About Us

Alexey Popov

Alexey Leonidovich Popov was born into a family of musicians in 1982 and composed his first piece of music at the age of six - the same year he entered musical school to concentrate on piano. Of course, brought up in the deep Russian north and having no access to radio or the Internet until the year 2000, allowed plenty of time for his prodigious skills to flourish independently - which they did. Under the tutelage of a father who was himself a composer and the director of a music school, Alexey began composing music electronically in 1998 and two years later had created an entire album on his parent's computer.

Promoting his CD as much as realistically possible given the geography, he enrolled in the Murmansk Pedagogical Institute to continue his piano studies, and continued to compose private compositions. It was not until he called upon the guitar skills of his brother, Albert, that his musical germination period ended and the budding career of Time Is Up began in earnest.

Catching the attention of the local Murmansk radio station, PowerFM, on the strength of the aptly titled Together, the brothers joined forces with the more technologically savant Victor Tesler to flesh out the sound of Time Is Up. Working together, the trinity of talents focussed on their individual skills to develop "Northern Dancer", Time Is Up's first commercially oriented album - and a standing testament to the worth of childhood piano lessons.