Outline / BuG a.k.a. Kirill Stepanenko, the founder of Art Bugz Records is of Ukrainian origin, now a Toronto citizen. For the past 10 years he has been mastering his craft of music production and composition. Starting out as a Downtempo, Ambient, Leftfield and IDM producer by the end of 2002, he quickly brushed up the techniques and progressed refining his sound year by year.
Kirill started out when he was still 12 years old with just a computer and his imagination in hand. He was so excited with an idea to create music with the computer, that not having the software at first, he took some video game sounds and arranged them into a composition in Windows Sound Recorder. He had to calculate the times in between the drums to form a beat mathematically etc. Just before his first initial move to Toronto, he had already collaborated with a school mate B.o.B., to make an Ambient-Leftfield single under A.C.M. (Acronym for Alive Conceptual Music). The first year (2003), soon upon arriving in Toronto, he continued on an already chosen path. The year was rich of Ambient-Downtempo productions on one side, and Jungle-Hardcore on the other, all under the moniker BuG. In 2004 the sound was taken further by learning midi at a sequencer level. More productions of the same direction were made and first full length Drum & Bass tracks were also made this year. In 2005, then BuG still, was continuing on his Downtempo journey with the sound still maturing and developing further.
Experimenting with a large number of styles (Downtempo, Jungle-Hardcore, Ambient, Leftfield, IDM, and so on), he nevertheless felt an urge to once again try something new. Being impressed with Drum & Bass production at the time, he started to produce the more dance floor approach Drum & Bass content. Not being restricted geographically, switching over to Drum & Bass was also synonymous with moving back to hometown of Kiev, Ukraine for a short while. Switching over to D&B meant a change of artist name, and for about a year Contaminated took over (Contaminated came from being inspired by Mark Caro's “Contaminate”).Thus from 2005 onwards a chapter of a Drum & Bass outburst occurred, Kirill managed to produce 3.5 hours worth of tracks in just a year and a half. In the spring 2006, the new artist name was born, this time Outline. The origin of the name is not certain but at the time Kirill was highly motivated by Spirit's “Puzzle Box” LP. Eventually Outline took over Contaminated, and the previous moniker was abandoned. It was time for another turn and Kirill return back to Toronto in Autumn 2006.
Another Toronto chapter unfolded. In 2007, further exploration of Jungle persisted with two full length, but this time the more experimental Drum & Bass albums were written entitled “Spiral Railroad” and “Guardian Angel”. The following year 2008, Outline has produced another double full length experimental Drum & Bass project self titled “Outlined”. An emphasis of that year turned to the track “Rainfall”, produced in the summer, that he still considers a business card demo. The track entitled “Rainfall” is a culmination of Kirill's talent and approach to writing music, it features creative insight, progressive structures, sound melodiousness whilst still maintaining a dance floor edge. The track is known to leave a positive impression on practically anybody.
From 2009 onwards, he started to work on a conscious album project called Chorus Music. First tracks were made, lineup started to form. In 2010 Kirill accidentally heard some Classical CDs, and got excited with them. Shortly after he decided to start studying the music theory angle at a Royal Conservatory. The same year Outline has already started to think of ways of releasing the album, and got excited with an idea to start an own digital label. Subsequently he felt appropriate to develop own webstore for the need of a digital label. Unfortunately, developing own webstore didn't prove logical so the plan was canceled eventually. Nevertheless, work on an album continued, and another full length compilation was starting to form in 2011 entitled Chestnut. In Chestnut LP there were mainly works that didn't see a light of day in Chorus Music project, backed with other tracks being made at that time. Another event of 2011 was start of a year long studies in George Brown college prep program in hopes of getting admitted for studio production and engineering course in Fanshawe College (London On). Unfortunately upon completion of the prep program, Outline wasn't admitted. Most of of 2012 was spent finalizing Chorus Music project, weather in production, engineering or mastering sides of things. Kirill has resumed studying music theory at the Royal Conservatory this year. The freshest set of works which were made between 2010 till the present are bundled in a suite called Crystal in 2013. Now that the Chorus Music project is finished, the business side of things has to be taken care of. The new plan encompassing working with a distribution company for the label started to take place. Bringing us to Art Bugz Records planning to launch in spring 2013 with a debut album release for the label owner Kirill Stepanenko aka Outline / BuG.
Following artists continue to influence Kirill. D&B – Suv, Tech Itch, Amit, Spirit; IDM / Leftfield / Downtempo – Animals on Wheels, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Afx, Bola; Ambient – Stephen Philips, Chad Kettering; Classical – Bach, Chopin, Satie, Wyschnegradsky, Haba, Prokofiev, Medieval & Renaissance music.