Central Asia Turns Up the Volume: elbowsway Spark a Shoegaze Scene

It’s difficult for most of us to imagine a world where discovering a band requires physical labor. In the West, underground music is only a click away. But for the founder of Central Asia’s first shoegaze band elbowsway, Tomas Mollaev, music was once a manual exchange.

Growing up in Turkmenistan — a country with internet restrictions so severe it is often compared to North Korea — streaming an album simply wasn’t an option. Downloading a single 5MB song could take eight hours over dial-up speeds. In that extreme isolation, music became a form of physical currency. It was traded through burned CDs, flash drives, and files carried back by friends traveling abroad. When you have to work that hard for a single track, you don’t take the noise for granted — you treat it with reverence.

That lifelong hunger eventually collided with revelation. After leaving Turkmenistan for university and finally gaining unrestricted internet access, Tomas discovered Nothing and their 2018 record Dance on the Blacktop. For a kid raised on nu-metal and deathcore, that massive, lo-fi wall of heavy shoegaze was exactly the catalyst he had been waiting for. 

Now based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, elbowsway is building a local shoegaze scene from absolute zero. Ahead of their debut EP, I caught up with the band to talk about surviving internet blackouts, the logistical realities of sourcing gear in a nonexistent scene, and how a dislocated arm in a local mosh pit gave birth to a collective determined to play loud.

I’ve heard that the band essentially started with a literal injury at a local gig. Can you tell us that story? It seems like a very "punk" way for a shoegaze band to be born—how did a moment like that lead to the four of you becoming a collective?

Honestly, socializing can feel incredibly difficult these days. Everyone seems to be isolated in their own way, and that was exactly my experience. The older you get, the harder it becomes to find your people.

When I first moved to Tashkent, the first show I attended was a reunion for a local alt-rock/emo band called Cruel Tie. The crowd was strangely passive; I could see in the performers' eyes that the energy was not what they were used to. During the final track, I just wanted to change that energy, so I tried to initiate a light circle pit. Someone pushed me from behind, and I went down hard on my left arm. I ended up with a dislocated elbow.

In that moment, I knew instinctively that the people who rushed over to help me were going to be my friends. That’s exactly what happened. The first two people there were Yuri from the Kazakhstani band Secret Radio and Alisher Rakhimov, a local artist. Even the band came up afterward and gifted me a tape. Through that initial "impact," I was introduced to the rest of the scene: Ruslan Tikhonov, then Anton Suraev (wyym), who joined as our second guitarist, and Artur Khafizov (St. Waters), who eventually connected me with Aziz Ganiev.

Aziz and I realized very quickly how much we had in common. While we were trading demos and looking for a drummer, the name elbowsway started to take shape. It was partly a nod to my injury, but also to Aziz’s "style" in the mosh pits—he’s known for using his elbows. We initially liked "Elbow Joint" because of how complex and interconnected that part of the body is, but after finding a US band with a similar name, we landed on "sway."

We loved the idea of "sway" as influence or impact, a sort of butterfly effect born from that one fall. We eventually decided to style it as one word, elbowsway, because it allows for different interpretations. It could be "elbow sway," "elbows way," or even "elbow one’s way." It’s flexible, much like the collective itself.

Music wasn't something you could just stream or download.

You originally come from Turkmenistan, which is often described as one of the most isolated countries in the world. For those of us who have no window into that region, what was the musical landscape like growing up? Is there even a concept of an "underground" there?

Growing up in Turkmenistan, the alternative scene was small and concentrated—mostly in the capital, Ashgabat, or in Krasnovodsk (Turkmenbashi). I also had a few friends from Chardzhou, near the Uzbek border. When it comes to my hometown Dashoguz, it was literally only me. Later on, I was able to introduce some of my classmates to that kind of music, but nothing beyond that. Back then, between 2009 and 2012, our entire social world revolved around a platform called Mobimeet. It was incredibly low-bandwidth, which was the only reason it worked given our internet constraints.

Music wasn't something you could just stream or download. A single 5MB song could take five to eight hours to finish. Because of that, music became a manual exchange. It was all about knowing the right people—those who had relatives or friends traveling abroad who could bring back files.

When you have to work that hard for a single track, you treat music differently. To this day, I still listen to full albums rather than playlists because of that habit. In those conditions, everyone was hungry for connection. There was no 'coolness gap' or gatekeeping; if you found someone who liked Linkin Park, you knew they'd likely be open to whatever else you had to share.

In a place like that, if you can't find your people, you have to create them. I never gatekept the music I loved. I always wanted people to see the value in what I appreciated, so I spent a lot of time introducing others to new genres. It wasn't just about the sound; it was about building a community from scratch.

Turkmenistan has some of the most restricted internet censorship globally, often compared to North Korea. Without easy access to YouTube or Spotify, how does a young person there actually discover "alternative" or underground music? What was your personal gateway into shoegaze?

My earliest memory of this world was seeing the music videos for 'A Beautiful Lie' and 'From Yesterday' by 30 Seconds to Mars around 2007 (I was 10 at that time). I immediately fell in love with the energy and the sound. I started asking everyone I knew if they had any tracks by them. After about a year of searching, I finally found a guy who shared a CD with me that had the full 'A Beautiful Lie' LP.

The real turning point was 2018. That's when Nothing released 'Dance on the Blacktop.'

Alongside that, there was 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora' by Linkin Park, 'Toxicity' by System of a Down, 'Follow the Leader' by Korn, and the self-titled Deftones album. Those records changed me completely; they were my main entry points. From there, I went down a heavy path from nu-metal to death metal and deathcore, while also diving into black metal.

As for shoegaze, I actually didn't know anything about it until 2016 when I moved to Moscow for university and finally had full access to all kinds of music. I discovered Saigon Blue Rain's record 'Noire Psyché' and realized the genre was called dream pop, which led me to shoegaze. At the time, I was still blending those sounds with a lot of metal and post-punk.

The real turning point was 2018. That's when Nothing released 'Dance on the Blacktop.' It blew my mind. I found it through Relapse Records, and I think a lot of metal fans discovered shoegaze that same way. I listened to that record 24/7; everything about it was perfect. People love to talk shit about the mix quality, but as a metal fan, that lo-fi sound was exactly what I wanted. It might not be a demonstration of the 'true' traditional shoegaze sound, but it was my gateway. After that, I started researching the roots of the genre and found My Bloody Valentine, Ringo Deathstarr, Whirr, Have A Nice Life, and so many others.

You are now based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. While the scene here is more open, you are still being hailed as the first official shoegaze band in the country’s history. Do you feel a sense of responsibility to build this scene from scratch, or does it feel like a lonely path to walk?

It's a pretty lonely path to walk, for sure. In a lot of cases, it's really hard to stay optimistic about how the scene might develop, but we're trying our best.

We try to introduce as many people as possible to the culture and encourage them to start making their own music. The way I see it, the more bands we have, the easier it's going to be to actually build a lasting scene here. There's no room for gatekeeping when you're starting from zero. We want to be a resource, not a barrier.

What are the biggest practical challenges of being an upcoming shoegaze band in Central Asia right now? Is it difficult to find the right gear (like pedals and amps) or even venues that understand how to mix a "wall of sound"?

Finding the right gear is definitely a challenge, but I've always felt that limitations of any kind are the sisters of the creative process. Being limited forces you to find your own way to achieve the sound you want, and that's often what makes a band's identity unique. You have to be more resourceful when you can't just buy your way into a specific tone.

When it comes to venues, it's a much bigger hurdle. Since the scene is practically non-existent, it's always hard to 'sell' a show to venue owners who don't know what to expect from this kind of music. Mixing causes its own set of problems, too. Getting a 'wall of sound' to translate in a space that isn't used to it is a challenge, but at the end of the day, it really depends on who you're working with behind the board and how much they're willing to experiment with us.

But if we're talking about an ultimate 'bucket list' goal, the primary dream for us is to play Outbreak Fest.

With your debut EP arriving in early 2026, you are already reaching listeners globally who have never even seen Central Asia on a map. Do you see your music as a way to put your region on the global radar, or do you hope to eventually take the band elsewhere? 

Logistically, it would eventually make more sense to move somewhere else because traveling from Uzbekistan to play shows is incredibly difficult. It's a major hurdle for any touring band in this part of the world.

For now, though, we don't have any specific plans to relocate. Our focus is simply on getting the music out there. We want to see how the world reacts to what we've created first. Once we see where the listeners are and what the response looks like, we'll be in a better position to decide where our band goes next.

As a young band starting out in a region where this sound is brand new, what is the ultimate "bucket list" goal for you? If you could open for any band in the world right now - who would it be?

I don't want to get too specific about the exact bands we'd love to open for, though names like Nothing or Whirr are definitely at the top of that list.

But if we're talking about an ultimate 'bucket list' goal, the primary dream for us is to play Outbreak Fest. Reaching that stage would be the ultimate achievement for me. It represents exactly the kind of energy and community we want to be part of. That achievement would definitely make me happy.