Ilya Orehov is a beatboxer who absolutely tears the roof off venues. No, Ilya’s beatbox isn’t just about going boom boom boom into a microphone — it is full-on shows that make you rediscover beatboxing. And if you never liked beatbox before, you suddenly fall in love with it and want more and more. Ilya is just one step away from earning legendary status in the beatbox world — after all, he has been at it for over 15 years.

But that is not the main thing right now. Recently, Ilya fulfilled his biggest dream: he created something completely new for himself. He started his own band called "Snails Line" and has already dropped their first track, “Now”, and its music video.

Who is in the band? Why was it formed only now and in Dubai? Why not earlier? What kind of music do they play? And why on earth are they called Snails Line? We bombarded Ilya with questions, and he patiently answered every single one of them (he also talked about performing with Limp Bizkit — so read on if you don’t know that story yet).

All the answers are below. And make sure you give Snails Line a listen!

— Ilya, now you are in Dubai. A lot of people know you as an insane beatboxer who tears it up. You have launched your own band — but… it all started with you playing on the streets of Saint Petersburg, right?

— Oh yes. I have been into music since childhood, since I was about ten years old. I studied at a music school and played the flute. And since 2010, I have been performing beatboxing at events.

The real starting point was my performance at the huge graduation festival in Saint Petersburg. I won a competition and performed on the main stage. In that performance, I started with the flute, switched to beatboxing, and built a drum-and-bass track entirely with my voice. At the same time, my friends were on stage doing parkour. It all came together as one big show. And from that moment on, I started performing regularly at corporate events.

But my main and strongest background is the street. That is where the real growth started; that is where people noticed me. We were doing full-on street shows, gathering big crowds.

Why did we do it? Because there were no other options. It was a way to stay an artist, not to wait for invitations or depend on other people’s decisions. You just go out and do it. And if it resonates with people, they feel it, and they support you.

For me, this was a very important stage. Not a survival story, but an experience of total independence and direct connection with the audience.

In 2015, we decided to move to Moscow, because that is where the whole industry was.

— You say you were gathering big crowds. Why do you think it worked? What made people stop and notice? We all know that not every street musician can make a living from street performances.

— I think, first of all, it is about energy. If the energy is there, people stop — and it doesn’t really matter what kind of music it is or what genre. If the energy isn’t there, it just doesn’t reach them.

And honesty matters too. When you are giving not because you “have to,” but because you know you actually have something to give.

— Great. Let’s go back to 2015. That was the year you performed with the Limp Bizkit! Everyone who knows you has heard about it — but for those who haven’t, how did that happen?

— I was introduced to Fred Durst by Kostya Sidorkov, who worked at VK for many years.

I was introduced to Kostya by my friend Yaroslav Andreev from WildJam. I had met Yaroslav at a Comedy Club party in Saint Petersburg, where I was invited by Styopa Pestryakov after he had seen me performing on the streets of the city.

Do you see how this works? If, many years ago, I hadn’t made the decision to go out and perform on the streets, none of this would have happened. And I easily could have chosen not to — at that point, I already had some events, some paid gigs, and I could have said, “That’s it, I’m done with street performing.”

But if I hadn’t made that choice, there would have been no chain of decisions, no connections, no coincidences. And in the end, I would never have ended up on the same stage as Limp Bizkit.

And speaking about that performance itself — honestly, the sound was terrible. Everything was working badly. After the show, Fred Durst came up to me — and he was the only one who didn’t just say “Great job,” but gave me honest feedback. He said, “Man, you performed great. But what the hell was that sound?” And that was incredibly valuable.

The situation itself was wild. Right before my set, when I started plugging in my gear, the technician who was supposed to run out from the other side of the stage just… wasn’t there. So I am alone, running across the entire stadium, plugging in cables. This goes on for about a minute and a half — a minute and a half of absolute silence.

And this is the finale of the concert, right before the last song, Behind Blue Eyes.

Fred says into the mic, “And now we have a surprise for you,” — and then… nothing. Just some guy running around the stage, plugging things in.

And here is what was really amazing: he didn’t leave the stage. He stayed, filled the silence, talked into the mic, held the moment — and basically supported me through it.

— Did you have any further connection after that?

— No, unfortunately. But there is one story!

In 2025, my wife and I went to a Limp Bizkit concert in Abu Dhabi — and it was amazing. I took a photo of them and sent it to Fred. I have his number. And I didn’t expect anything at all — the number could have changed, he could have forgotten me, whatever.

We are already driving back home to Dubai, and I get a notification that he liked my message.

Can you imagine my reaction? I was literally screaming with happiness in the car.

And at that moment, I realised something else — that it felt like a kind of blessing for the release of our band’s first track. And that is exactly what happened: we dropped the track shortly after that.

— That is wild! A few years ago, you decided to move to Dubai with your family, and at some point, you said in an interview, “I’ve never worked this much in my life.” Tell me about that period.

— Back in Russia, I would say I had found my niche — the corporate event segment. I was performing beatbox everywhere, making good money, a lot of people knew me, and I had a huge network.

In Dubai, everything had to be built from scratch. I didn’t know anyone, and nobody knew me. I was trying to meet as many agencies and people as possible, to build a network from zero, so that some work could start appearing.

Every day, I would literally walk from office to office — everywhere I could think of. Just doing pure outbound hustle. At the same time, I was writing in group chats, meeting people, reconnecting with friends who were already here — and slowly, things started to move.

But there was another issue: the event market here is completely different. It is very, very hard to sell a beatbox show, which was exactly my speciality. Here, almost no one really needs it. And if they do, they don’t pay much for it.

That is when I realised I had to change something and adapt to the market. A friend of mine, Artem Minasyan, suggested that I start selling myself as a DJ. Because beatbox alone doesn’t really attract clients here. But DJing is still a performance — so why not?

That is how I started DJing, something I had never done before. And that decision is actually what helped me secure myself here, move my whole family over, and build a life in Dubai.

I am not saying I gave up beatbox — not at all. Now it is my trump card. I can DJ — and then pull beatbox out of my sleeve and completely tear up the dance floor.

— I saw an absolutely insane video of you — you are in a costume and a mask performing Feeling Good at the 15th edition of the Middle East Events Awards ceremony.

— That is a great story. We did that performance together with The Fridge agency. And a fun fact — it was the very first agency I went to in Dubai. Literally straight off the street.

Before they start working with an artist, they do a live audition. They say, “Come in, forget about time, we’ll listen to you live.” And of course I said yes — for me, that was the perfect format.

I come into their rehearsal room. Two girls walk in — managers — they sit down on this small couch. And I start performing. Full-on, my usual thing, giving everything, just dropping this wave of energy on them.

They are sitting there in shock, completely blown away. At some point, they say, “Wait, stop,” run out into the office and literally drag everyone into the rehearsal room. So instead of two people, there are suddenly about ten of them in there. It turned into this spontaneous mini-rave — they really didn’t expect it to be that powerful.

After that, we started working together. And that Feeling Good video is actually one of those projects.

— A few people told me that you absolutely tear the room apart with your beatbox. And you just said you “drop the wave of energy” on people. How do you do that? I know it is a hard question, but try to explain it.

— I think it is just… me. It doesn’t matter what instrument you have in your hands — guitar, voice, drums, whatever. What matters is not what you do, but how you do it. What really matters is the energy you put into it.

It is not about movement, not about volume, not about being flashy. It is about stepping forward and giving yourself completely. You connect with your instrument and you let the flow go through it. In my case, my instrument is my voice. I connect with it — and I transmit that state through it.

First, you send the impulse: a sound, a gesture, a look — it doesn’t matter. People receive it, and then they respond. That response can be noise, shouting, applause, or, on the opposite end, absolute silence, when everyone’s jaw just drops. And sometimes that silence can hit harder than any scream.

You feel that wave coming back at you, you get charged by it, and then you give back twice as much. If that energy exchange is built right, the crowd responds the same way. And step by step, this growing mass of energy starts to build — so powerful that it almost feels like it can create its own worlds.

— Thanks. Now let’s talk about Snails Line. Am I right in saying this is your first band?

— Yes. This is a dream I have actually been moving toward all these years. I think before, I was probably just afraid to say it out loud like that.

— Why?

— Because before that, I was always playing covers, other people’s music — just in my own interpretation. A beatbox version of pretty much anything. And that is how I made a living for many years.

But at the same time, I always had a dream. I wanted people to come to shows not because of some other big, famous artist — but because of me, because they wanted to hear my music.

For a long time, I didn’t understand what that should even look like. Could I gather people with covers? Sure, probably. But I didn’t want that. It was crucial for me that it would be something of my own — something completely different, something deeply personal.

And the genre question was huge. Because when you have been doing covers for years, you can basically pick and perform almost anything — from drum and bass to Mozart. But understanding what kind of music I want to make myself — that took years. Figuring out what is truly mine. What carries my energy in the way that feels right to me.

I started noticing that when I did beatbox covers of rock — Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park — that is when things really exploded. Even within the beatbox scene, I could see how strongly people reacted to that energy. And the most important thing — that was when I enjoyed it the most.

That energy started feeding me for real, and I began looking in that direction. And somewhere around that time, I realised I was very close to starting to write my own music.

In 2021, I went to a songwriting camp — a space where musicians come together, collaborate, spark ideas, push each other creatively. We spent a week in this very dense, creative environment.

And that is where two tracks were born — two demos that were never released. They were in Russian, but vibe-wise, they were completely me. One felt like Linkin Park, the other like Limp Bizkit. And that was the first time I thought, “Wow. This sounds good. This is my track.”

Then the move to another country happened — and all of that kind of pushed my original music aside. I put it into a long drawer.

And only later, in December 2024, there was a real turning point. My wife and I flew to Saudi Arabia for a Linkin Park concert — the Soundstorm festival. It was one of the most powerful concerts of my life.

I was standing in a crowd of around 450,000 people, watching legends perform on stage — artists I grew up with. And on top of everything, it was my birthday.

At some point, I caught myself thinking: I have been dreaming about starting my own band for so many years. What the hell am I waiting for? How much longer can I keep postponing this?

I was standing in that crowd, looking at the stage, realising that the people up there are the same as us. They just reached a moment where they said to themselves: “Yes. I’m ready. I want this. I’m done postponing.”

And I realised I wanted exactly the same thing. And right there, in the middle of that crowd, I made a decision. I literally said it out loud to myself: If I don’t release my own track in 2025, then I will never say again that I want to release my music.

— And you made it in December 2025! You brought the people together and released your first track. Before we talk about anything else, tell me about the people behind it.

— I would say Snails Line lineup right now is almost fully formed. There are three of us at the moment. It is me and Kostya, the guitarist of Snails Line. We have been friends for about 15 years. We performed together on the streets and travelled across Europe.

Kostya and I write the music and lyrics together — everything is done on equal terms. We have a very strong musical connection: we listen to similar music, we care about the same things, we vibe on the same emotional frequencies. At the same time, we are completely different — and that is actually the main strength of the band.

The third member of the band is Sasha Moon, our bass player. He is an incredibly talented guy — and interestingly, bass guitar actually came into his life during our work together. He is a multi-format artist in general: a two-meter-tall Korean guy in tabi shoes, with a braid down to his waist, shooting flamethrowers shaped like guitars. He has a very well-known fire show and LED show.

We are still missing a drummer. I have someone in mind — a person I’d really love to have in the band — but he doesn’t live in Dubai, which makes things complicated. So for now, we are still looking.

— So, why snails? Because the process of forming the band took many years — or is there more to it?

— Actually, that is a very sharp observation! But also, there are a lot of layers in this name.

Yes, the first and most obvious one is the tempo. We really took a long time to get here. A very long time. From the initial idea to releasing the first track, it took about a year.

The second one goes a bit deeper. One evening, the three of us — me, Kostya, and my wife — were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea, talking, and once again discussing the project. We had a million working titles; we were throwing ideas back and forth. And my wife said, “Man, you guys take forever. When are you finally going to release your track, my little snails?”

And we just froze for a second. Snails. The Snails!

And then it started to unravel. What kind of Snails? Loud Snails? Fast Snails? Something else? There were tons of options.

The thing is, I am very much a deadline person. My wife and I even joked that I should name the band Deadline, because things only really start working for me when there is a hard deadline.

And then she says, “Maybe Deadline?” And I suddenly reply: “Or Snails Line.”

And that hit me hard. Because Snails Line is exactly that moment when you are almost too late — almost — but you still make it. When you jump into the last train car, the doors slam shut behind you, and you literally slide in — like a snail. That edge-of-the-cliff moment. You promised yourself — and you delivered. That is very much who we are. We take a long time to build momentum, but once we set a deadline, we make it.

And the third layer is almost… sacred. A snail lives inside an external exoskeleton — its “bones” are on the outside. And the shape of a snail shell follows the golden ratio, the Fibonacci spiral — the proportions of all living things. The snail’s line itself is literally a lifeline. For some people, Snails Line will be exactly that — a spiral, a form, a law of nature.

Others might see it as the trail a snail leaves behind — the line, the trace, the mark that remains. A footprint. Something that stays. And that also feels very true to us.

And some people will just say: “Okay, that’s weird and cool.” And that is totally fine too!

— At the same time, your first track isn’t about slowness — it is called “Now.” What is it about?

— Yeah, Now is about action. About not postponing things. About living in the moment. About putting your phone away and actually being here and now.

For example, it really triggers me when people film fireworks — videos that no one ever watches again. Or kids’ school performances, where children are on stage, looking for their parents’ reaction, and the parents are just sitting there on their phones. People try to capture the moment so they can come back to it later — but you can’t come back to it. It doesn’t exist anymore. That is one of the core ideas behind Now.

And moving forward, our music will be even more energetic, even louder. It is a balance between drive and meaning, between guitar power and an inspiring message. It is important for us that it is not just loud, but that it actually charges you with energy.

— I know you already have three demos ready. What are these tracks called, and what are they about?

— By the way, all these tracks are very different from Now. While I was searching for my musical sound, I was also discovering my vocal sound. And in these tracks, I gradually started exploring distortion — extreme vocals.

So, these are still working titles, but one of the songs is called The Boss. It is a track about the ego that lives inside each of us — and about the constant dialogue, or more often, the struggle we have with it. The whole song revolves around that conflict, and the chorus asks one very direct question: Who’s the boss?

The second track is called Hey I. I won’t say much about it yet. If you listen carefully, by the end of the song, you’ll understand what it is really about.

The working title of the third track is The Rat. It is a song about that side of all of us — when you do something you are deeply ashamed of afterwards. You realise: yeah, that was a rat move. You can’t undo it — it already happened. All that is left is to live with it and, if possible, try to fix it somehow.

And Kostya and I have a real-life story that illustrates this perfectly. We were on a Euro tour, performing on the streets, staying via Couchsurfing. And in Marseille, France, a girl hosted us.

We spent the night, woke up in the morning, and made some coffee. She wasn’t home — she’d gone to work. And then we noticed a box of Dutch waffles in the cupboard. This was 2015, and we had never tried anything like that back in Russia.

So of course, we took one each with our coffee. And it turned out to be the most delicious waffle we had ever eaten in our lives. So we took another one. And then another. Long story short — the box was empty.

And then we saw a second box.

At first we thought, okay, that is enough. But then we convinced ourselves that she probably buys them somewhere nearby, and we could just replace them later. So… we ate the second box too.

After that — with full awareness of what we’d done — we texted her: “Hey, those waffles are insanely good… where do you buy them?”

And she replied: “They’re my favorite waffles. I just came back from Amsterdam yesterday and brought them for myself.”

And that was the moment everything stopped. We realised we had eaten her entire stash of favorite waffles — ones she had brought from another country. And at that point, you just sit there and think: Well, who are you, if not a rat?

We honestly tried to find the same waffles in the city — no chance. So all we could do was promise ourselves that one day, we would return those waffles to her.

— Haha, did you apologise?

— We did. We wrote her a letter, left with red faces, and promised that we would definitely return those waffles. And now almost ten years have passed. I have no idea how she is living now or whether she even remembers that story at all.

But the fact is, much later, when we started thinking about what to write a song about, we suddenly realised: we have to write a track about those damn waffles.

At some point, it even turned into a dream idea. It would be incredible if the song went so viral that we could actually find that girl somewhere in the world — and finally return the waffles to her.

— When I listened to Now, I heard Linkin Park, I heard Limp Bizkit. At some point, I even thought of Evanescence — though I am not sure. Tell me: who are you in terms of sound?

— There is definitely Linkin Park in us. There is Limp Bizkit. There is Papa Roach. And there is Slipknot as well.

But in terms of message and emotional core, I’d easily mix that with Coldplay and Imagine Dragons. Then I’d add the drive of The Prodigy and the inner protest of Nirvana.

In the end, it turns into a kind of cocktail of all of that. But it is not “pure” Linkin Park, and it is not “pure” Limp Bizkit. It’s not an attempt to be someone specific.

It is Snails Line.

And with every next track, that will become even more clear. The new songs are quite different from the first one. We are preparing the listener for what is coming next — more weight, more shape, more structure, more muscle, more volume.

We plan to sound loud. And to shine bright.