Dj Tapolsky turns 50 years old. His set began at an embassy in Delhi and still hasn’t ended

On September 29, Dj Tapolsky — Anatolii Tapolskyi — turned 50 years old. He has been playing drum and bass for more than three decades, and in that time the set in his hands has been a party, a radio broadcast, a festival, a stream from an empty lockdown city and a fundraiser for drones for the front.

We’ve put this story together as a tracklist — from his first party in Delhi to the track he released four days before his 50th birthday. The facts come from his monologue for Mixmag Ukraine, an interview with the weekly Tyzhden and his own YouTube channel.

Intro: Delhi, cassette decks and a light switch instead of a strobe

Tapolsky was born in 1976 in Bohuslav, but by his own account he spent only a few days there — he grew up in Dnipro. His father was in the military, so the family spent part of his childhood abroad: first in Algeria, then in India.

It was there, in Delhi, in the early nineties, that he threw his first party — at an embassy. There was no DJ setup: the music came from cassette decks and CDs, and the strobe was someone flicking the light switch as fast as they could. He never forgot India — at the end of 2019 he went back and paid a visit to his old school.

Dnipro: radio, Plotyna and the first drum and bass

In 1995 he joined radio Mriia (“Dream”) in Dnipro as a sound engineer. Before long he was hosting his own morning electronic music show there, and later he became program director. By 1997, Tapolsky was already art director of the Plotyna (“Dam”) club.

Drum and bass came into his life in 1998, after a single set he heard at KaZantip. From then on, broken beats and fast bass became his calling. “Drum and bass became protest music — listening to it felt cool and unusual,” he recalled in a conversation with Mixmag Ukraine.

Kyiv: 14 listeners, Time2Bass and Ideolohiia

The move to Kyiv began with a cold shower. “Only 14 listeners came to my first set, and seven to the next one — while in Dnipro I was drawing around five hundred people,” he recalled. He had to win over the capital from scratch.

And win it over he did. In the 2000s, when the Ukrainian club scene got its own radio stations and big parties with headliners flown in from abroad, Tapolsky hosted the weekly show Time2Bass on Kiss FM — his last broadcast as host went out on July 8, 2015. And the Ideolohiia (“Ideology”) festival, which he ran, as he puts it, for “a whole 10 years,” brought Goldie, Noisia, Sub Focus, Camo & Krooked and Black Sun Empire to Kyiv. Alongside it came SKOVORODUB — in his own words, the first national dubstep festival.

2014–2016: a festival for the army and a mortar battery

In September 2014 he put together the Tak, ya liubliu Ukrainu (“Yes, I love Ukraine”) festival in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — with Skriabin, TiK, O.Torvald and Tonia Matviienko. And in 2015 he joined the army himself: for about ten months he fought in the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) as a mortarman with the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade.

Even then, the music wouldn’t let him go. In April 2016, while on leave, he opened for The Prodigy in Kyiv, and on October 1 of that year he marked his fortieth birthday with a big party, T40, at SENTRUM.

The set as a place: from a funicular to a psychotherapist’s office

After returning from the army, he started playing where DJs never usually turn up: in a terminal at Zhuliany airport, in the greenhouse and the apple orchard at VDNH, at Kyiv’s oldest boat station in Hydropark, at Zhytnii Market, on a tram in Podil and in the mechanical workshops of Kyiv Polytechnic.

When the pandemic shut the clubs, this became a format. From October 2020 to December 2021 he posted thirteen hour-long streams on YouTube — from Bessarabskyi Market, the Space Museum, Dachna bus station, a library, the funicular, the Institute of Aerospace Technologies, an observatory, a psychotherapist’s office, the Glass Bridge and Podilskyi Bridge. The set on Podilskyi Bridge has been watched more than 258,000 times.

“My sets have become more atmospheric, more sincere, more my own. I feel the spirit of the times in that,” he said, explaining why ordinary club rooms interest him less and less.

2022: the fifth day

After February 24, 2022, by his own account, he was back in the ranks “on the fifth day.” For about two years Tapolsky served in the 47th Mechanized Brigade Magura, the last six months of it in the Avdiivka direction. And in November 2022 he played in the Kyiv metro and on the roof of Kharkiv’s Derzhprom, raising money for a drone.

It was at the front that he finally started writing his own music. “I’d wanted to write my own tracks for a long time, but there was never any time. When I went to the front for the second time, I realized I had to start,” he said. His first track, “Kokhalys” with Inaia, came out in September 2023, followed by “De skhodyt sontse?”, “Plus (+)” with the poet Pavlo Vyshebaba, “Kyiv – Kramatorsk” and “MMD” with Alloise. His remixes of The Hardkiss, ROXOLANA and Okean Elzy had already come out in 2022.

In the summer of 2024 he moved to Kulturnyi Desant (“Cultural Forces”), and the set became a tool once and for all. On June 1, at Squat 17B in Kyiv, Tapolsky played his first set in a year and a half — together with the poet, veteran and paramedic Olena Herasymiuk. On July 7 he played beneath the “Donetsk Oblast” sign at the entrance to the region, raising money for FPV drones for the 48th Separate Assault Brigade. Then came a poetry set with Pavlo Vyshebaba on Peizazhna Alley and a set in Kharkiv with the artist Hamlet Zinkivskyi — each time with a fundraiser for specific units.

“I want to leave behind a lot of drum and bass tracks with Ukrainian vocals,” says Anatolii Tapolskyi.

His latest release to date is “Radja,” which came out on September 25. The track is dedicated to a brother-in-arms with the call sign Radja, who was killed in the summer of 2023.

Burning Man: “How are you?” in the middle of the desert

On August 28, 2024, Tapolsky played at Burning Man, next to “I’m Fine” — a 32-meter installation that artist Oleksii Sai and producer Vitalii Deineha of the Ukrainian Witness project built from war-mangled road signs, fences and satellite dishes from the liberated territories. For the set, he asked his brothers-in-arms, friends and family to answer three questions — “How are you?”, “What do you want most in life?” and “What do you dream about?” — and wove their voice messages into the mix.

“Never in my life did I expect people to be so compassionate. Americans really support Ukraine, they share their thoughts, many of them cried, even grown men,” he told Ukrainska Pravda. A year later the story repeated itself, only harsher: a dust storm destroyed the new installation, Black Cloud, Tapolsky broke his leg in that same storm, and within three days No Fate was assembled from the wreckage. On September 1, 2025, he played next to it — in a cast.

How old is Dj Tapolsky?

He turned 50 years old on September 29, 2026. He was born in 1976 in Bohuslav, in the Kyiv region, and grew up in Dnipro.

Is it Tapolskyi or Topolskyi?

He spells his surname with an “a” — Tapolskyi — and his stage name, Tapolsky, is built the same way. The spelling with an “o”, Topolskyi, turns up on Wikipedia and in some media.

Where has he served?

In 2015–2016, in the ATO with the 72nd Brigade. Since the first days of the full-scale invasion he has been back in the Armed Forces of Ukraine: about two years with the 47th Brigade Magura, and since the summer of 2024 with Kulturnyi Desant. In 2026 he is still serving.

What tracks has he released?

He has been writing his own music since 2023: “Kokhalys” with Inaia, “De skhodyt sontse?”, “Plus (+)” with Pavlo Vyshebaba, “Kyiv – Kramatorsk,” “MMD” with Alloise and “Radja.” Back in 2017–2018, as a duo with VovKING, he put out releases on the Program, Mainframe, Technique, Bad Taste and High Tea labels.

Where can I hear his sets?

On his YouTube channel: hour-long streams from unusual places around Kyiv in 2020–2021, and sets beneath the “Donetsk Oblast” sign, on Peizazhna Alley with Pavlo Vyshebaba and in Kharkiv with Hamlet Zinkivskyi. His own tracks are on all streaming platforms.

Over half a century, Tapolsky has traveled the same road as the whole Ukrainian dance scene: from parties for friends to radio and festivals, from clubs to streams from an empty city, and now to sets after which what gets counted isn’t guests but hryvnias raised for drones. He isn’t the only one: Atlas raised 103 million hryvnias this summer to protect the skies. But few have made the journey from a cassette deck in Delhi to a mortar battery — and still not stopped their set.