Hall of Ukrainian Rock’n’Roll
In our traditional support of the Ukrainian rock scene, we would like to offer you a story about a remarkable event that took place in western Ukraine in the small town of Manevychi. Every year, at the end of May, all the world's museums hold a night at the museum, and such a night took place in Manevychi, where at the same time the soft opening of the first hall of the future Rock Capital museum took place. The hall is called The History of Ukrainian Rock and Roll and is the first of seven planned halls of the Rock Capital Museum. Perhaps it would not have been so attractive if the Rock Capital Museum had not truly been the first rock museum in Ukraine.
Do you know at least one Ukrainian punk rock band?
Do you know at least one Ukrainian punk rock band? Of course, no one asked me such a question, but I sometimes ask it to my friends. Talking about the glorious traditions of Ukrainian rock n roll, I don't want to miss punk itself. The first thing that comes to my mind is the band Borshch. Some people will say it's not punk rock, and maybe they're right. But musically and lyrically, Borshch has a spark that only lives in this style.
David Bowie’s first address
It remains interesting that even such alien rock stars as David Bowie had his parental home on our unfortunate planet. The future star lived the first 6 years of his life in 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton, London.
Formation of the Ukrainian rock n roll scene
2022 has become too difficult for one of the largest countries in Europe. It is about Ukraine and its heroic people. The passing year has brought devastation and tears, pain and suffering to the country. In its fight against the invaders, Ukraine is choosing its freedom and the right to a democratic future. Today we wanted to remember the glorious past of this musical nation and especially, we are interested in the development of the rock scene in Ukraine, in a country with its ancient roots and culture. How it was and how it was born.
Noya Sol – Sunlight In My Soul
Blues-rock rarely sounds this unguarded anymore. It prefers technique, or nostalgia worn like a badge, or the studied cool of players more interested in impressing other guitarists than moving a room. Noya Sol clearly didn't get that memo, and thank god for it. "Sunlight In My Soul" arrives like a window thrown open after months of shuttered air — dust motes catching light, stale rooms flooding with warmth, and the listener blinking against the sudden brightness of it all.
Torfevas – Last Rodeo
Quarter of a century is a peculiar gestation period for three minutes and change of song, and yet here we are: a family affair twenty-five years in the waiting room, finally allowed through the studio door. The temptation with a backstory like this is to treat the record as a curiosity, a heartwarming footnote dressed up as music. Resist that temptation. *Last Rodeo* earns its keep on its own terms, quite apart from the mythology of its making.
Janalynn Castelino – Can’t Deny
Pop music thrives on collision, and Castelino understands this instinctively. "Can't Deny" doesn't so much blend Spanish and English as let them wrestle for the microphone, each language grabbing a verse before handing it back bruised and grinning. The result feels less like a gimmick and more like a genuine dialect of desire — one where confession slips naturally between tongues because feeling, apparently, refuses to be contained by a single grammar.
Kit Cooper – Grave Concern
Kit Cooper has always written like a man taking inventory of his own bruises, but "Grave Concern" finds him counting other people's for a change, and the shift suits him. This is a band who long ago earned the right to be called reliable, which in rock music is usually a polite word for boring. Not here. "Grave Concern" is the sound of a group refusing to coast on the goodwill of millions of sold records, choosing instead to dig somewhere colder and more interesting.
HZPROD – WarTorn
There is a particular species of record that arrives not as product but as confession, and *War Torn* — the debut curatorial statement from Doha-based producer HZPROD — belongs unmistakably to that lineage. It is the sound of a man who has spent years behind the boards for other people finally stepping forward to say something only he could say, and doing so not with a microphone but with a Rolodex, a conscience, and, by his own account, twenty grand of his own money.
Mickey P – Good Love
East London has always kept its own time signature — somewhere between the last night bus and the first shift at the market — and Mickey P understands this rhythm in his bones. "Good Love," his five-track offering, doesn't so much announce itself as slide onto the dancefloor already mid-groove, sunglasses on, unbothered.
Faris Ishaq – JASAD جَسَد
Few instruments carry as much unspoken history as the nay. Reed cane, no mouthpiece, no keys — nothing between the player and the note but breath and intention. On *JASAD* (Arabic for "Body"), Bethlehem-born virtuoso Faris Ishaq turns that austerity into a manifesto, and the result is one of the most quietly commanding solo instrumental records to emerge from the Levant in years.
Paweł J.P. Hirlok – Perły
Some records announce themselves with a knock at the door. *Perły* arrives instead through the window, cape billowing, orchestra in tow, demanding you rearrange the furniture of your afternoon. Paweł J.P. Hirlok's twelfth album is a lavish, unrepentant thing — twelve tracks that treat restraint as an option to be politely declined.
Fish And Scale – Holy Man
Roland Wälzlein has never much cared for tidy categories, and "Holy Man" makes that abundantly clear within its opening bars. Recorded live in the studio, the piano sits close and unadorned, each note allowed to hang in the air a beat longer than convention would permit — a decision that rewards patience rather than punishing it.
Xxäm – Riddle me this
Chesterfield rarely produces cultural earthquakes, but Xxäm has just tilted the axis of British electronic pop a few crucial degrees with a debut that arrives fully formed. "Riddle Me This," the first single and video from the act's upcoming self-titled album, plays less like an introduction and more like an accusation whispered across a darkened room. By the time the first chorus detonates, you'll have already confessed to something you didn't do.
Jessica Fessler – Blue Nightgown
Somewhere between the last glass of red wine and the first cigarette of the evening, Jessica Fessler has found her voice, and it turns out to be a low, unhurried thing, more interested in withholding than confessing. "Blue Nightgown" opens not with a declaration but a slow exhale, the sound of somebody deciding, quietly and for good, that she no longer needs anyone's permission to feel whole.
Paul Louis Villani – Someone In My Head
Melbourne has produced its share of songwriters who mistake volume for feeling and confession for craft. Paul Louis Villani belongs to neither camp. His closing single of 2026, "Someone in My Head," arrives not as a plea for sympathy but as a controlled descent — the sound of a man mapping his own unravelling with the precision of a cartographer rather than the panic of a patient.