dear friends,
on the 6th of april 2015 the first single of the ‘1314’ project came out.
this year i’ve decided to celebrate the good times i had with everyone, who took part in that crazy endeavour, by releasing the ‘ministry of secrets‘ anniversary edition single.
it includes a rare and previously unreleased unplugged live version from our performance for balcony tv.

/ left to right: Andrian Lebedev, Andrey Yegorov, Gene Bogolepov, Mitya Klochkov
i used to be extremely critical about the way my voice sounded there. now i know and acknowledge – yeah, i could have done better, and i’ve learnt much since then, but the emotion that my voice expressed then.. it’s there, and it’s left there forever. i sing about other things now, and i feel very differently now. and so it must be. this re-issue is a closure i craved after some extremely difficult volatile years.
the song was written in february 2015 with my good friend Andrian Lebedev who tragically passed away in 2021.
i remember the night we wrote ‘ministry of secrets’ – i flew in to st. petersburg in a very depressed state of mind, Andrian picked me up from the airport and took me to his place to take care of me and to support me. i de-frosted a bit and shared an idea for a song: point of view of the ice queen, who forgot how to cry and doesn’t feel anything any more, and there’s a whole ministry in her kingdom that keeps her secrets under seven seals. so we imagined frozen crystals, mesmerising ornaments of them, wind-like synths and a dramatic voice on top. we sat down and wrote it in its entirety in the next two hours after the first discussion. i miss Andrian, i miss those evenings.
this release is out on the 6th of April 2023 and closes the series of singles i have selected for my ’20 years of love and struggle’ project.
goodbye past, hello future.
much love,
gene
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