26 April 2026. The project Disco Magic & valex77 publishes the track “Siren” (Lilac) - 4 minutes 31 seconds in the styles of Italo Disco and Eurodance, 739 plays on the first day on PromoDJ. The song entered the album “Forgotten Melody” as the fifth of eight tracks, and its English version was titled “Lilac” and runs two seconds longer - 4:33. This is not a cover, not a remix, not a reworking of someone else's hit. It is an original song by Alexey Shepelev (Disco Magic) and Alexander Vorobiev (valex77) - a duo that has been making retro music in the aesthetic of the 80s and 90s since 2017.
Who is behind Disco Magic & valex77
Alexey Shepelev is the author of the Disco Magic project, valex77 is Alexander Vorobiev. The duo works in two modes: covers of Soviet and international hits in the Italo Disco and Eurodance style, and original tracks. Covers - from Modern Talking and Ice MC to BIS - serve as a bridge to an audience familiar with the originals. Original tracks are the artistic core of the project. “Siren” belongs to the second category: an original composition written specifically for the album “Forgotten Melody”.
The album was released in 2026 and contains eight tracks with a total duration of about 30 minutes. The description on the project's website defines it as “a pop/Eurodance album about love, family and memory”. This is not a singles collection - it is a conceptual record with a unified theme. Eight songs, eight stories: “Ty menya obidel” (4:19), “Yura, Yurka” (3:42, dedicated to Yura Shatunov), “Moi samyi rodnoi” (4:04), “Beloi vyugoi” (3:00), “Lilac” (4:33), “Cover Girl” (3:37), “Ty i Ya” (2:59), “Dochenka” (3:50).
“Siren” is the fifth track of the album, central by position and the only one with an English version on the same release. On the Disco Magic website, the track is available at /tracks/siren. The duration of the English version “Lilac” is two seconds longer - 4:33 versus 4:31 - indicating a separate vocal recording rather than a simple language-track replacement over the same instrumental.
Lilac as image and motif
In Russian culture, lilac is a sign of May, brief flowering and nostalgia. The image is built on a simple contrast: the flower lives two weeks, the memory of it - decades. In the context of an album about love, family and memory, this motif works as a metaphor: a bright moment that passes quickly but remains forever. For the English-speaking listener, “Lilac” is simply the name of a flower. For the Russian listener - an entire season: May holidays, school exams, the smell after rain. This double layer is the reason the track received two versions.
The track runs 4:31 - above the album average (3:46). This allows instrumental sections to unfold: intro, breakdown and outro - structural elements that in Italo Disco are traditionally longer than in a streaming-single pop song. The intro in the genre usually lasts 16-32 bars, the outro 8-16, and “Siren” uses both zones. Seven other tracks on the album fall in the 2:59-4:19 range.
Sound: Italo Disco and Eurodance in one track
“Siren” combines two genre aesthetics that discomagic.ru defines as the track's styles: Italo Disco and Eurodance. Italo Disco provides the melodic foundation - synthesizer pads, eighth-note bass, melancholic minor-key harmony. Eurodance adds rhythmic energy - a straighter kick, emphasised clap on the second and fourth beats, above-average tempo.
The connection between the two genres is not accidental: Eurodance grew out of Italo Disco in the early 90s, inheriting the synthesizer sound and melodic approach but accelerating the tempo and adding rap inserts. Disco Magic & valex77 work at the intersection of both genres - their covers of Modern Talking, Ice MC and BIS occupy the same zone. “Siren” as an original track uses the same palette, but with its own melody and lyrics in Russian.
Songs in Russian in the Italo Disco style are a separate tradition. Soviet and post-Soviet Italo Disco clones of the 1980s-1990s - from “Maki” to “Zvyozdy” - proved that the genre works with Russian lyrics if the melody leads. Disco Magic & valex77 continue this line, but with modern production: tracks are recorded in a DAW, not in a studio on tape, and this is audible in the clarity of the mix and the precision of the programmed parts.
Album structure around “Siren”
“Siren” is the fifth of eight tracks. Before it: three songs of a personal nature (“Ty menya obidel”, “Yura, Yurka”, “Moi samyi rodnoi”) and one landscape piece (“Beloi vyugoi”). After it: “Cover Girl” (the most “disco”-oriented track), “Ty i Ya” (short, 2:59, the fastest by tempo) and “Dochenka” (final, 3:50, a ballad). “Siren” stands at the point where the album's mood shifts from nostalgia to lightness - from winter (“Beloi vyugoi”) to spring (lilac), from heavy themes to bright ones.
The album “Forgotten Melody” is not a random set of singles but a sequence with an arc. The tracks are arranged not by recording chronology but by emotional logic: resentment (“Ty menya obidel”) → memory (“Yura, Yurka”) → family (“Moi samyi rodnoi”) → winter (“Beloi vyugoi”) → spring (“Siren”/“Lilac”) → lightness (“Cover Girl”) → closeness (“Ty i Ya”) → tenderness (“Dochenka”). “Siren” is the turning point: after it, the album gets lighter.
Production: retro sound in a DAW
Disco Magic & valex77 record music in a digital audio workstation (DAW), not in an analog studio on tape. This defines the approach: the retro aesthetic is achieved not through vintage equipment but through software synthesizers, sample libraries and digital processing. The project's PromoDJ catalog lists the track style as “Mastered”, meaning the final mastering was done digitally, not through an analog mastering chain.
For a listener familiar with Italo Disco production, the difference between an analog recording from 1984 and a digital one from 2026 is audible in the first seconds: the digital mix is more transparent, software synthesizers are more precisely tuned, the kick is tighter. But the melodic logic - pads, bass, lead synth - is the same as forty years ago. “Siren” sounds like Italo Disco not because it was recorded on vintage gear but because it follows the genre's harmony and rhythmic grid.
Similar tracks by Disco Magic & valex77
“Siren” is not the only original track by the project. In the Disco Magic catalog on PromoDJ, original songs sit alongside covers: “Dochenka”, “Moi samyi rodnoi”, “Beloi vyugoi”, “Zabud”, “Ehta noch”, “Devushka s oblozhki”, “Kosmonavt”. All of them are from the album “Forgotten Melody” or from single releases not included in the album. “Letniy veterok” and “Den rozhdeniya (Disco Mix)” are two other original tracks that received separate publication.
Among the covers - “Geronimo's Cadillac 2026” (Modern Talking), “Think about the way” (Ice MC), “Scream” (Ice MC), “Gudbay” (BIS), “Krasnaya Shapochka” (Radiotrans), “Edem na mashine” (Gudzon), “Noch neskazannyh slov” (140 udarov v minutu), “Modnitsa” (Kofe). The cover catalog spans Soviet estrada, 90s Russian dance music and Eurodance classics - three sources from which the project draws material. “Siren” in this system is a rare case: an original song with a two-language version, claiming independent artistic value rather than a reassembly of someone else's hit. In this, it is closer to “Dochenka” and “Moi samyi rodnoi” - two other original album tracks with a personal subtext.
Place in the new wave of retro music
Disco Magic & valex77 are part of a new wave of artists making Italo Disco and Eurodance in the 2020s. Unlike German and Italian revival projects targeting an English-speaking audience, the Shepelev-Vorobiev duo writes in Russian and addresses a listener for whom Italo Disco is not exoticism but the soundtrack of their youth. The project runs a Russian-language website (discomagic.ru) and an English version (discomagic.ru/en), publishing tracks in both languages. On the English page, the album “Forgotten Melody” is presented with English track titles, but Russian transliteration is preserved in the URL - /en/albums/zabytyj-motiv.
The album “Forgotten Melody” - eight songs, thirty minutes, one language and one emotional arc: from resentment through memory to tenderness. This is not a “best of” or a compilation - it is an author's record in which every track was written for this album. In a genre that lived for decades on singles and compilations, a full album of original songs is a gesture that distinguishes the project from most contemporary Italo/Eurodance acts working in the single-by-single format.
Bilingual strategy
The presence of two versions - “Siren” and “Lilac” - on the same album points to a strategy: the project works on two language markets simultaneously. The Russian version is for the discomagic.ru audience, for whom lilac is a cultural code. The English version is for the international listener who will find the album on the English version of the site or on streaming platforms. Two seconds of duration difference is not an encoding error but evidence that the vocals were recorded twice, with different phrasing and breathing.
Not every track on the album received an English version - only “Siren”. This makes it a singled-out track, highlighted among eight. The choice of lilac as the song for a bilingual release is deliberate: the image of flowering is more universal than “Ty menya obidel” or “Dochenka”, which require cultural context unavailable to a foreign listener without explanation. Listen to “Siren” / “Lilac” →