Nastia

Nastia has spent two decades building and rebuilding scenes, first a Ukrainian underground that barely existed on the international map when she started, then, after February 2022, a career and a community forced to relocate almost overnight. Born Anastasia Topolskaia, she has been described by Resident Advisor as one of Ukraine's most toured DJs, the founder of two record labels, and a co-founder of a festival that still runs in Kyiv today, all built from a starting point about as far from techno's usual entry points, Berlin basements, Detroit radio, London art school, as the genre gets.

From Luhansk to Kazantip

Nastia was born on May 20, 1987, in a small village in Ukraine's Luhansk region, near the Russian border, and grew up in a family of modest means with two older sisters. She initially set her sights on dancing rather than DJing, spending her early teenage years at her hometown's only club before studying at Donetsk National University of Economics and Trade. In Donetsk she worked briefly as a go-go dancer, then switched to DJing after a boyfriend who was already a working local DJ taught her the basics of mixing. She played her first set in 2005 in Ivano-Frankivsk under the name DJ Natia Beauty, and within a year had become a resident and stage curator at Kazantip, the sprawling, freewheeling festival that operated on Crimea's coast until 2013 and served as the training ground for a generation of Ukrainian and Russian dance music names. From 2006 to 2016 she also hosted her own weekly radio show on KISS FM, a decade-long run that helped establish her as a fixture of Ukraine's electronic music media before she had much of a footprint outside the country. That changed in 2009, when a video of her mixing picked up more than 100,000 views on YouTube and started pulling in bookings from outside Ukraine for the first time.

Sound and Style

Nastia has built her reputation as a DJ who resists being pinned to one lane, moving across house, jungle, drum and bass and underground techno within the same set rather than sticking to a single tempo or mood. Her own productions, by contrast, lean toward a more restrained, functional strain of techno, built less around obvious hooks than around small, patient shifts in tension, texture and rhythm, a style that came into sharper focus with TECH041, her first full-length solo record, released in 2026 on her own label. It's a sound that rewards the kind of long-form club sets she has built her international profile on rather than quick festival-stage impact, closer in spirit to the functionalist techno tradition than to anything built for a highlight reel.

Propaganda Records and the Strichka Festival

In 2010, a residency at Moscow's Arma17, a club built inside a former factory that became one of the era's defining Russian techno rooms, pushed Nastia toward running her own events rather than only playing other people's. Three years later she launched Propaganda Records, her first label, a vinyl-focused outlet that ran until 2019 and gave early releases to Ukrainian producers including iO and Andrey Zots. In 2014, the same year Russia annexed Crimea and fighting began in her native Donbas region, Nastia partnered with the team behind Closer, Kyiv's most influential club, to launch the Strichka festival, an event that has continued in the city in the years since and remains one of the clearer through-lines between Nastia's early career and Kyiv's present-day club scene.

NECHTO, War, and Rebuilding as TECHNO Records

Nastia founded her second label, NECHTO Records, in Kyiv in 2019, built around an intentionally open-door submission policy for what the label called "unknown names," artists without existing profiles or label connections. In 2020 and 2021, NECHTO's own party series drew crowds in the thousands to Kyiv, with attendees traveling in from more than twenty countries. That momentum was interrupted in February 2022, when Russia's full-scale invasion forced Nastia, like millions of Ukrainians, to leave the country; she relocated to Amsterdam, where she remains based today. Rather than step back, she used NECHTO as a fundraising vehicle, staging "NECHTO for Ukraine" at Knockdown Center in New York in July 2022, with proceeds going to the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund and a lineup of fellow Ukrainian artists including Nastya Muravyova, Noizar, Bejenec and Voin Oruwu sharing the bill with international guests. She has also worked behind the scenes helping Ukrainian DJs and producers secure the visas and military exemptions needed to keep performing in Europe during the war, and Beatport profiled her story as the opening episode of its Off the Record documentary series in 2022. In January 2026, she rebranded NECHTO, originally an anagram of "techno," into TECHNO Records outright, a small but deliberate act of reclaiming the genre's own name rather than working around it, and marked the relaunch with TECH041, her own first solo full-length as the label's founder.

Career Highlights

Nastia's profile has extended well beyond Ukraine's own club circuit over the years. She has recorded a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix and held a residency on the station, played Boiler Room on multiple occasions, and appeared on the covers of both Mixmag and DJ Mag. At the height of her touring schedule she played roughly 200 shows a year across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia, a pace that RA has credited as among the heaviest of any Ukrainian DJ's career. Her 2010 set for RTS.FM, recorded that December and still archived on the station's YouTube channel with well over 70,000 views, captures her mid-career, years before Propaganda closed, NECHTO launched, or the war reshaped where she could call home, and it remains one of the earliest widely available documents of her sound from that period.

FAQ

Where is Nastia from?

She was born on May 20, 1987, in a small village in Ukraine's Luhansk region, near the Russian border, and grew up in Donetsk before beginning her DJ career in 2005.

What labels has Nastia run?

She founded Propaganda Records, a vinyl label, in 2013, which closed in 2019. That same year she launched NECHTO Records in Kyiv, which she rebranded as TECHNO Records in January 2026.

What is the Strichka festival?

Strichka is a Kyiv festival Nastia co-founded in 2014 in partnership with the team behind Closer, one of the city's most influential clubs. It has continued running in Kyiv in the years since.

How has the war in Ukraine affected Nastia's career?

Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 forced Nastia to relocate from Ukraine to Amsterdam, where she is now based. She has since used her NECHTO label to run fundraising events for Ukraine and has helped fellow Ukrainian artists secure visas and military exemptions to perform abroad.

Has Nastia played for RTS.FM?

Yes. RTS.FM recorded a DJ set with Nastia on December 23, 2010, which remains archived on the station's YouTube channel.