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.
Olina – Starstruck Simulation
Anyone who has tried to meditate with a phone buzzing face-down on the duvet will recognise the predicament at the heart of "Starstruck Simulation". Olina's new single is a song about trying to sit still while the world flickers at you, and it manages the neat trick of being both a portrait of that restlessness and a small, glowing antidote to it.
Electrobuddha – The Man Who Killed The World
Somewhere on the outskirts of Glasgow, in a house its owner calls Electrobuddha Towers, a man in a woolly hat has been quietly assembling the sort of record the grand pop institutions stopped commissioning around the time focus groups learned to read lyric sheets. He plays it all himself, builds it all himself, and, with a wry smile you can almost hear, labels it "eco rock." Pop has weathered sillier genre names. Few of them came attached to such a sincere argument.
Siri Neel – West Street
Friday night, a bathroom mirror, a stick of red lipstick hovering an inch from the mouth. It is pop's most democratic theatre of self-doubt, and Siri Neel has dragged it out of the flat and onto the pavement. "West Street", out 2 October, is the sound of someone deciding that the evening, and the person she might be in it, deserves a fighting chance.
Conchis – It Will Only Hurt Once
It begins with unease. A background of dark, uncertain colour seeps out of the speakers, the sort of sound that makes you check whether someone has come into the room behind you. Over it, a crackling rhythm starts to fizz and spit like a fuse working its way through the dark, restless and slightly put out, like a landlord who has come about the rent. Within thirty seconds Conchis has dragged you into a room you didn't know you'd entered and can't imagine leaving. "It Will Only Hurt Once" is the third single from *Gravity*, and it is the most physically commanding thing she has done.
appetiteapple – Gratitudes
Britpop was always an act of imagination before it was an act of geography. Damon Albarn never lived in a Cockney music-hall song, Jarvis Cocker watched the English from the edge of the party, and half of Oasis's mythology was built from a Manchester that sounded bigger on record than it was in life. So it makes a certain sense that one of the warmest tributes to the genre in years arrives from Seoul, from a bedroom-scale operation whose maker goes by appetiteapple and credits no one else because no one else was in the room.
Wade Easy – Honey Venom
Wade Easy has now made three albums in under a year, which in the current climate of careful, focus-grouped rollout strategies is practically an act of insurrection. Most musicians agonise for half a decade over a record nobody asked for. Easy simply sits in a room in Morgantown, West Virginia, plugs in, hits record and lets the fog roll in. *Honey Venom* is the third dispatch from that room, and it is the best yet.
Sienná – EMA
There is a particular kind of record that arrives not so much to be reviewed as to be survived, in the best sense. *EMA*, the seventh full-length from Kyoto-born, Oslo-dwelling Sienná, is one such object: nine pieces of music that treat the listener's attention as something to be gently confiscated and returned, subtly altered, an hour later.
Lyndo Jaco – 3
A home studio with a view of the garden is not, on paper, where one expects swagger to be manufactured. The image is of lawn and shed and a kettle on the boil. Yet Lyndo Jaco, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and sole occupant of the control room, has made an EP in that tranquil setting that carries itself like a band who've spent years in the back of a van and emerged with their tempers and their tunes intact.
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.
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.