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.
Tarita – The Death of Peter Pan
Twenty years is a long time to leave a song waiting, and most songs would have sulked. Tarita, the solo project of Chennai-based psychologist Dr Sindhuja Sankaran, wrote "The Death of Peter Pan" at 21 and released it at 41. In between it lived on an old IBM laptop, unproduced and unheard, losing a stanza somewhere along the way like a sock in a launderette. That the wait has produced something this tender, rather than something merely nostalgic, is to everyone's credit.
Brian Kovacs – Holding Space
Most songs about emotional difficulty are in a tearing hurry to resolve it. A key change arrives to heal the wound, and a chorus swells to announce that everything is fine now. Brian Kovacs, a Chicago-area bassist with 33 years in the trade, declines the transaction. "Holding Space" is a song about sitting with what cannot yet be mended, and it has the nerve to sound exactly like that: unhurried, low-slung and quietly stubborn.
Nine Petals – Turn It Up Now! Hey Hey
Somewhere in downtown Miami, in a studio apartment the artist cheerfully calls tiny, a sculptor who never quite stopped being a sculptor has been chiselling sound. No marble, no mallet: the raw material was a singing bowl, a handful of bells and a set of wind chimes, and the chisel was a computer screen on which each tone was rendered as a waveform to be studied, nudged and polished. It sounds like the premise of a gallery installation that would make you check your watch. The result is a record that makes you check your hips instead.
Gravité Fresq – Nail The Noise
Somewhere in Dublin, behind a door nobody has been invited through, a person or persons unknown are bashing a lump of metal into submission. The result is "Nail The Noise," a single that arrives at the pulse of a pub brawl and the posture of a seminar, and which settles every argument it starts by getting the whole room to dance.
Lucian Lacewing – Freedom From Forever
Bristol has a long record of producing music that sounds as though it were made in a damp basement by someone who has seen through everything. Lucian Lacewing makes his in a bedroom, a smaller room with a better view of the ceiling, and this four-track mini-album is the sound of a man lying on his back and watching the plaster turn into weather.
PoeTreeman – Still, the World
Anthony Wayne Langston has chosen a stage name that sounds like a hedgerow philosopher, and the record behind it has the same unhurried, weathered wisdom. *Still, the World*, ten songs released on April Fools' Day with no foolery in sight, is the work of a Californian who understands that a good melody needs no apology and that a plain feeling, plainly sung, can hit harder than any amount of cleverness.
Chosen Undead – Cinder Of A Fading Dream
Debut albums usually arrive with a manifesto under one arm. *Cinder of a Fading Dream* arrives with a box of charred keepsakes. Chosen Undead, five musicians from Hainburg who only became a band in 2024, have built their first record from the wreckage of an earlier project and an album that never got to exist. They sifted the ashes, kept what still glowed, and bolted it to new material. The result is gloriously, unapologetically heavy, and more emotionally literate than the genre usually bothers to be.
Josh Orange – The Fire & The Call
Twenty-one years is a long time to be a secret. Josh Orange, a Sydney folk-rock band, have spent that stretch writing, recording and playing for the faithful few, and their sixth album, *The Fire & The Call*, finally gives that patience somewhere to land. It runs to ten songs and thirty-nine minutes, with nothing wasted, nothing padded and nothing apologised for. It is the sound of a band who know exactly who they are.
The House Flies – Lost Literature
Post-punk has spent forty-odd years learning how to dress for a funeral, and the more interesting question is whether it can dance at the wake. The House Flies, four men from Moline, Illinois, answer with "Lost Literature", the second single from their forthcoming Lions and Ore. It is gloomy, gripping and very hard to keep your feet still through.
Danny Lu – 我渴望 ( I Long for You)
Pop music has grown so loud, so eager to be liked, that a song willing to wait for you feels almost impolite. Danny Lu's "我渴望," a Mandarin single written in the high desert of Santa Fe and finished many years later, does exactly that. It sits there, unhurried, with its coat still on, and lets you decide whether to come in.
Prem Byrne – Here In America
Protest songs tend to fail in one of two ways. Some shout so loudly that nobody can hear the argument, and others tiptoe so politely that nobody notices there was one. Prem Byrne's "Here In America" avoids both. It is a song about the lingering damage of slavery, and it trusts a warm voice, an unhurried guitar and a plain tune to do the work that bluster usually botches.
JF Roy – The Morning Light
Dawn is rock music's oldest trick, and the genre has been squinting into it since the first amplifier warmed up. Canadian singer-songwriter JF Roy, born in Atlantic Canada and now settled in Alberta, takes it on with "The Morning Light". He does so with a lack of irony that is almost radical, and the result is a rousing, big-hearted record that leaves a rather better mood behind than most of its more fashionable neighbours.