Frenda's group: “The main thing is to find yours, and yours is always ideal. Friend's group. Exclusive interview Interview with Maria Prokopchenko

Hello dear reader! Today Follow Me Magazine's guest is one of the coolest boy bands - the Frenda Group - a young but already beloved group, produced by actor, director and musician Alexey Vorobyov. The soloists of the group are Maxim Matsyshin and Roman Larin.

Follow me magazine is a portal about a dream, and our first question is traditional for everyone. Tell us about your dream, what is it and how are you going towards it?

Maksim: My dream is to become a musician that others can look up to.
Novel: And I strive to ensure that my music changes people's lives for the better.

The Friends group is a project that for many is associated with Alexey Vorobyov, but our readers are interested in learning about the group’s soloists. Tell us what the group is for you and when to expect a new release, because the last Friends video was a year ago.

Maksim: We have prepared a lot of new material, which we have been accumulating for a whole year, in order to surprise listeners with not just one song, but a whole collection of cool things, where everyone will find something new for themselves :) By the way, very soon, on December 8, we are premiering a new single “Baby, it’s Peter” on iTunes and GooglePlay - so the wait is just a little bit longer :)
Novel: The group is an excellent opportunity to combine the individualities and talents of each of us into one whole, under the leadership of Lesha, to create something original and find our place in the soul of the listener. The material, indeed, has accumulated for several albums. We take a very careful and serious approach to the selection and refinement of material, because the main thing is not quantity, but quality, so expect results in the future.

Previously there were three of you, now you are a boy band. How does it work in a duet?

Maksim: more spacious, there is more space on stage (Laughs)
Novel: Now, it seems to me, we have returned to the very roots, because initially the group consisted of 2 guys - Alexei Vorobyov and Sergei Romanovich (actor of films and TV series “Chernobl”, “Olga”, “Match” and many others - approx.). That is, initially it was in fact a boy band. Therefore, it seems to me that the stars are aligned only in the right direction, even though we miss Nastya and wish her good luck in her chosen path (Anastasia Dvoryanskaya is now a student at O.P. Tabakova’s theater school - approx.)

Tell us what you do in your free time from the group?

Maksim: In my free time I ride a longboard, travel, teach vocals and seduce women :)
Novel: And I write music, songs, beats. I try to bring something of my own to the sound of the group, so perhaps soon you will hear my contribution to the work of Friends.

Do you have a production contract? What is forbidden to you and what is allowed?

Maksim: We're not allowed to be ugly and untalented and uninteresting as long as we don't get fined for not following through, so I guess we're doing a good job! :) I want to believe! (Laughs)
Novel: Of course have! But it is more of a disciplinary nature, so we signed without looking :)

Let's step away from creativity, tell us about your greatest impression from the trip, where was it and were there any incidents in other countries?

Maksim: It was September of this year, I saw New York for the first time and it was absolutely gorgeous! And, of course, it was nice when a girl recognized me on the Brooklyn Bridge and told us to release a new song as soon as possible, otherwise she had listened to the old one to pieces, and showed her leaky iPhone (Laughs)
Novel: To this day, my best experiences are from L.A. There we filmed our first videos in the group almost 3 years ago. This is my city :) In the future I hope to continue my development in music there.

For our readers, are you free? What is your ideal woman?

Maksim: Ideal... I adore cheerful girls with a sense of humor - this is my weakness, appearance is not so important, I love easy-going girls who know how to laugh at themselves and others, loyal and loving children and animals.
Novel: I really appreciate such qualities in girls as sincerity, self-sacrifice, humor (how could we live without it), patience and simplicity. There are no perfect women in everything. The main thing is to find yours, and yours is always perfect.

What's the most romantic thing you've ever done?

Maksim: I'm sure it's still to come...
Novel: It's hard to say, I really love dedicating poems, it's hard to call it a romantic act, but I think it's cute :)

Do you have phobias?

Maksim: I'm afraid that the ruble will fall again)
Novel: At school I was very afraid of large crowds of teenagers and young people, and constantly avoided them. In my hometown, everyone knew me since childhood, knew that I sang and looked for any way to laugh at the “star”. As I got older, it went away and I learned to ignore it, so now I think I'm fearless... well, almost :)

“Friend Zone” is a group designed to break stereotypes about how modern music is made. This is a school group from a certain city in the country, which began its rise to fame through promotion on the VKontakte network.

Date of foundation: May 3, 2018.
Founding city: N.
Zodiac sign: Taurus.
Height and weight: unknown.

At first, the “Friend Zone” group seemed like the embodiment of simple amateur performances by high school students. But as time passed, everyone realized that this team did not appear on the Olympus of glory in order to quickly disappear. Her appearance and rapid rise to fame once again proves that in the electronic world and digital economy, emerging artists no longer need reputable record labels. If the public is interested in the team’s work, they will notice it on social networks.

Fame

The group has five fictional characters drawn in a "cartoon" style.

Make Love in a black and white outfit, hiding his face behind a mask.
Crokey Boy, rapper and hooligan.
Maeby Baby is the first beauty of the class. A girl with blue hair who is not shy to talk (and sing) about what worries everyone around her.
Valera DJ, just a DJ, whose life is only music.
Kisesh Pisesh is a producer who tries to keep order in the group.

All heroes have their own account on the VKontakte network. But the main reason for its success lies not in unusual animated musicians, but in a mixture of the most popular rhythms among young people: trap beat, city punk, rhythm and blues instrumentals, pop and emo songs.

The real members of the group are considered unknown. And yet the circle of names that pop up next to this project is narrow: Galat, Trippi, Emelevskaya. And the cat producer is Mikhail Panshin. In the “Bottle” video, rapper Galat appeared in a recognizable form.

The group sings about current issues for teenagers: relationships with each other, with parents, self-determination, attitude towards same-sex couples, first feelings and complexes that interfere with them. The songs resonated with thousands of teenagers in just a matter of months.

Teenagers see the “Friend Zone” group as a manifesto of their main themes and problems in life. Adult journalists note that the team has a strong production team to support it, which amateur teams rarely have. T-shirts and other commercial goods with the band’s attributes could be bought almost from the first days of its appearance on the networks.

Personal life

The personal lives of the group members are shrouded in darkness. While fans are figuring out who could sing there, it is difficult to predict what kind of relationship there might be between these people.

This closeness allows the group to sing and make videos about various problems. In the “Boychik” video, a beauty with blue hair is looking for a boy’s kiss. And in the video for the track “Bottle,” her goal is to be in the arms of a girl.

Apparently, the personal lives of the team members will be kept secret even more strictly than their names.

The video for the song “Boychik” was watched by about 4 million people in a short time.
The group's first tour was supposed to cover 20 cities.
In the first 3 months of the team’s existence, its public page on the VKontakte network gathered about 150 thousand subscribers. Now their number exceeds 270 thousand.
There are suggestions online that the production project “Friend Zone” was created in such a way that various artists can appear under the guise of characters in different videos and tracks. Will it be the same personalities or will they be replaced from clip to clip? This question is not yet certain.
The video for the song “Bottle” gained a million views in just 2 days from its release.

vk.com/friendzona
instagram.com/friendzonaa

“Friend Zone” is a school pop-punk band from the city of N, saturated with teenage dreams and the smell of cheap cigarettes. You can’t get out of this friend zone - we love you, but as a friend.” This text hangs on the “Friend Zone” group on VKontakte, which has almost 150,000 subscribers.

This is a surprising amount and surprisingly fast: the first post on the page appeared just three months ago. For comparison: in VK at Grechka, despite the fact that the information noise around her continues much longer.

Another evidence of the unprecedented interest in the “Friend Zone” in the VK music ecosystem: this playlist of their debut album with the self-explanatory title “Flirting on the List” has nearly 2 million plays.

What are they

All five participants of the “Friend Zone” are fictional cartoon characters with corresponding names: the face-hiding lyricist and outsider Make Love, the rapper, hooligan and drug dealer Crokey Boy, the most noticeable and spoiled girl in Maby Baby’s class, DJ Valera DJikin, who is passionate about music “maybe” , that he’s gay,” and the cat Kisyosh Pisyosh is the producer of the group. Each of them has their own VK account.

Musically, the “Friend Zone” was clearly pushed away. But if another new group, “Tomorrow I’ll Quit”, the appearance of which could not but be dictated by the popularity of Kirill Bledny, clearly plays on the same field with the “inspirations”, then the creators of “Friendzone” have gone further. There is not only synthpunk here, but also trap beats, neo-RʼnʼB instrumentals, pop songs inspired by Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, and even emo-cons in the spirit of the late Lil Peep. Overall, the full range of music that middle and high school kids go crazy for is covered. Moreover, the sound of the songs is studio-style, but bland, leaving a slight feeling of homemade amateur performances. This, obviously, should also add some “crunchiness”.

Track "Virgin"

The roles are divided according to the images: Maeby Baby intones along with songs past the notes with a stereotypical “girl” pronunciation, Make Love draws sweet-voiced vocalises, and Kroki reads rap verses in a hoarse voice, distorted by the sound effect (we’ll talk about why this was needed later).

They sing and read about what, as if by default, should worry most about today’s teenager: sex, alcohol and drugs, a slight interest in same-sex relationships and other joys of adult life. Which coexist with chaste compositions about embarrassment in the first kiss or an invitation to dance at a school disco. The same character Make Love in one track is afraid to kiss the girl he likes, in another he confidently declares that he needs a virgin.

Glorified by “Propaganda” and “Factor-2”, teenage nihilism, straightforwardness, indecisiveness and hooliganism are found in modern times with the expression of Kirill Bledny. Plus endless topical name-dropping, also aimed at the intended listener: the texts feature Face, Rick and Morty, K-pop stars BTS, The Weeknd, Britney, Dorn, Supreme, Leviʼs, as well as swipes, Instagram, Twitter, VK and shipping in fanfiction.

Having released their debut video “Boychik”, the cartoon group burst into the real world, immediately announcing a tour of 20 cities in Russia

The idea worked for some of the target audience - in the comments to “Boychik,” for example, they seriously discuss the relationship between the group members or look for clothes in the style of each of the characters. It turns out that “Friend Zone” is a project that tries to use all the keys to the young listener. Here is the serial line of relationships between the characters, and all the popular musical archetypes at once, and a teenage cry of the soul, and stylish attributes, and forbidden fruits.

In the recent musical history of Russia, this seems to be the first example of such an obvious production project, with clear targeting and taking into account all the realities of promoting music on social networks

Who's behind them?

They are already trying to figure out the real participants of the “Friend Zone” - in particular, a funny investigation has appeared on YouTube. Interestingly, it was quickly blocked for using fragments of “Friend Zone” tracks - at the request of the copyright holders. This is quite atypical and looks like an attempt to prevent the spread of the video, the creators of which reveal the identities of the project participants. Now the video has been re-uploaded, removing the “Friend Zone” songs from there, and it’s .

The video states that the voices of the project are rappers from St. Petersburg Galat, Trippi and Emelevskaya, and the producer is Mikhail Panshin, the creator of the popular youth public VK “Rhymes and Punchies”. And although no evidence is provided, there is quite a lot of indirect evidence in favor of this theory.

As for Galat, the timbre of the voice of the most famous member of the “Friend Zone” and a veteran of rap battles is too recognizable to hide it with sound effects. It is impossible to confuse, and even more so to believe in a coincidence. It is significant that Galat has not released new material for a long time.

As for Trippi, he completely cleared it out and renamed it, but reposts from there can be found in Galata and Trippi (what a coincidence!). And here, too, it’s easy to notice a strong similarity - both in the voice and in the singing manner of Trippie and Make Love.

It’s more difficult to say anything confidently about Emelevskaya: Mabe Baby’s plaintive “girlish” pronunciation gets in the way.

It is worth noting that the most significant support for “Friend Zone” releases is received in the public (2.5 million subscribers), where all “Friend Zone” premieres take place. Which from the rap community on VKontakte has grown into what would previously have been called a production center: “RiP” actively pushes the artists under its wing on social networks (you can recall the so-called records for reposts on VK, which were set by Face and Lizer), has been organizing tours for a long time and is hosting the Rhymes Show music festival for the second year. Where, by the way, the first performances of “Friend Zone” will take place.

The “Friend Zone” autumn tour, entitled “The Main Record of Your Life,” includes 20 concerts. The sites are small by today's standards. But as we know, the distance from small stages to soldouts in halls with a capacity of thousands these days is overcome in a very short time.

“Friends” is a group from Russia, a youth music production project of actor and composer Alexei Vorobyov.

The emergence of an unusual team

The Friends group, photos of which can easily be found in glossy periodicals, began in 2013 as a joint project of two friends Alexei Vorobyov and Sergei Romanovich, who decided to joke about modern pop music on the stage. “Musical banter” - that’s what they called this group, and the official name was “Gop Friend Y”.

Alexey Vorobyov was not only a producer, but also a composer, lyricist and arranger of the project. High-quality musical material was the result of his painstaking work. The word “gop” in the group’s name began to look stupid and pretentious, not in keeping with the musical aesthetics. Therefore, the first video filmed, “First,” belongs to a group called “Friends.”

Group, composition and participants

Since its inception, the project has not had a permanent composition. Various vocalists took part in the recording of the first songs.

At the end of 2013, the project began to undergo changes. I couldn’t fully engage with it and left the post of producer. Alexey began to take his project more seriously and, in collaboration with Yana Rudkovskaya’s center, found soloists for the updated group - Nastya Dvoryanskaya and Pasha Korolev. Alexey began to jokingly call the soloists of the group “my beloved kindergarten,” because Nastya was 13 at that time, and Pasha was 16 years old. By January 2014, the guys recorded five new songs in a club style: “She and I and YEAH,” “Samba,” “Everything suits a scoundrel.” The production project was a great success

The video “I'll Always Be With You,” released in the spring of 2014, featured new soloists and their producer.

The departure of Pavel Korolev

But in 2015, Pasha had to take final exams, and he left Friends. Alexey Vorobyov, with the help of “Love Radio” and “Music of the First”, is conducting a casting. He auditions more than two hundred or even three hundred gifted guys. And in February, a message about a new line-up appears on his social network page. Now the musical group has three performers: Maxim Matsyshin, Roman Larin and Nastya Dvoryanskaya.

Composition of A. Vorobyov’s production project for today

Romeo - Roman Larin, born on August 19, 1997 in Kursk. Favorite musical instruments are piano and guitar. Writes poetry and music. Alexey Vorobyov characterizes him as a romantic of our time.

Andy - Anastasia Dvoryanskaya, was born on October 25, 2000. She is a Muscovite. Anastasia loves and knows how to dance thanks to classes at GallaDance and Todes studios. A visit to the Kvadrat theater studio allowed Nastya to study acting. She performed in 46 performances at this studio. Currently studying at the Academy of Film Business and Show Business.

Nastya is the winner of the title “Model of the World 2013” in the category under 16 years of the World Championship in Performing Arts. She has several prizes at the Kinder MUZ Awards 2013, and the “Discovery of the Year 2014” award at the “Young Star of Russia” competition-festival. The head of the “Friends” project speaks of her: “Today her goal - to sing and dance all the time - has become her specialty, and “Friends” is a group whose composition is unthinkable without her.”

MaxMan - Maxim Matsyshin, was born in 1991 in Saratov. Since childhood he has been interested in music. He graduated from arts and became a vocalist of the Saratov Regional Philharmonic. Maxim is the winner of many competitions, the winner of the Grand Prix of the projects “City of Stars” and “On the Wings of Talent”, as well as a gold medal for vocals in tenths. He holds the title of the best European singer according to the results of the Bulgarian competition “Sarandev”. Max's friends consider him the life of the party.

Boss - Alexey Vorobyov, was born on January 19, 1988 in Tula. The musician, actor and director writes lyrics, music, and creates arrangements for “Friends” songs. He is the author of the script and director of all the guys’ videos.

Creativity now

In the fall of 2015, Alexey Vorobyov staged a premiere screening of the new video “Best Friend’s Girl.” The performers have just returned from Los Angeles, where two more videos were filmed. The band's album is currently being worked on in the studio. Friends members allow fans to watch rehearsals in real time, broadcasting them on one of the social networks. It must be said that many fans of this musical group were happy with this decision.

The team of musicians does not have many songs, but most of them are famous and recognizable. The popularity of Vorobyov’s works was brought by the humorous series of the TNT channel “Deffchonki”. All the soundtracks for this sitcom were recorded by Friends. The group, whose members are still working hard on their next album, is gaining more and more popularity. Their musical works are broadcast not only on radio stations, but also on television. Increasingly, young guys are invited to various parties and concerts. Therefore, this musical group has a great future ahead of them.