Flëur is a musical collective from the Ukrainiancity ofOdessa, being unique for the Ukrainian musical scene. The collective is based around the two original members and frontwomen Olga Pulatova and Olena Voinarovska who write the lyrics, perform vocals and previously wrote all the music. Although currently the whole collective takes part in making music and arrangements, lyrics are still written solely by Olena and Olga. Flëur's musical genre is hard to define as it combines many influences. Flëur originated as cooperation of the two singer-songwriters and the music still bears a tiny resemblance to the genre, yet from the very beginning it was in a way different from typical singer-songwriter music. First official releases also had a touch of neoclassic/ethereal music. Because of the difficulties with picking the right term for Flëur's music, the collective itself created the term "cardiowave", but when it comes to more usual terms Flëur usually gets labeled as dream pop. The texts of the label Prikosnovénie spoke of resemblance with Cocteau Twins, All about Eve and Bel Canto.
Band history
Flëur was formed by Olga Pulatova and Olena Voinarovska in Odessa in February 2000. In March 2000 flautist Yuliya Zemlyana joined them. According to an autobiographical story by Olga Pulatova, it was Yuliya who came up with "Flëur" as a title for their collective. On 17 March they had their first live concert in Odessa. During 2000 and 2001 they were joined by Kateryna Serbina, Oleksiy Tkachevsky, Vitaliy Didyk and Oleksiy Dovhaliov. The first official release was the CD "Touch" released on the independent French label Prikosnovénie. Only the album's title was translated to English — all the lyrics and song titles in the CD's booklet are in Russian. One month later the Ukrainian edition of the album came out under the original title "Прикосновение". Two more releases followed on the Prikosnovénie label, but these were also the last ones on this label. After that Flëur was mostly released in CIS countries. Currently Flëur has 7 officially released albums plus reissues of two early releases. The song "Шелкопряд" had the first place in "Chart Dozen" hit-parade of Russian radio Nashe Radio — Flëur was awarded the "Chart crack" prize as best new band of 2007. From their Flëur's popularity has been slowly but steadily growing. Besides live performances in their hometown of Odessa and Ukraine's Kiev, the collective has been touring extensively in Russia in recent years, including many live performances in Moscow which presented them with a full house. Flëur has also performed live on radio several times, had a TV slot for the song "Искупление" on the Ukrainian music TV-channel M1, musical arrangement made by Pavlo Shevchuk. New album called "The Awakening" came out in spring 2012.
Side Projects
Many current and former band members also participated in other musical projects.
Ольга Пулатова was a vocalist on the projects"Аэроплан" and "Оля и Монстр" , and cooperated closely with the project"Dust Heaven".
Олена Войнаровська, Олексій Ткачевський, former Flëur member Олексій Довгалєв, Катерина Котельникова and Анастасія Кузьміна took part in the projects "М.Р.Ф" and the English language project "Amurekimuri".
Олексій Довгальов also has his own project "The Клюквінs" .
Алла Лужецька and Анастасія Кузьміна take part in the project "ТИМ" .
Former Flёur member Юлія Земляна takes part in the projects "Аддарая" and "Inversus".
Євгеній Чеботаренко has his own group "My Personal Murderer".