Alex Stealthy is the pseudonym of Russian electronic musician and producer Alexey Volikov. His musical journey began long before this name appeared and passed through numerous projects, musical styles and experiments — from hardcore and acid to trance, progressive house, techno, tribal, downtempo, dark ambient and noise.

The defining characteristic of his work has always been a desire to explore music beyond genre boundaries. Alexey has never perceived electronic music exclusively as a club-oriented format: his work combines melody, atmosphere, dramaturgy, elements of classical music and free-form sound experimentation.

Early Years

Alexey’s first interest in music emerged at the age of 10, when he began playing guitar.

However, his serious interest in music and music production developed later — at the age of 14, after he discovered electronic music. It was at this point that he became interested not only in listening to music, but also in creating his own compositions.

During his teenage years, Alexey’s parents also enrolled him in a theater school. This was not a professional musical education, but the theatrical environment gave him his first understanding of stage art, dramaturgy and emotional expression.

His musical taste was shaped by a wide variety of artists and composers — Kraftwerk, The Prodigy, Pink Floyd, Queen, Jean-Michel Jarre, Eduard Artemyev, and many others.

At the age of 15, Alexey discovered the Moscow radio station Station 106.8 FM, which became one of his important sources of electronic music at the time. Listening to the station further encouraged him to pursue his own musical experiments.

Gradually, his hobby developed into a serious pursuit. Alexey began creating music independently, using the computer equipment available to him and essentially learning music production through constant experimentation.

This was the journey of a musician who was trying to build his own world virtually from scratch, without a professional team, significant financial resources or music management behind him.

Acid Rain — First Performances

One of Alexey’s first full-fledged musical projects was Acid Rain.

It was under this name that he gave his first public performance — at DJ Transer’s parties at the MAI Cultural Center in Moscow.

The music of Acid Rain was primarily associated with hardcore and gabba. This was an early stage when making music at home was gradually turning into actual stage activity.

One of the notable works from this period was a remix of “Solnyshko v Rukakh” (“The Sun in Your Hands”) by the group Demo.

This experience became one of Alexey’s first serious steps as a remixer and demonstrated that working with someone else’s material could be just as interesting as creating original music.

T.A.G.

Before Alex Stealthy emerged as an independent project, there was another important stage — T.A.G., created by Alexey together with Irina Savostina.

T.A.G. became one of Alexey’s first serious original projects and the direct predecessor to his international career.

One of the project’s key compositions was Fire.

It was with Fire that Alexey first approached the international label DHV Records, where the project’s first vinyl release was planned.

However, the release did not take place as originally planned due to technical reasons. Nevertheless, a limited pressing was produced.

The history of T.A.G. soon came to an end. The project was closed, and Alexey began a new chapter under the name Alex Stealthy.

It was during this period at DHV Records that Alexey met Mike Darius, an American musician of Armenian descent. This meeting would subsequently become the beginning of a separate creative project.

Darius&Stealthy

The meeting with Mike Darius at DHV Records developed into a full-fledged creative collaboration.

Thus the joint project Darius&Stealthy was born — a project by Alex Stealthy and Mike Darius.

For approximately two years, the musicians worked together on original material and numerous remixes.

They worked with music by a wide variety of artists, including Queen, Björk, Titiyo, Tori Amos and many others, experimenting with genres, arrangements and form.

Over time, however, it became clear that the two musicians’ creative plans and musical visions were beginning to diverge. Each saw the future development of the project differently, and continuing the collaboration no longer corresponded to Alexey’s individual artistic plans.

As a result, the story of Darius&Stealthy came to an end, and Alex Stealthy set out on his own as an independent artist.

This became a turning point in his career.

A new chapter began — the solo career of Alex Stealthy, which would eventually bring him international recognition.

SOG Records and the Beginning of His Solo Career

Among the first to believe in the potential of the young musician as a solo artist was SOG Records.

This was where a new stage of Alex Stealthy’s professional history began — without a second name in the project title and without having to share its creative direction with anyone else.

SOG Records effectively became one of the first platforms to give his solo project an opportunity to develop and reach an international audience.

For Alexey, this was the moment when years of home experimentation, early performances, T.A.G. and Darius&Stealthy began to come together into an independent career.

From there, his development accelerated significantly: new releases, remixes, international compilations, DJ mixes, radio broadcasts and support from prominent figures in the global electronic music scene followed.

Alex Stealthy and the Search for His Own Sound

As the Alex Stealthy project developed, his music became increasingly difficult to classify within a single genre.

His work crossed trance, progressive trance, progressive house, house, techno, tribal, breaks, ambient and other styles.

But genre affiliation was never an end in itself for him.

What mattered most were melody, atmosphere, harmony and emotional dramaturgy.

His compositions could feature epic string parts, violin textures and expansive harmonic structures more characteristic of cinematic or classical music than of a conventional club track.

This was precisely why Alex Stealthy’s music was difficult to fully associate with a single genre.

A listener might discover him through trance and expect the next release to follow the same direction, only to find that the next work could be progressive house, tribal or techno.

Some compositions went far beyond dance music altogether.

This genre freedom was one of the defining characteristics of Alex Stealthy’s work — and at the same time one of the reasons why it was difficult to fit him into the standard structure of the music market.

International Recognition

During the first half of the 2000s, Alex Stealthy’s music began to reach well beyond the Russian scene.

His compositions and remixes appeared on international compilations, in DJ mixes, on radio broadcasts and on releases by foreign labels.

Among the notable publications and series featuring his music were Trancemaster, Global Underground, Goa, Electronic Elements, Progressive Sessions, In Search of Sunrise, and others.

One of the most significant compositions of this period was Something Is Wrong.

The track received notable international support and was included in Tiësto’s In Search of Sunrise mix.

Another important work was Able To Forget, which Armin van Buuren used in his performances as part of Armin Only.

For an independent musician from Russia at the time, this was a significant achievement: music created virtually single-handedly had entered the direct context of performances and projects by some of the biggest artists in the global electronic music scene.

Radio

Radio played an important role in the distribution of Alex Stealthy’s music.

Alexey was invited as a Featured Artist on Proton Radio, where his special mix was broadcast.

His music also reached the airwaves of BBC Radio One — the composition Something Is Wrong was featured on Pete Tong’s program.

In Russia, Alex Stealthy’s music also received significant support.

His mix was broadcast on Dynamite FM as part of Vladimir Fonarev’s program, while Alexey’s remix of Yulia Savicheva regularly appeared in his personal charts.

Thus, Alex Stealthy’s music existed simultaneously across several radio environments — from specialized international progressive radio to major national broadcasts.

International Festivals

Alex Stealthy’s music was heard not only on radio and in DJ mixes.

His compositions regularly appeared at international electronic music events and festivals, including the Music Conference in Miami.

This was particularly significant for a musician who developed his career largely independently and was based in Russia, far from the main centers of the global electronic music industry.

His music gradually crossed not only genre boundaries but also national borders, entering international club, festival and radio spaces.

Once — Music Beyond Trance

One of Alex Stealthy’s most representative works was Once.

The composition existed in several completely different versions, which in itself reflected Alexey’s approach to music.

Once (Sunseeker Remix) appeared in the context of Global Underground, while Once (Liquid Soul’s Whacked-Out Mix) was included in Goa Volume 14.

But even more revealing was Once (Original Ambient).

This version demonstrated that Alex Stealthy’s music could exist not only within the club-oriented trance environment, but also within an ambient and downtempo context.

The work was picked up beyond the trance scene itself, with its ambient version appearing in the context of broader experimental and atmospheric electronic music.

Thus, even during the height of his international career, Alexey continued to explore the boundary between club-oriented and atmospheric electronic music.

Alexey V → Inner Fluence

At the same time, the international success of Alex Stealthy did not mean abandoning experimentation.

On the contrary — as the Alex Stealthy sound became increasingly embedded in the international club environment, Alexey felt the need to preserve a separate territory free from commercial expectations.

This led to the creation of the Alexey V project, later renamed Inner Fluence.

This project existed in parallel with Alex Stealthy and was exclusively experimental in nature.

Here, Alexey could work on music without thinking about the dancefloor, club-release formats or audience expectations.

Under Alexey V and later Inner Fluence, he created music at the intersection of downtempo, dark ambient, noise and other experimental directions.

While Alex Stealthy increasingly existed within the international club environment, Alexey V / Inner Fluence allowed him to completely abandon the need to conform to that environment.

It was music created primarily for the sake of music itself.

Interruption of His Career

By the mid-2000s, Alex Stealthy already had an international presence, foreign releases, radio broadcasts, support from well-known DJs and a professional discography.

However, the next step was necessary for his career to continue developing.

To pursue a full international career, it was becoming necessary to enter the foreign music industry more deeply and effectively move abroad from Russia.

For an independent musician, this was an extremely difficult decision.

At the same time, an even more serious problem emerged.

Alexey began to experience hearing loss, with his right ear being particularly affected.

For a musician and producer whose work is directly connected to the perception of sound, this became a critical circumstance.

The question of continuing his international career was now connected not only with the need to relocate, but also with his physical ability to continue working professionally with sound.

As a result, his active professional career was interrupted.

This did not happen because he had run out of ideas or lost his desire to make music.

Tahta — Return After a Long Hiatus

After a long hiatus, Alexey returned to full-fledged collaborative music-making.

In 2018, the project Tahta emerged, created together with Victoria.

This was a completely different stage and a completely different kind of music.

Vika wrote lyrics and performed the vocal parts, while Alexey created the music and handled the arrangements, vocal processing and production.

The project began after they met online and gradually developed into a full-fledged creative endeavor.

For Alexey, this was a return to music after a long period of silence — not only as a professional activity, but also as an opportunity to create music together with another person again.

During the work on Tahta, a large archive of material accumulated: songs, lyrics, vocal recordings, demos, finished compositions, visual concepts and ideas for future releases.

The project gradually developed its own artistic universe.

But this story was tragically cut short.

The Tragedy of Tahta

For Victoria, music was not simply a creative hobby.

She saw the project as an opportunity to find her own voice and build something of her own.

The collaboration became an important part of her life.

Alexey, for his part, regarded the project as serious musical work and invested his many years of experience into it — from composition and arrangement to sophisticated vocal processing.

Over the course of a year of collaboration, a substantial amount of material accumulated.

But then problems began.

First came technical losses: the computer crashed along with the backup copies, and a significant portion of the work was lost.

The remaining material had to be reconstructed and processed again.

At the same time, problems emerged with the final versions and mastering of the material. The music, into which an enormous amount of time and effort had been invested, was gradually falling apart.

But the real tragedy was still to come.

Victoria passed away. And with her, the soul of the project was gone.

Vika lived for this project. She was not simply its vocalist or co-author — she was its soul. Tahta was a part of her life, a space in which she could express herself and believe in the possibility of another life. With her death, the project itself died. Continuing it in its previous sense no longer had any meaning: with Vika, the reason why this music had been created disappeared.

What remained was the archive — songs, vocals, lyrics, unfinished ideas and recordings.

What remained was music that no one could continue anymore.

Some of the project’s compositions were subsequently recreated and restored using neural network technologies. This made it possible to bring back to life material that had been lost or seriously damaged in its original form.

For Alexey, this was not an attempt to rewrite the past, but a way to preserve at least part of what might otherwise have disappeared completely.

Therefore, the modern history of Tahta is simultaneously a musical archive, a reconstruction of lost material and a memorial to a person who is no longer here.

Huh? — Returning to the Very Beginning

A special place in this new chapter is occupied by the release Huh?, released in 2026.

Despite its release date, the material on the album belongs to a much earlier period.

The compositions included on Huh? were written between 1999 and 2002 — before the Alex Stealthy project had fully taken shape and even before the name itself appeared.

Thus, Huh? effectively takes the listener back to the earliest years of Alexey’s work — to a period when his musical language was only beginning to take shape and his experiments with electronic music were not yet connected to any particular genre or professional career.

Some of these works remained unreleased for more than two decades.

In 2026, Alexey decided not to leave them in the archive, but to give these early compositions a new life.

Therefore, Huh? can be viewed not simply as a new release, but as a kind of dialogue between the musician of the late 1990s and early 2000s and Alex Stealthy of today.

It is a return to material created before the international releases, before the recognition, before the subsequent projects and before the story of Alex Stealthy had even begun.

It creates a kind of closed circle: music written between 1999 and 2002 receives its official release more than twenty years later, in 2026.

In this sense, Huh? is not simply an attempt to revive the past.

It is an opportunity to finally give life to music that once remained without its own time.

The Return of Alex Stealthy

In 2026, Alexey once again returned to the name associated with the most significant international period of his career.

This return is not an attempt to mechanically reproduce the sound of the early 2000s.

On the contrary, it brings together different periods of his musical history: early works from the late 1990s and early 2000s, experience from the international club scene, the experiments of Inner Fluence, years of silence and a new perspective on music after decades.

Alongside the archival compositions, new material is also emerging.

Thus, the present-day Alex Stealthy exists simultaneously across several dimensions of time: he is the musician who was only beginning to create his first electronic compositions in 1999, the artist of the international club scene of the 2000s, and the creator returning to music in 2026.