Composer and synthesist Maria Teriaeva grew up in Sayan Mountains in Siberia, Russia, deep in the centre of the Asian continent, before moving to Moscow as a young adult.
But as a member of the queer community, growing homophobia in her home country ultimately forced her to leave two years ago, when she relocated to Paris. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organisation”, effectively criminalising queer activism, with Human Rights Watch claiming that the decision “opened the floodgates to allow arbitrary prosecution of LGBT people and of anyone who defends their rights or expresses solidarity with them”.
Her new album, Sayan – Savoie, releasing on February 7, explores her journey of rediscovering herself amid displacement, while also learning how to fully express herself in spaces that accept her. Considered, longing synth lines build into moments of sublime release, with the music drawing the links between her home and adopted countries – the title itself draws lines between the mountains she grew up in and the French Alps.
For Analogue Appreciation, our new series celebrating the value of physical culture in an ever more digitised world, she picked out five of her favourite pieces that give her a sense of home in a foreign place. “I think the main theme of my objects is love and memory,” she explains. “Sometimes these concepts take on an amazing form, sometimes they are distorted and arrive in an altered state, but they always carry great and important meaning.
“I spent more than half of my life in Siberia, and this is the second major relocation in my life (the first was from Siberia to Moscow),” she continues. “Physical objects are what help me feel at home.”
