Here’s a fascinating story that will keep you captivated from start to finish. Meet Van Sur Les, an Amsterdam-based, Moscow-born artist with an Ingrian ancestry. The word “Ingrian”, quite probably, does not mean much to you at this very moment. But it will leave you both enchanted and saddened by the end of this article. A combination worth every attention.
The Ingrian region, with its own culture, history, language and – most importantly – music, is a gradually fading memory. One that Van Sur Les is attempting to keep a record of through his EP, “Ingrian Tape”, which has just been released on the streaming platforms. It is a collection of tracks which were born from a sense of a geographical and cultural distance. But it also serves as a sonic record of a culture that is at a risk of extinction, being brought to life through modern production techniques. The beauty of it (and the sadness which accompanies it) is truly mesmerizing in the deepest sense, as it embraces nostalgia after a world which is slowly fading away. And an attempt to save the fragmented roots linking the artist to his home.
What else can I say? “Ingrian Tape” is a triumph of artistry over history, an emotional rebellion translated into musical notes, and a bitter-sweet story with its aim to rescue as many memories as possible. And this is just the starting point. Now, you need to read on.
Bartek: If you were to briefly highlight the most important aspects of Ingrian culture, what would they be?
Van Sur Les: I think it’s helpful to start with the terminology maze. While “Ingrian” is often used as an umbrella term for the region, I focus specifically on the Izhorians. They are the indigenous people of the area. While their language is also called Ingrian, they have a distinct identity. My grandfather is Izhorian, so that’s the core I’m drawing from—even though history and empires have often blurred the lines between the different groups living there.
The most vital aspect of that culture is the relationship with the land. For Izhorians, the sea and the forests weren’t just romantic images; they were survival. But those places were also sacred. The landscape was a living presence that you spoke to, feared, or asked from, which is why those environments are such heavy images throughout the EP.
Then, there is the singing. The runo-song tradition was the pulse of daily life. People sang while working, grieving, or just being together. It wasn’t a performance; it was a way to process the world in real-time. I wanted to capture the concept of culture being inseparable from daily life in Ingrian Tape.
What is your own story as a descendant of the Izhorian people?
I’ve always been very close to my grandfather. He’s Izhorian, and because of him, that identity was always quietly present in my life, even if I grew up far from the language itself.
From the outside, it was always oversimplified. Most people had never heard of Izhorians, so it usually got flattened into “Russian” or “basically Finnish”. But even as a kid, I felt there was something more specific there—something harder to explain. That curiosity eventually pulled me toward other Finnic cultures; I even moved to Finland for a while, drawn to that world without fully knowing why.
Strangely, it was only while making Ingrian Tape that things clicked. I started speaking with the community and hearing the language differently, and suddenly this identity stopped feeling abstract or historical. For the first time, I felt that this culture exists on its own terms. It is something distinct—smaller and more fragile, maybe, but deeply alive.
Emotionally, that was a huge shift. It felt less like discovering something new and more like finally recognizing something that had been sitting inside me all along.
When did the Izhorian culture start becoming endangered and which historical events caused it?
The endangerment began with a direct attack on the culture in the mid-1930s. Before that, there were Izhorian schools and textbooks, but by 1937, the Soviet state reversed its stance. They began treating Finnic languages as a political threat, shutting down the schools and confiscating books to force assimilation.
This was followed by the Stalinist repressions. During the late 30s, thousands of Izhorians were executed or deported simply because they were seen as a security risk near the border. World War II was the breaking point. The community was scattered by the front lines, and those evacuated to Finland were later “repatriated” to the USSR, only to be sent into internal exile in remote regions instead of being allowed home.
The final blow was the forbidden return. After the war, people were legally barred from returning to their ancestral villages. Families had to stop speaking the language and hide their identity just to survive and blend in. It wasn’t a natural decline; it was a survival strategy after their schools, their books, and finally their land were taken away.
What is the current state of the Izhorian culture now, in 2026?
It’s a fragile situation. There are still people preserving the culture, researching it, singing the songs, documenting traditions, and trying to keep the language alive. But the number of native speakers is extremely small now.
At the same time, there’s an interesting paradox: the culture is disappearing in daily life, but huge amounts of songs, recordings, and archival material still exist. That tension became one of the central ideas behind Ingrian Tape.
Your project, “Ingrian Tape”, spans multiple art disciplines and different formats. Could you talk a bit about the various elements of it and why it was important to you for the project to go beyond “just” the music?
Very early on I realized this story couldn’t fully exist as only an album. The project slowly expanded into a larger ecosystem: music, visual work, a digital museum/archive, documentary elements, and eventually, a theatre form.
Partly, that comes from my background composing for theatre—I naturally think in terms of worlds and spaces rather than isolated tracks. But it also felt important because the project deals with memory itself. Archives, landscapes, voices, family fragments, disappearing language—all of that needs different forms to breathe properly.
Speaking about the music itself, though, it represents a melting pot of genres from organic electronica, to folk, to elements of jazz. What was the original Ingrian music like? And also, why did you decide for the arrangement you chose to represent the Izhorian culture?
Traditional Izhorian music was centered on runo-singing—a repetitive, trance-like oral tradition shared across Finnic cultures. It has this hypnotic, incantational quality that feels almost like a spell.
I didn’t want to just recreate folk music literally; I wanted to imagine these fragments inside a contemporary emotional language. To be honest, a lot of it comes down to the music I actually listen to. I was searching for forms that could express the weight of this history, so I experimented with the genres I love.
Organic electronica felt right because it allowed me to layer memory and atmosphere with physical textures. The arrangement moves between felt piano loops, wooden percussion, and jazz-influenced instrumentation. By mixing folk vocals with field recordings and processed textures, I wanted the music to feel alive and present, rather than something pulled from an archive. I was just looking for a way to make those ancient emotions feel real today.
Do you remember any childhood stories coming from the Izhorian culture which left a lasting impression on you, or perhaps inspired you to launch this project?
The main thing that stayed with me were the fragments of poetry and stories my grandfather shared. He used to tell me rhymes that were a mix of Ingrian and Russian, and even as a kid, I could feel they were a window into a specific culture that was hidden from my normal life.
But the real inspiration was simply wanting to do something for him. He is 85 now and gradually losing his memory, so I wanted to bridge that distance and help us both process this heritage. He’s always been a creative person, so he understands the language of music instinctively. When I play him these tracks, he lights up and starts remembering his childhood, the local river, and gathering mushrooms with his mother.
Using music as a form of non-verbal storytelling to bring him that joy is really the heartbeat of Ingrian Tape.
You call the additional elements of your project “a digital museum and a forest”. Could you shed a bit more light on what this part involves?
The “digital museum and forest” is really an extension of the album’s three-dimensional narrative: the history of the Izhorian people, my family’s story through my grandfather, and my own journey of discovery today.
The museum is where I’m gathering the more concrete materials. I’m currently processing archival fragments, personal photos, old recordings, and stories from the local community that I plan to release in a few months. I wanted to create a space where people could approach the culture through real human stories and family memory, so it feels less distant or abstract.
The forest, on the other hand, is more of an interactive environment. It’s a lighter, almost gamified way of exploring the culture, where you move through a landscape and gradually discover poems, songs, field recordings, recipes, or fragments of folklore along the way. I wanted it to feel less like reading a history book and more like uncovering memory in real time.
As “Ingrian Tape”, the EP, progresses, the Ingrian language takes less and less space, and it is eventually replaced by Russian. This, on its own, feels excruciatingly sad and painful. One more culture on the edge of extinction. How did you come up with this idea, and how do you personally feel about it?
The idea came naturally when I started thinking about how to represent the historical trajectory of the culture. I was inspired by The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, where tape loops slowly physically degrade and sound falls apart. I thought applying that concept to the language itself would be a powerful way to tell the story.
The EP starts with Kadoi, which uses actual archival samples of folk recordings in Ingrian. Then, in Tapio, the language begins to shift; I was inspired by an archival song recorded from a “rusty” speaker who had already started forgetting the grammar. That sense of transformation is pushed further by the Finnish singer Emmi, who brought her own accent and interpretation to the vocals.
By the end, Russian takes over almost entirely as the language dissolves. In the final moments in Oma maa, only a few ritual phrases remain:
“On my own land, the song floats by itself”.
Personally, it’s painful to witness, but I didn’t want the project to be just an act of mourning. Using this “disintegration” of the language was a way for me to process that trauma through creativity. Even as the words fade, I wanted to show that the connection to the land and the ancestors remains.
Is there any aspect of this entire project that helped you heal on your own?
Definitely. The project helped me bridge the gap between my roots and my current life, but the real healing came from the double meaning in the name. I think of Ingrian Tape as both a recording and a physical act of “taping” fragments of memory back together—like using tape as a plaster or bandage to heal a wound.
By working with the language and the archives, I finally recognized a part of myself that had been in sleep mode for years. Creating this for my grandfather allowed me to process the trauma of his fading memory and the physical distance between us. It was an attempt to take a broken history and make it feel whole again through sound.
Where would you like the “Ingrian Tape” project to take you artistically, and do you perhaps plan a continuation, or a full-length album?
Musically, I feel the EP is already a complete statement. It tells a specific story from start to finish, so I don’t plan to extend the record itself. Instead, I want to focus on experimenting with different formats, like the theatrical production we are developing where the stage is built around the music.
I am also working on a digital museum to house archival materials and personal stories, allowing people to dive deeper into the culture. Through this project, I’ve recognized a real demand from the community; there is a desire for kids to have modern songs in the Ingrian language so it feels like a living culture rather than just something archival.
It’s an inspiring direction and I might create more songs to help meet that need, but I don’t want to limit my entire artistic direction to this one topic.
Finally, if there’s one emotion or a moment that you would like your listeners to remember and take away from their “Ingrian Tape” experience, what would that be?
I would want listeners to feel that art can become a bridge—a way to process trauma, fragmented memory, and distance from home.
Right now, I can’t physically be close to my homeland or fully reconnect with that part of my family history, so music became a kind of metaphysical space that allows me to return there emotionally. That idea is deeply connected to the name Van Sur Les itself: “Sur” as in surreal or dreamlike landscapes, and “Les,” the Russian word for forest. Across the project, the forest becomes this symbolic place where memory, folklore, family, and identity all overlap.
I like the idea that people can step into that forest through sound and reconnect with something inside themselves—their roots, their memories, or simply a feeling they thought was lost. Even if you are far away from home, music can still help you find a path back to it.
More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izhorians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrian_language
Artist links:
Project website: https://ingriantape.com/
Bandcamp: https://vansurles.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5cdxnEuHRBZukquCIVYgcK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vansurles
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vansurles
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vansurles
Photos: Press release
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