WORLDWIDE Exclusive Premiere: UMIKO Kotori ‘UKA (羽化)’ FULL ALBUM Stream 10/9/2026 on RadioRadioX.com at 4pm (New York) 11pm (Lithuania)
UMIKO Kotori
UKA (羽化)
The sound of becoming — an eleven-track album where electronic production,
live instrumentation and instinctive genre collision become one moving form.
Official album artwork by Eglė Fern · Photography by Dalia Mikonytė
UMIKO Kotori releases UKA (羽化), her eleventh album and the latest chapter in the long-running solo practice
of Lithuanian musician, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Elena Neniškytė. Written, produced,
recorded, mixed and mastered by Elena, the album captures an artist working without fixed genre boundaries
— following curiosity wherever it leads.
The title UKA emerged from an unexpected linguistic coincidence: Lithuanian “ūkas”, a nebula — a cloud of gas
and cosmic dust where stars can form — and Japanese “uka” (羽化), the moment an insect emerges from its
final skin and takes its adult form. One word describes where a star is born; the other describes the moment a
wing is born. Between them sits the album’s central idea: music in the moment of becoming.
The sound: Sonically, UKA moves like a living organism: deep electronic low-end, restless beats and live drums
meet distorted guitars, bass, saxophone, synths and vocals, pulling from grunge, krautrock, hip-hop, soul, punk
and experimental electronics without settling into one genre.
THE ALBUM
Music in the moment of becoming.
UKA is not built around one storyline. It behaves more like a mixtape: eleven distinct moods, each allowed to
exist on its own terms, while the whole record moves through pain, elevation, tension, release and sudden
turns of curiosity.
The album grew out of a much larger burst of writing: twenty tracks created across a single year, followed by
six months of mixing and mastering. Four became pre-release singles; eleven form UKA; five more remain to
come. The album therefore feels less like a sealed object than a cross-section of a living process — one point on
a line that keeps moving.
UMIKO Kotori’s working principle was deliberately simple: from everything in front of her, choose whatever
contains even the smallest spark of curiosity, follow it until it runs out, then choose again. The result is music
that can move between electronic production and live instrumentation, grunge, krautrock, hip-hop, soul, punk
and experimental sound without needing to settle into any one category.
Two collaborators appear on the album itself: Mantas Augustaitis on drums and Augustas Genutis on bass.
Simonas Šipavičius (saxophone), Paulius Volkovas (guitar), Mantas Daujotas (drums) and Augustas Genutis
(bass) also appear across the pre-release singles.
THE PRE-RELEASE SINGLES
Four signals before the emergence.
The four pre-release singles — POLITE, SWEETY, JUNGLY and GRUNGY — introduced UKA’s evolving world
through four distinct moods, each paired with a recurring handmade white mask across different Vilnius
locations, building toward the mask’s removal on the album cover.
The singles were released between April and July 2026, creating a visual and musical arc into the album.
POLITE received airplay on LRT OPUS; the wider audiovisual direction continues through moving image,
performance and real-time visuals.
THE VISUAL WORLD
From mask to emergence.
The visual identity of UKA has developed alongside the music since April. Across the four pre-release singles,
UMIKO Kotori wore a handmade white mask in different Vilnius locations. For the album cover, the mask is
removed for the first time: the visual metaphor of becoming made physical.
For POLITE, UMIKO Kotori created the mask herself and directed and edited the video, extending UMIKO’s
practice beyond recorded sound into moving image, performance and real-time visuals.
THE ARTIST
UMIKO Kotori / Elena Neniškytė
UMIKO Kotori is the solo project of Lithuanian musician, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Elena
Neniškytė. Her musical path runs from classical and jazz vocal training through Vilnius’s alternative scene and
into electronic music. She works across vocals, drums, bass, guitar, synthesizers and trumpet, maintaining an
independent practice in which she writes, produces, records, mixes and masters her own work.
UMIKO began in 2011, with the first album Wave arriving in 2012. “UKA” is her eleventh album under the
project. The catalogue includes the home-recorded lo-fi IF (2014), “Aftermath” (2017), recorded with a live
band at Big Jelly Studios in the UK, the audiovisual “In the Nowhere Without the No” (2020), and later releases
including “SAKE” (2022), “Sorry to be You” (2023) and “Spitting Supernovas” (2024).
Her live work has taken UMIKO Kotori to Portugal, Poland and Germany, including Casa da Música in Porto,
Halfway Festival in Białystok alongside Julia Holter, My Brightest Diamond and These New Puritans, and solo
performances in Berlin at ACUD Macht Neu and Donau115. In Vilnius she has opened for Efterklang and,
through her wider work, for Franz Ferdinand.
Neniškytė’s wider practice includes Ministry of Echology, shishi and the Mommy’s Karma project, as well as
production and recording for other artists. She has also composed for film, animation, theatre, contemporary
circus and visual art, and hosted the monthly Radio Vilnius programme “Kokie nelygūs Vilniaus šaligatviai”
from 2022–2024.
WHY THIS RELEASE MATTERS
For media, curators and music industry professionals, “UKA” offers a clear entry point into an artist whose
practice is already unusually broad: a self-contained producer and multi-instrumentalist with eleven albums,
international performance experience and a growing audiovisual language. The album is also the beginning of
a new visual phase — one that can extend naturally into live performance, moving image and real-time visual
work.
CREDITS
Lyrics, recording, mixing & mastering: UMIKO Kotori;
Album cover art & graphic design: Eglė Fern
Photography: Dalia Mikonytė
Musicians across singles and album: Mantas Augustaitis (drums), Augustas Genutis (bass), Simonas Šipavičius
(saxophone), Mantas Daujotas (drums), Paulius Volkovas (guitar)
Official website: umikokotori.com
