“Train to Nowhere”: a song from a train ride made it to radio

“Poezd v nikuda” (“Train to Nowhere”) by the project Holod Strok goes into rotation on two radio stations from October 5. Another release, “My — tishina” (“We Are Silence”), made it into three editorial playlists on Yandex Music. The author told us how it happened.

Lyrics that waited a year

“I wrote the lyrics last summer. On the train back from a business trip I was struck by the emptiness of my fellow passenger — her life was one long dark streak, and she was so tired of it all.”

The words sat for a year. “And finally I got round to the mixing and the arrangement — putting it all together into one puzzle,” the author says.

Several versions before choosing

The last step was mastering. The author didn't stop at the first result: he ran “Train to Nowhere” through three characters — rock, electronic and metal — and compared them by ear before picking the final one. He kept loudness in the −10…−11 LUFS range — dense, as the genre expects.

“We Are Silence” was released with pop processing at −12 LUFS.

What to take from this

• Finish it. An idea can sit for a year — what matters is that one day it comes together into a finished track and gets released.
• Compare versions. The same song sounds different through different presets; choose with your ears, not by the first result.
• Keep the platforms in mind. Streaming will turn an overly loud master down anyway, and an overly quiet one gets lost next to its playlist neighbours.

“You deserve part of the credit for the release getting into rotation on two radio stations,” the author wrote to us. We appreciate it — but the real credit goes to the song and to the person who finished it.

Listen

• “Train to Nowhere” — band.link/5V4q1
• “We Are Silence” — band.link/0TEf3

Want to finish your own track the same way? Master a track — your first runs are free, no sign-up.