of by festival partners — S7 Airlines.

More than 70 shows happened in four days at the different venues, from the Sport Embankment and Central City Square to bars and nightclubs of Vladivostok. The city has never had such a diverse music scene happen before V-ROX Festival.

Festival headliners included No Brain (South Korea), Ego Wrappin (Japan), P.K. 14 (China), Julien-K (USA) and Mumiy Troll (Russia) who for the first time introduced a live version of their new album “SOS Matrosu”. General attendance of the festival in four days was more than 100,000 people. According to internet-streaming moderator ROSTELEKOM, 250,000 people saw the show. More than 30,000 people attended the Gala-concert. According to Google search results on September 1st 2013, V-ROX festival was mentioned 30,000,000 times only a week after the event. This is hundreds times more than any other festival that take place in Russia.

V-ROX festival took place with the support of the City Administration of Vladivostok. Igor Pushkarev — Mayor of Vladivostok: “Vladivostok — the city of new achievements and records. We are prepared to realize such big and unique projects like International music festival ‘Vladivostok Rocks’. Rock — is a powerful sound, drive and energy! I believe that rock festivals like this one will become a good tradition for us. I thank all participants for the celebration of rock, for the attention to Vladivostok and for the sea of positive emotions!”

Electronic stage of V-ROX became a venue not only for new names but also for new technologies. With the support of Red Bull Music Academy at Street Bar, Russian and Asian DJs / Producers performed their sets and master-classes during the whole festival. Curator of the electronic stage of V-ROX was the Vladivostok native, Sasha Kholenko — founder of indie-label “How2Make Records”.

During 4 days at V-ROX, there were educational events — lectures, master-classes and panel discussions. World specialists from the industry shared with regional musicians on how to create your own label, how to develop it, what is happening with musicians and with festivals around the world, what is the goal of music critics and what is crowd funding.

Under V-ROX representation, museum-gallery “Artetazh” opened an exhibition of Belgium artists Leroy Brothers, whose art-project became the artwork of the new Mumiy Troll album “SOS Matrosu”. Their exhibition will continue its tour throughout Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Monaco. After the tour concludes the artworks will go back to Vladivostok, as Leroy Brothers gifted them to the city.

Festival Vladivostok Rocks was covered by leading federal and world media outlets including: magazines “Filter Magazine” (USA), “Afisha”, “Russian Reporter”, and “Rolling Stone”; newspapers “The New York Times” (USA), “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” and “Komersant”; television channels “Channel 1”, “Bloomberg” (USA) and “Pyatnitza”; projects “Colta.ru”, “Kroogi.com” and many others. Active support to the festival was provided by international publishing project “Russia Beyond the Headlines”, radio station “Europe Plus”, agency “Asia to Go”, “Magagazeta” and “Geometria.ru”. The regional press paid close attention to Vladivostok Rocks — the event was covered in publications and TV media by leading information agencies: federal channel correspondents, “Novaya Gazeta”, “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, TV channels OTV and PTR, NHK (Japan).

Ilya Lagutenko — curator and founder of V-ROX Festival: “The first of V-ROX is done! We’ve come to realize that the aim was to present Vladivostok as an international center of music culture and we could work it out just fine. We’ve came up with a new cultural layer of Vladivostok and there are lots of interesting happenings and meetings and victories ahead…”