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.
Charlie Sly – Never Had
There is a particular kind of record that can only be made by someone with nobody left to impress. It arrives without a publicist's gloss or a studio's expensive varnish, just a person, a few microphones and an ache that needs somewhere to go. "Never Had," the new single from Cheltenham's Charlie Sly, is exactly that record, and it is quietly, stubbornly wonderful.
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.
Trail Hawk – Confused
Country music has always known that the best songs are written from the kitchen table, not the stage. Hank Williams knew it, Loretta Lynn built a career on it, and Trail Hawk's "Confused" belongs to that line. It arrives from a home studio in Frankfort, Kentucky, with no polish to hide behind, and it is better for it.
Fede Micioni – Syntezi
Techno has a patience problem. Too many producers treat the seven-minute mark as a dare, stuffing it with drops, risers and fake-outs, as though the dancefloor might leave if it got bored for half a bar. Fede Micioni has never seemed worried about that. On "SYNTEZI", his third single for Big Doings, he trusts the room, the pulse and the listener, and the trust pays off handsomely.
The Bastas Project – The Lighthouse in the Dust
Grief albums usually arrive hushed, draped in reverb and piano, asking the listener to tiptoe. The Bastas Project, a family band from Woodstock, Georgia, have made one you can sweat to. *The Lighthouse in the Dust* is a record about the loss of Nadine Basta, wife and mother, and it refuses the sickroom hush. It puts the kick drum where the sob would normally go and dares you to move.
ERICKOSCAR – Two Flags, One Heart
Country music has always been a music of passports and pedigrees, of who gets to claim the dirt road and the dusty hat. Erick Oscar answers the question with a title: *Two Flags, One Heart*. It is a statement of residence and of loyalty, delivered by a man who has spent thirty-odd years with an acoustic guitar in his lap and thirty-four of them as an American, having been born in Panamá and posted across nearly every Latin American country that work could find for him. He calls himself "an American with Panamanian Heritage." The record is that sentence stretched over ten songs, and it is a great deal more persuasive than any manifesto.
ERICKOSCAR – Live, Learn, and Love Without Regets
Debut albums tend to arrive in one of two states: overdressed or underprepared. Erick Oscar's nine-song first record manages to be neither, and the reason is almost embarrassingly simple. He has been playing acoustic guitar for more than thirty years, and it shows in the one place that matters, which is the way every song sounds as though it was written by somebody who needed to write it.
Barry KuKes – Songs for Bryan
There is a particular species of pop miracle that occurs when a man who has spent fifty years behind a drum kit is finally told by his son to come out from behind it. Not literally, mind you. Barry KuKes remains, by his own admission, a back-of-the-stage creature, more comfortable keeping time for his cover bands than stalking the footlights. But with *Songs for Bryan*, released this week, the Port Orange, Florida veteran has done something altogether more daring. He has made a dance record, and it is a thoroughly disarming one.
Patrick Doval – Rocket to The Moon
Rock music has always been about leaving. Elvis left Tupelo, Bowie left Earth, and every teenager with a guitar and a grievance has left their parents' semi-detached for somewhere louder. Patrick Doval takes the oldest rock and roll impulse and follows it to its logical conclusion: he builds a rocket, climbs in, and goes to the moon. It is magnificently daft, and it is also rather wonderful.
FORRM – PALAZZO
Rock music has a long and honourable history of going abroad to find itself, and the best of it comes home changed. FORRM, the Paris-based project of artist and filmmaker Firouz FarmanFarmaian, goes to Venice. The result, "PALAZZO", is a single of rare poise: ambitious without being pompous, atmospheric without dissolving into mood-board mush, and thoroughly alive as a piece of rock music.
Elias Dream – Goodbye, My Love
Roadside shrines, rain-slicked tarmac and weeping pianos have furnished the tragedy song since the days of the teenage death disc, and most of them move the listener about as much as a cold cup of tea. So it is to Elias Dream's credit that "Goodbye, My Love", released on 13 August, arrives with a pulse, a plot and a conscience.
Vela Jones – Mama’s Coming Home
Proxima b is a long way from the nearest kitchen table, which makes it an improbable setting for the most tender single of Vela Jones's career. Yet she has gone to the far edge of human settlement and come back with something rarer than a silver jumpsuit and a slogan: a song about missing your mother.