Alex Shkudun and the Art of the Glowing Hourglass on NO TIME
Alex Shkudun and the Art of the Glowing Hourglass on NO TIME
A Kyiv-Born Songwriter in Spain Builds a Pop-Rap Single From the Lyric Outwards
An hourglass drawn in blue light fronts both official videos for NO TIME. It is sharp styling, because the song is about time running out in a life with every tool going. Alex Shkudun, a Kyiv-born songwriter based in Spain, released the English-language pop-rap single on 22 May 2026. Its music video premiered the same day.
Alex Shkudun’s NO TIME now sits in the playlist below. His full run of coverage is collected on his artist profile. The single reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts. That programme verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Queue it up, then read on for the hourglass and the method behind it.
Alex Shkudun Opens NO TIME on a Night City and Saves the Melody for the Chorus
Shkudun has described the opening himself: the feeling of a night city, phone light, speed, plans and movement. That is the world the verses live in. They are rapped, and they carry the story line by line through a cold, always-on city.
Then the chorus changes the register. It is sung, and it repeats one line about having everything except time. The song runs to three minutes and five seconds, so that line comes round often enough to stick.
That pairing of rapped verses and a sung hook is one of pop’s sturdiest frames. Linkin Park made it a mainstream blueprint on In the End. Mike Shinoda rapped the verses, and Chester Bennington sang the chorus. Meanwhile, NF has spent a decade pairing brooding, piano-heavy rap with sung refrains. NO TIME sits in that same moody corner.
The mood is part of the arrangement too. Shkudun calls the atmosphere dark and cinematic. The verses also cut back to memories of a slower, warmer world, where people had time for one another. The city feels colder for the contrast.
He has also been clear about what the song is not. It is not a song against technology, and it is not a song against success. In his own telling, it pushes back against a life where success matters more than the person living it.
Story First, Tools Second, as NO TIME Moves From a Lyric Sheet to a Finished Single
The production story is unusual, and Shkudun is open about it. On his own blog, he explains that the words and the story always come first. Only then does he turn to AI music tools to try out melodies, arrangements and voices.
A single track can run to dozens of generations before he settles on a vocal and a version. His own credit on NO TIME is precise: he wrote the lyrics and developed the concept and the creative direction. His approach combines songwriting, creative direction and production oversight, with AI serving as one of the tools used to bring his ideas to life. The script is his, and the casting of the sound is where the work goes.
The list of jobs behind each release is long. He writes and rewrites the text, generates versions, chooses the vocal and prepares the cover. Then comes the video, which he makes and edits as well. Songs also come out in English, Ukrainian and Russian, each version a new adaptation rather than a translation.
The late shift is part of it, too. Shkudun has written that much of this happens late at night, after work and once the family is asleep. For nearly two decades, that working day has belonged to international corporate law. Prose and poetry have been part of his life since childhood. A song about running out of time, built in the hours left over, has a certain logic to it.
The visuals come from the same workshop. Alex Shkudun Music runs as a separate YouTube channel, so the songs do not get lost among vlogs. The official music video arrived with the single. An official visualizer followed on 4 June, built around the glowing hourglass and a waveform.
Where to Hear NO TIME by Alex Shkudun, From the Music Video to the Hourglass Visualizer
NO TIME is on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, and both videos sit on the Alex Shkudun Music channel. Start with the official video above, which carries the story the verses tell. After that, leave the visualizer running, because the hourglass suits a song about time better than any lyric sheet could.
The track will suit listeners of melodic pop-rap and alternative hip-hop who want a lyric with an argument behind it. It also fits late-night playlists built on mood, and anyone who answers work email at midnight.
From the AltPop.News Curator Team: “NO TIME treats its image as part of the arrangement. The hourglass on screen and the one repeated line in the chorus make the same point. That match between sight and sound is why the release stays with you.”
Find Alex Shkudun on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube Music. Then follow along on the YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook.
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