‘Mission Passed’: Kyiv has just finished a three-day techno festival played like a video game

Vice City, a three-day festival by the Ukrainian techno movement electroperedachi, has wrapped in Kyiv. It ran from 31 July to 2 August at X-Park on Trukhaniv Island, and the organisers described it from the outset not as a programme but as a storyline: every evening they counted the percentage completed, and signed off the finale with ‘Mission Passed’.

They wrote about it on their Telegram.

The genres were split between two stages: MALIBU handled techno — peak time, hard, acid — while VICE stood closer to the water and kept things melodic. Doors opened at 14:00 on Friday, at noon on Saturday and Sunday, and every day ended at 22:30.

The festival was not only a dancefloor. The island had a campsite and a beach, SUP boards and wakeboarding, a barbershop on site, a carousel by the entrance and even ‘Vice City weddings’ with ceremonies on a schedule. Mornings began with yoga, and on Sunday with a 45-minute qigong session led by master Volodymyr Amida.

Then, on 1 August, in the middle of the festival, the team announced that Lorenzo Raganzini’s set was being postponed.

“Putting on large events and bringing you fresh sound from abroad during a war is always an enormous risk. In all our years of work this is happening for the first time,” the organisers wrote, stressing that it was not a cancellation but a reschedule: “The day will come when Lorenzo arrives.”

The foreign guests who did play, the organisers said, “send their respect” to the Kyiv community. Five artists from Italy, France and Brazil performed in all; the announced names included Rafael Cerato and Black Hertz. The melodic stage was headlined by RAJA, who builds his sets around live vocals and ethnic motifs, while Nadai played the techno stage.

The closing post on the movement’s channel opened with the words “Mission Passed! We did it! 3 days, 100% of the storyline completed!” The same post promised an epilogue — a separate event as soon as next weekend.

electroperedachi call themselves a Ukrainian techno movement and work under the motto “Freedom. Equality. Techno.” Their own event archive begins in 2017, and the movement was founded by the DJ Yevgen Tyupa.