Moscow Grooves Institute

Moscow Grooves Institute project was created in 1995 by two local musicians, Arkady Martinenko (Megapolis, Teplo Zemly, Eject Project) and Boris Nazarov (acid jazz outfit UKV). Over the next several years, the collective was searching for its own style and sound. Together with the Ministry of Psycho, MGI played electronic concerts at the independent experimental Substation radio. These live performances provided the background for the project's first studio album, called Surround Wednesday, which was released by Citadel Records label in 1997.

At the same time, MGI started giving concerts in Russia and abroad; it took part in such music festivals as Kazantip (Crimea) and Subtropique (Georgia). At the end of 1999, the third participant, Sergei Belyaev, joined the band. He participated in the recording of MGI's second album, called Pizza. The basis of the release is funk with elements of drum'n'bass and ethnic trip-hop. Together with Arkady Marto, Boris Nazarov, and Sergei Belyaev, Sergei Klevensky and the members of the Detsky Panadoll project took part in the recording of the album.

In 2000, MGI issued a compilation of remixes and unreleased tracks called Commercial and also filmed three video clips for the compositions Stereophonique, Voyage, 2 Professors and two videos for the OLF (Olga Noel & Moscow Grooves Institute) project — Na Zare and Les Chrysanthemes. The clips were rotated on MTV Russia, Muz-TV as well as on Ukrainian and Belarusian musical channels. In 2001, MGI together with the Mummy Troll group recorded a version of Victor Tsoy's song Malysh that had never been released before. For a long time, this song was the leader of Radio Maximum's music chart.

In June of 2002, MGI's new album, Tangibility, was released. Such well-known foreign labels as Netlmage Foundation (Great Britain) and MPLS. Ltd (USA) released vinyl singles from the album.

The fifth studio album of the project, Les étoiles sont plus proches avec les yeux fermés, was released in April of 2005, but actually the musicians had been gathering material for it since 2003. Olga Noel adorned several compositions of the album with her backing vocals. Such musicians as a participant of the German band N.O.H.A, MC Chevy, whose rap diversified MGI's electric sound, and the old friend of the project, Daria Rodcher, known for MGI's concert activity from 2000 till 2003, participated in the recording of the album.

Several times during the last few years, the MGI project has become a finalist of the international contest of electronic music, Qwartz Electronic Music Awards. MGI tracks are often included in music compilations issued by such foreign record companies as Pork Recordings, George V, Les Maquis, Pschent, etc. The members of the project are authors of music for films; they also worked on remixes of compositions by t.A.T.u., Vitas, Mummy Troll, Enrique Iglesias & Alsou.

In 2007, Citadel Records released a multicolor version of Moscow Grooves Institute's debut album, Surround Wednesday, partly rearranged by sound producer Sofia Kruglikova in 2004-2005.

Since the summer of 2008, MGI consists of Boris Nazarov (vocals, samplers and groove boxes), Yuri Shulgin (bass guitar, cuts), and Pavel Khotin (synthesizers). Before the gig in Japan, which took place in July 2008, the project was working on a new program that later provided the basis for the sixth studio album of the band.