These are the first new tracks I have made using the Pisces name in 7 years.
My family has been going through some stuff the last few years and part of the reason I made this is because one of the things that's helped me deal with it is rediscovering how much I like making beats (thanks to the people who encouraged me to get back into it). The other part is I wanted to celebrate the story of my Mother's family.

My Mother grew up in Belarus. Belarus was one of the last places the nazis successfully occupied before they lost at Stalingrad and the war began turning against their favour. In the course of the nazi occupation approximately 25% of the Belorussian population died. Out of 900,000 Belorussian Jews only 100,000 were to survive once the nazis had finally been pushed out in 1944. Almost all of those 100,000 people only survived because they had been either been evacuated to other parts of the Soviet Union or were fighting in the Red Army.

In the Minsk Ghetto, where the nazis herded the Jewish population of the city (approximately 100,000 people), only 13 people survived by hiding in a grave for the last months of the occupation. The nazis shot everyone they hadn't starved as they retreated back from the Red Army.

My Grandmother returned to Minsk at approximately 10 years of age after being evacuated to live with distant relatives in Siberia for the duration of the Nazi occupation. On her return she found most of the people she knew had died.

Despite these traumatic events she went on to build her life having been orphaned young and raised by other relatives. She got married to my Grandfather and had her only child, my Mother, in Minsk in 1957.

My Mother and my Grandmother are thankfully alive and well today. I want to dedicate this to them and to my Grandfather who died in 1986 and the many people from Belarus who lost their lives to the nazis.

Most of the samples that I've used in these tracks come from my Mother's record collection which she has carried with her since leaving the Soviet Union in the 70s. Others are from the small number of Russian and Jewish records I already owned. Others still are from a bunch of other random shit.

The recordings of my family come from a tape they made at a party for a visiting relative they had in the 60s. They partied and laughed and celebrated a lot and i am forever grateful for that.