Thirty Kilometres From the Front, Kharkiv’s Underground Raves Go On

Sep 02, 2026 12:32 Updated Sep 02, 2026 13:24

6 min read

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Authors

Josh Olley

Photojournalist

Air-raid alerts, Russian drones, and missiles may interrupt its days and nights, but inside the former industrial refrigeration complex, a group of friends Mykyta Demenkov, Denys Kravchenko, Slava Prokhorov, and Anton Nazarko, still built something new. They call it Some People, the cultural space that shows what contemporary Kharkiv sounds and feels like today.

I was invited to attend Some People’s third-anniversary party. I had often heard about it over the last few years and had actually been inside the building once before.

In February 2025, I had the privilege of interviewing the Nafta Theatre group inside the vast labyrinth of this old complex, where they rehearsed and performed. Because of the constant Russian attacks on the frontline city, performing arts can only operate in designated bomb shelters. What I did not know at the time was that this same building was also the creation and cultural home of Some People.

Some People gradually transformed it into a multidisciplinary space with a huge hall for concerts and performances, recording studios, listening rooms, a cinema, a restaurant, and smaller rooms scattered throughout the multistory concrete building.

The project was founded by four friends with roots in music, fashion, streetwear, and Kharkiv’s underground cultural scene. When I arrived around 5 p.m., Anton met us outside and began showing us around the space. His passion for music and fashion is immediate, but even more so is his attachment to Kharkiv and the culture that continues to take shape there.

The scale of the project reaches far beyond a nightclub. Much of the space has been constructed by the founders themselves, from walls and furniture to parts of the sound system. It includes multiple stages and a school of creative industries that offers courses in DJing, sound production, visual art, and cultural management and has graduated around 300 students. A newly opened stage is being developed into a cinema and permanent home for theater, documentaries, audiovisual performances, lectures, and listening concerts.

The longer-term plan includes music studios, an art gallery, rehearsal spaces, and an artist residency where visiting artists could live and work for several days. One studio is intended to give young people access to synthesizers and other equipment they might otherwise never be able to afford. But the project remains financially fragile. The founders rent the building and describe what they are doing less as a business and more as a volunteer effort. Their large parties take place roughly once every two weeks, with theater, concerts, and other cultural events in between.

The project grew out of a long friendship between people already connected through Kharkiv’s underground culture. Before the full-scale invasion, the founders had worked on streetwear, music, and other creative projects, and some had toured together as part of an electronic music formation. When Russia’s invasion began, several ended up in Lviv while others remained in Kharkiv. It was during this period that they decided to bring their different backgrounds together and build something as one team. Each came with their own knowledge of underground culture, helping shape the space into something deliberately multi-genre.

From the beginning, they had a clear sense of what they wanted to create, even with little money and no fixed blueprint.

“From the start, we understood that we will build one of the best clubs in the world.” The space developed organically. They would spend two weeks building, clean everything, throw a party, then start construction again. What was initially imagined as a small 15-person audiovisual room gradually became a proper cinema and performance space, part of a larger vision combining nightlife, theater, education, and music production under one roof.

The broader ambition is to turn Kharkiv’s energy into a cultural language of its own, expressed through music, streetwear, performance, and art. Its identity, Anton says, is rooted in “art and pressure and concrete,” a mix of industrial hardness, creativity, and tension that they are trying to capture in their sound.

That atmosphere is also visible in the crowd, where soldiers and civilians share the same dance floor. With the frontline only about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away, soldiers will often arrive at parties shortly after coming off positions, moving from the frontline into a few hours of music and dancing. It is a reflection of Kharkiv itself, a city where nightlife, war, and everyday life increasingly exist side by side.

After our interview with the founders, we stayed outside as a DJ played a carefully curated mix of ambient techno. People were scattered around the courtyard, some dancing, others sitting in small groups talking. Then the sun went down and, almost in the blink of an eye, the full rave was underway inside. People from all walks of life crowded onto the dance floor, losing themselves in the music for a few hours. It felt honest and unforced, a brief escape from the constant threat of Russian attacks hanging over

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