Inspired by Huntrix
🎤 Artist in the
Spotlight: Inspired by Huntrix
When curiosity becomes a creative world of its own
Some music projects begin with a melody. Others start with a band rehearsing in a garage, a lyric scribbled onto a piece of paper, or an artist determined to make a record.
Inspired by Huntrix began with a father watching something unexpected with his daughter.
Sergey’s musical world had always been much closer to rock and metal than K-pop. An enthusiastic electric and acoustic guitar player, he had developed an ear shaped by guitars, dynamics, tension and release.
Then his daughter introduced him to KPop Demon Hunters.
At first, the combination of K-pop and demon hunting seemed almost amusingly far removed from his own musical universe. But somewhere between watching it with his daughter and listening more closely to the music, curiosity took over.
He began hearing beyond the surface: the production, layered vocals, hooks, rhythm changes and the enormous amount of creative work hidden behind something designed to appear effortless.
That curiosity became the starting point for Inspired by Huntrix.
FROM K-POP CURIOSITY TO CULTURAL EXPLORATION
Sergey did not stop at listening to the music. He began researching the world surrounding it.
He discovered an industry very different from the rock culture he knew. Behind an idol group can stand an extensive creative infrastructure of songwriters, producers, choreographers, stylists, video teams, performance directors and management.
But he also encountered its more difficult side: trainee systems, intense public expectations, fandoms, anti-fans and the extraordinary pressure placed upon performers.
Those discoveries didn't simply remain research. They started finding their way into his songwriting.
Anti-Fan, for example, grew from his exploration of online hostility, fandom wars and cancel culture. Its subject ultimately reaches far beyond Korea: what happens when anonymity gives people a confidence to attack others that they might never display face to face?
His curiosity also led beyond contemporary K-pop and into Korean cultural history, including the relationship between popular music, censorship, media, youth culture and social change.
Along that journey Sergey encountered a concept that would become particularly important to him:
Heung (흥).
There is no simple English translation. Sergey interprets it as something approaching a shared emotional energy — the connection created between performer and audience when music becomes more than sound and turns into something experienced together.
That idea would eventually influence where he wants to take the entire project.
AI AS A CREATIVE BRUSH
There is another element of Inspired by Huntrix that Sergey makes no attempt to hide: artificial intelligence is fundamental to the project.
But his relationship with the technology is perhaps more interesting than the increasingly familiar debate about whether AI should or shouldn't be used in music.
Sergey describes AI as “the biggest creative brush I had ever been given.”
For him, it provides the ability to experiment with arrangements, musical styles, characters and visual concepts on a scale that would otherwise be impossible for one person to achieve.
And experimentation, in his view, comes with responsibility.
The ease with which AI can exaggerate characters, sexualize them or transform cultural references into attention-seeking imagery is precisely why Sergey deliberately chooses not to take that route.
He wants his characters to remain human and beautiful without becoming exploitative. When drawing inspiration from Korean culture - or from other languages and traditions — his intention is curiosity and respect rather than imitation or shock value.
Creative freedom, in other words, doesn't remove creative responsibility.
WHEN CHARACTERS START TO BECOME PEOPLE
The original idea was surprisingly simple:
What other original songs could these girls perform?
The first experiments were modest. There were lyric videos and animations that Sergey himself readily admits were not particularly good.
But the technology improved - and so did he.
Simple animations developed into scenes. Scenes became narrative videos. Narrative videos became increasingly cinematic stories.
At the same time, Rumi, Mira and Zoey evolved from cartoon-like figures into more human characters, each developing recognizable personalities, emotional roles and ways of responding to the world.
That progression was a natural fit for Sergey. Long before Inspired by Huntrix existed, video editing had already been another of his hobbies; for years he had edited travel films after his trips. AI video therefore opened another creative door rather than introducing an entirely unfamiliar medium.
But eventually the project began doing something Sergey had not anticipated.
It started helping him personally.
A CREATIVE SHIELD AGAINST THE PRESSURE OF DAILY LIFE
Sergey's professional world is not the music business.
It is hospitality.
Hotel operations can mean long shifts, staffing problems, busy services, guest situations, events, meetings, financial responsibilities and an almost continuous stream of decisions.
Inspired by Huntrix became his escape from that intensity.
After a difficult operational day, creating a scene, developing a song or exploring a visual idea allowed him to disconnect and reset. He calls the project his “burnout shield.”
Yet hospitality contributed something else to his creativity.
Working internationally brings you into contact with an enormous variety of people. Sergey has encountered sports stars, musicians, diplomats and people whose public image can make them seem almost larger than life.
Up close, however, celebrity doesn't erase humanity.
They still experience insecurity, exhaustion, pressure, family concerns, fears and bad days.
That realization changed the subjects Sergey wanted to explore through music.
SONGS ABOUT THE PERSON BEHIND THE IMAGE
Instead of concentrating on generic confidence anthems or disposable love songs, Inspired by Huntrix increasingly began looking inward.
Problem Queen explores the uncomfortable parts of our own personalities — characteristics capable of creating problems but which also contribute to making us who we are.
Alter Ego examines the tension between public and private identity: the person the outside world expects to see versus the person who exists when nobody is watching.
Anti-Fan turns toward hostility, online culture and the behaviour surrounding fandom.
Then there is Draw Me a Door, a considerably more personal song about resilience.
Its idea is beautifully uncomplicated. There are moments when someone cannot see an obvious way forward. Another person doesn't necessarily have to solve the problem. Sometimes all they need to do is help us discover a door we couldn't see ourselves.
Scars looks at another side of resilience: carrying responsibility while experiencing pain yourself. People may continue remembering the wounded version of somebody long after that person has changed. The scars remain part of their history, but they do not have to define the entire individual.
These are surprisingly human questions for a project built partly around artificial characters.
And that apparent contradiction leads directly to perhaps its most interesting question.
CAN AN ARTIFICIAL CHARACTER CREATE A REAL EMOTION?
When You Press Pause asks what happens when the technology disappears but the emotion remains.
Close the laptop.
Turn off the screen.
If the song remains with you, was the feeling somehow less genuine because AI played a role in creating it?
Sergey points toward fictional characters we have accepted for decades. Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and the Terminator don't exist, yet audiences have experienced excitement, fear, nostalgia and affection through them.
We understand that they are constructions.
The emotions they produce in us nevertheless remain real.
And so Inspired by Huntrix turns the usual AI question around.
Perhaps the most interesting question isn't whether the character is artificial.
Perhaps it is whether the feeling it creates in the audience is real.
SOMETIMES THE MIRACLE IS JUST AN EXTRA CHAIR
Even the project's Christmas song, Miracles, follows this preference for small human stories.
Its miracle isn't a spectacular present, fireworks or the countdown to midnight.
It's somebody arriving at the door.
Someone cooking.
Laughter coming from the kitchen.
A hug. A chair being pulled out so that one more person can join the table.
We live in a culture that frequently presents happiness as something enormous that must be achieved, purchased or celebrated publicly. Miracles suggests that we may be overlooking the smaller moments in which belonging actually lives.
THE NEXT CHAPTER: HEUNG
Inspired by Huntrix is now moving beyond its original boundaries.
More finished WAV-quality tracks are waiting beyond the debut album, while Sergey is developing an ambitious multilingual concept with a fitting title:
Heung.
The project is envisaged almost as a map of human emotions across languages and cultures. Korean is being combined with Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Chinese, Indonesian and Seychellois Creole/French.
Crucially, the languages are not intended as decoration. Each is connected to a different story.
And one development may offer a glimpse of where Inspired by Huntrix goes next.
Sergey has begun collaborating with a Seychellois musician named Angelo. What started as experimentation combining Creole, French and Korean changed when Angelo recorded his own voice for the song.
Suddenly AI was no longer simply allowing Sergey to simulate possibilities.
It had helped create the circumstances for collaboration with another human musician.
NOT REPLACING MUSICIANS — OPENING DOORS
That distinction may ultimately be the clearest expression of Sergey's philosophy toward AI.
Not replacing musicians.
Not generating thousands of songs at the push of a button.
But giving people with ideas the ability to explore, learn, collaborate and create things that might previously have required resources far beyond their reach.
The technology continues to change. So does Inspired by Huntrix. The music improves, the videos develop and Sergey continues learning what he actually wants this unusual project to become.
Interestingly, he still doesn't describe it as the beginning of a traditional music career.
Hospitality remains his professional world. Inspired by Huntrix exists alongside it as an experiment, a creative outlet and a hobby that unexpectedly became something much larger.
It began because his daughter introduced him to something outside his musical comfort zone.
Today it encompasses songwriting, video, fictional characters, cultural research, collaboration and an ongoing reason to learn something new.
Streams and playlist numbers may determine how far the music travels.
But they are not the only measure of whether the experiment succeeded.
For Sergey, it already has.