Roman Vyacheslavovich Belavkin (Russian: Рома́н Вячесла́вович Бела́вкин; born 9 January 1971) is a Russian-British electronic musician, computer scientist, and wushu master. He is the son of mathematician Viacheslav Belavkin. As a musician, he is known under the pseudonym Solar X (also: SolarX). He is considered one of the pioneers of the Russian intelligent dance music (IDM) scene of the 1990s. He founded the label Art-Tek Records, the first Russian label specializing in IDM. He was European wushu champion (1992) and holds the title of International Master of Sport. Since the mid-2000s, he has lived in the United Kingdom, where he works as an associate professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Middlesex University.
Early life Belavkin was born in Moscow into a family of mathematicians. His father was Viacheslav Belavkin (1946–2012), later a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Nottingham and one of the pioneers in quantum probability research. As a child, he lived in a small Moscow apartment where his father's study also served as his bedroom; during the 1980s, he witnessed his father's work on quantum information theory. His father brought him a synthesizer from a business trip, which he used to make his first musical sketches.
Career
Sports From the late 1980s, Belavkin seriously pursued wushu, training under Gleb Muzrukov, the founder of the USSR Wushu Federation. He became one of the leading athletes on the USSR and Russian wushu teams. In 1989, Belavkin became USSR wushu champion at the country's first official championship in Almaty. In 1990, he won a gold medal in changquan at the first international wushu tournament in Moscow. In July of that year, he competed as part of the USSR team at an international tournament in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), placing 6th among representatives from 42 countries. In 1991, he won the USSR Cup as part of the Moscow team. At the 1992 European Wushu Championships in London, he won a gold medal in jianshu (straight sword). That same year, he was involved in a car accident that left him immobile for two years and ended his sports career.
Music career
1990s During his rehabilitation period, Belavkin began seriously pursuing electronic music, using a computer and Soviet analog synthesizers to create compositions—including Polivoks, Ritm-2, Aelita, and others, which were more accessible than European or Japanese alternatives and had a distinctive sound. In 1988, Belavkin enrolled in the Faculty of Physics at Moscow State University. His university studies gave him access to the internet, which in the mid-1990s was only available in academic settings. In 1994, he graduated from Moscow State University, took the pseudonym Solar X, and began performing—playing at the Pilot club and other Moscow venues—and recorded his debut album Outre X Mer on cassette. Through the "Analog Heaven" mailing list devoted to analog synthesizers, Belavkin contacted Dan Nigrin, co-founder of the American label Defective Records. In 1995, the label released an EP of the same name based on the cassette material. The release received positive reviews in the Western press: German magazine Frontpage named it "record of the week". However, according to music critic Denis Boyarinov, at that time in Russia, Belavkin "was known perhaps only within Moscow and among devoted readers of Ptuch magazine," while abroad significantly more was written about his music. In 1997, Belavkin founded his own label, Art-Tek Records. It became the first label in Russia to specialize specifically in IDM. The label's name was a reference to the Soviet pioneer camp Artek. Following the release of the album X-Rated, publications appeared in The Wire, De:Bug, and other magazines. That same year, Solar X met Richard James (Aphex Twin); after moving to London, they became neighbors. The Art-Tek label became an important platform for the Russian IDM scene, releasing recordings by musicians from various cities: Novel 23, J-Tunes, DJ Compass Vrubel, Lazyfish, Alexandroid, and the St. Petersburg duo EU), which subsequently signed to the British label Pause 2 and toured in Europe. In 1999, the label released the compilation Artefacts featuring a selection of Russian IDM. In 1998, he composed the music for the film The Monk, directed by his former wushu teacher Gleb Muzrukov. In 1999, his third album, Little Pretty Automatic, was released on the British label Worm Interface Records. One of the singles from this album was a cover of the song "Koroleva" (Королева, lit. "Queen") by Alla Pugacheva. Music critic Artemy Troitsky provided vocals for the track. In 2001, the EP Chanel N° 303 came out on the German label Hymen Records. Tracks "Dasha 1, 2, 3, 4..." and "Xiao Jie" from this release were played on John Peel's show on BBC. In 2006, the EP Masters of Meanders was released as part of the box set Travel Sickness on the same label. From the early 2000s, Belavkin largely stopped releasing new music for an extended period, focusing on his scientific work.
Return to music In November 2017, he performed at the "Island of the 90s" festival at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg alongside video artist Vadim Epstein; this was his first performance in that city. In 2019, techno musician Nina Kraviz reissued the album X-Rated on her label Galaxiid (a sub-label of трип), releasing it on vinyl for the first time. In a Resident Advisor review, the album was called "an exceptional piece of Russian IDM from 1997". In 2024, a reissue of the debut album Outre X Mer was released on the same label. In August 2021, he recorded the track "Summer Agents" (Агенты лета) for a musical marathon in support of the publication Meduza, which had been designated as a "foreign agent" in Russia. In 2025, Solar X released his first studio album in 26 years—Divergent Sequences on the Art-Tek Records label. The album includes 18 tracks with a total duration of over 75 minutes; the title refers to the mathematical concept of a divergent sequence. Theremin player Lydia Kavina participated in the recording.
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