NOTH

MARKO — THE RECLAIMER

Marko Hrytsenko is a Ukrainian voice shaped by movement, memory and the instinct to find his way home. Within NOTH, he is The Reclaimer—an artist who takes what fear, distance and history attempt to fracture and transforms it into identity, motion and hope.

There is youth in Marko’s energy, but never naïveté. Hat lowered, body in motion, he carries the restless confidence of someone still discovering who he is while remaining fiercely certain of where he comes from. His songs return to home, freedom, language, belonging and rebirth—not as distant ideas, but as lived truths.

Marko does not sing from the edge of Ukraine looking inward. He sings from within it: modern, wounded, defiant, proud and unmistakably alive. 💙💛

The man beneath the movement

Marko is quieter than his photographs initially suggest. He does not dominate a room with conversation; he watches, listens and waits until he has something real to say. His humour is dry, his loyalty instinctive, and once he trusts someone, he becomes surprisingly warm and playful.

Movement is where his restraint disappears. Marko thinks through his body—walking, dancing, climbing rooftops or following unfamiliar streets until his mind becomes clear. Onstage, every turn of the shoulder and extension of the hand feels connected to the song. He is not performing confidence; he is physically working his way towards it.

He carries Ukraine openly, but he refuses to let pain become the only story told about it. To Marko, heritage is not something fragile to be preserved behind glass. It must be spoken, worn, challenged, danced to and carried forward. The colours, symbols and language surrounding him are not decoration; they are declarations of continuity.

What Marko reclaims is larger than one place. He reclaims identity after uncertainty, tenderness from restrictive ideas of masculinity, joy after grief, and the right to imagine a future without betraying the past. This is why his music repeatedly returns to paths, wind, sunrise, voice, memory and home. They are not simply images—they are his coordinates.

At his centre, Marko is hopeful, but never naïve. His optimism is deliberate. He knows that finding your way home does not always mean returning to where you began. Sometimes it means rebuilding home inside yourself—and then choosing to move forward. 💙💛

His musical identity

Marko’s music keeps moving even when the lyrics look backwards. His arrangements feel warm and open: the verses draw inward, creating room for reflection, before the choruses expand towards the horizon. A Marko song often begins as a private reckoning and ends as something everyone can carry.

His sound occupies the space between contemporary Ukrainian alt-pop, cinematic songwriting and rhythm-led urban production. Movement matters—there can be a street-dance pulse beneath the emotion—but melody remains its heart. His Ukrainian identity comes through language, perspective and melodic instinct, never through heritage being treated as a costume.

His voice

Marko’s vocal strength is conviction rather than excess. He sings with warmth and directness, allowing experience to remain audible without turning every scar into theatre. In the verses, his delivery feels close and thoughtful, almost as though he is discovering the meaning while singing it. When the chorus arrives, his voice opens naturally and the individual story becomes communal.

He is strongest when holding two truths simultaneously: grief and momentum, tenderness and defiance, memory and possibility. He never denies what has been lost, but he refuses to remain inside the loss.

Each song reveals a different part of that identity:

* Відродження turns recovery into physical movement—urban, youthful and alive.
* Скажи це ще раз carries renewal outward, transforming personal joy into collective release.
* Це Життя reveals his grounded maturity: endurance without pretending life is painless.
* ШЛЯХ ДО СЕБЕ reaches the centre of Marko—the intimate journey of becoming himself again.

Marko does not simply sing about returning home. He sings about becoming strong enough to carry home forward. That is the true sound of The Reclaimer.

Musical roots and influences

Marko’s first influence is not a single artist but the Ukrainian tradition of using song to preserve memory. He is drawn to melodies that can hold sorrow and hope at the same time—music passed between generations because certain truths are easier to sing than to explain.

Within modern Ukrainian music, he connects with the emotional scale of Okean Elzy, the urban humanity of Boombox, the physical musicality of MONATIK, the directness and social conscience of YARMAK, and the way Go_A carries cultural memory into an unmistakably contemporary space. Kuzma Skryabin’s honesty, humour and lack of pretension also speak deeply to him.

Beyond Ukraine, Marko gravitates towards Stromae, Woodkid, Labrinth and Mahmood—artists who allow rhythm, visual imagination, cultural identity and male vulnerability to coexist. Stromae’s ability to place difficult emotion inside movement is particularly close to Marko’s own instincts.

He does not imitate these artists. What he takes from them is permission: permission to remain culturally specific while speaking universally, to create something physically alive without sacrificing lyrical depth, and to present masculinity without emotional concealment.

Marko is most interested in the point where inheritance and reinvention meet—where something familiar survives, but returns with a different heartbeat. For The Reclaimer, tradition is not a destination. It is material for the future.

Beyond the music

Marko is rarely completely still. Movement is how he clears his mind: freestyle dance when nobody is watching, long walks beside the Dnipro, and occasional rooftop solitude above the noise of Kyiv. He often finds the physical rhythm of a song before he understands its words.

He is fascinated by things that carry evidence of a previous life—old cassette players, analogue radios, worn leather, faded shop signs and buildings where several layers of paint remain visible. He repairs rather than replaces whenever possible. This instinct is another expression of The Reclaimer: he sees possibility where others see damage.

Marko keeps small notebooks filled with overheard phrases, street markings, dates, directions and expressions remembered from his family. He reads Ukrainian poetry, particularly Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Stus and Serhiy Zhadan, because he admires language that can remain precise under emotional pressure.

He enjoys crowded tables more than crowded rooms. Around trusted people, his guardedness disappears: he teases, tells stories, argues passionately and becomes fiercely competitive over almost any game. At larger gatherings, he is usually the person who eventually slips onto the balcony for air.

His pleasures are uncomplicated—strong coffee, rain against an open window, late trains, second-hand record shops, clothing with history, and conversations that continue long after everyone intended to leave.

Marko does not collect possessions to prove where he has been. He collects fragments that remind him who he is becoming.