The Estonian showcase festival Station Narva sits on the very edge of Europe. Set in a 13th-century castle, you can look out across the border from its lofty ramparts into neighbouring Russia. Small but humble, the medieval setting provided a captivating backdrop to the medley of acts that performed across the early August weekend. When dusk fell, campfires and food roasts smothered the castle's interior with a rich charcoal smell—in Eastern Estonia, the nights are far from warm.

In Narva, Estonia, the majority of the city's Russian-speaking population have long felt somewhat underrepresented by its national government. Many locals can be found glued to screens broadcasting Russian state TV in bars and restaurants. Knowing this, the team behind Tallinn Music Week decided to expand their repertoire four years ago in hopes of bridging some gaps between the Estonian and Russian communities, with a mission of growing the city's cultural scene while defying the modern political melee.

Like most culturally-funded showcase festivals, Station Narva is a host to a range of raw and regional experimental acts—with a few big international talents thrown in. Sometimes the booking felt a little loose around the edges, but during Covid, you can never be too sure of the circumstances behind event bookings. Indeed, festival organiser Ingrid Kohlta told me they had to implement creative solutions to get many Russian acts across the currently sealed border.

Sven Grünberg & AIGEL

The risks, however, seemingly paid off. The festival opened with Estonian electronic and synth pioneer Sven Grünberg performing his debut 1981 LP Hingus live in full, with help from the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society. The original score, never formally transferred into music notation, was performed using bespoke and long-forgotten USSR synthesisers built and designed by members of his former prog-rock band Mess. Despite the challenges of re-creating this, the resulting concert paid off, fully encapsulating the record's weird and alien sonic landscapes.

During the Soviet era, Grünberg's early work was heavily censored, making this modern reinterpretation of Hingus—which many consider the first Estonian electronic album ever released—even more befitting of the festival's opening.

There was also the Russian one-man, cold wave act Discours Synthetique who re-interpreted the style and music of Alan Vega, albeit in French, using just a few sequencers and drum machines. Russian duo AIGEL would draw one of the biggest responses over the weekend with their melee of dubstep heavy, bass-driven, electronic rap songs, performed in both Russian and Tatar, the native language of the Tatarstan region. The lead singer and poet Aigel Gaisina, flexed and flaunted her impressive dexterity on the stage, much to the enjoyment of the local crowd. Finnish rapper and alt-pop diva New Ro was equally impressive with her imposing, Charle XCX-like performance.

Many of the Estonian acts reflected more of the culture's deep-culturally associated folk aesthetics, something I had also noticed during last year's Tallinn Music Week. Electronic act HUNT, the collaborative project of musicologists and lecturers on gender research Hannaliisa Uusma and Brigitta Davidjants, used soft-soundscapes and broken beats reminiscent of early '90s Björk, merging old and modern sounds in their native Estonian language.

Hunt & A Guy Called Gerald

On the final night, at the festival's afterparty at Club Ro-Ro, the live electronic three-piece band OOPUS indulged in some heavily conceptualised performance art alongside the river. A semi-naked male performance dancer gyrated along the club's exterior as the band sequenced out a melodic cacophony of animated beats and sounds, including sampled flute, harps, and Estonian poetic singing.

As one member of the crowd told me, prior to Station Narva, many acts neglected to include the city on their tour schedule, and Narva had once felt like a cultural wasteland. While an influx of electronic acts might not mean much to the older generation, the festival creates a lively bubble in the community, many members of whom clambered their way to the front of the mainstage for the festival's headline acts, A Guy Called Gerald and Roni Size. At this year's edition, with many of the locals in high spirits either on site, or lining the city’s ramparts for a free view of the action, Station Narva felt like it achieved its goal of giving back to the scene, and served as a reminder that there's more that connects the neighbouring countries than divides them.