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.
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.
Bash Co. – Velvet
Bowie decamped to Berlin and Reed claimed New York, while INXS took themselves to Prague to cut "Never Tear Us Apart". Now a schoolteacher from Vila Nova de Gaia has followed them there, and has come home with a single that deserves a good deal more attention than a bedroom-recorded release usually gets.
Ravenheart – Make My Heart Smile
Cynicism is the default setting of the professional listener. We are paid to be unmoved, to hear a sincere chorus and reach for the nearest raised eyebrow. So it is with some embarrassment that I report "Make My Heart Smile," the debut single from Denver's Ravenheart, got past my defences in roughly the time it takes to boil a kettle.
Aurora Bloom – Breathless
Anyone who has stood at the edge of a new romance knows the peculiar physics of it: the lungs forget their one job, the sentence dies halfway out of the mouth, and the floor tilts a few degrees. Most pop songs about this condition describe it from a safe distance, like a nature documentary narrated by someone who has never been wet. "Breathless", the debut single from Colorado Springs five-piece Aurora Bloom, goes in up to the neck.
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.
HMS Beckett – greyhound / fern / swallowtail / apple tree
There is a particular kind of record that arrives not with a bang but with a held breath, and Chris Beckett's latest, released under his HMS Beckett banner, is exactly that. It is the sound of a man finally opening a door he has kept shut for three decades, and discovering, to his evident surprise and our enormous benefit, that the garden on the other side is still alive.
Agneu – Air and Twigs
Kieran E Scott was handed a Kodak Retina with no film in it and a guitar at around ten years old, and he has been trying to make one art form do the work of the other ever since. His brother Paul took the other guitar and went on to found Pop Mechanix, one of the 1980s' iconic New Zealand indie bands. Kieran left his own brief stint alongside Jordan Luck, in the band that became Dance Exponents, for London and a photography degree. A career in editorial photography followed, telling stories about how people live. *Air and Twigs*, released under the name Agneu, is what happens when those stories finally demand a different medium.
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.
Co.LeGa – you.Love
Digital romance has never sounded quite so uneasy, nor quite so danceable. "you.Love" arrives as the second salvo from Co.LeGa this year, and it lands with the poise of someone who has stopped worrying about whether electronic music can be both cerebral and physical, and simply gone ahead and made it both.
The Lazz – The Crown
Benjamin Lazzaro has spent four decades wielding a guitar, and it shows in the muscular confidence of "The Crown," the opening salvo of Act IV in his sprawling, Jungian-soaked concept saga. This is not a musician chasing trends; this is a craftsman who has finally built the machine capable of matching the scope of his imagination.