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.
Los Guapos de Mamà – Vibra Alegria
Cuba and Italy walk into a studio. One brings rum-soaked rhythm, the other brings a tailored suit and an opinion about reverb. Out comes "Vibra Alegria," a single that wears its cross-continental parentage on its sleeve like a carnation in a lapel.
Franklin Gotham – Sunshine & Gasoline
Two years is a long stretch to leave fans waiting, and Franklin Gotham have chosen to break the silence not with a whisper but with a sunburnt holler. "Sunshine & Gasoline" arrives less like a comeback single and more like a band flinging open the windows of a clapped-out estate car and gunning it down the nearest coastal road, windows down, decorum abandoned at the petrol station.
Marry Me Emelie! – Flowers
There is a particular kind of English misery that wears velvet rather than sackcloth, and Marry Me Emelie! have spent two years quietly perfecting it. "Flowers," the duo's first single since last spring's quietly devastating EP, doesn't so much arrive as exhale. It is less a song than a held breath that finally, reluctantly, lets go.
CDubs – Love Language – Original Mix
Southampton has given English music plenty over the years, though dance-floor mysticism has never been high on the list — that's normally Manchester's department, or Bristol's, cities that have built entire mythologies around a bassline and a smoke machine. CDubs, working out of a Hampshire studio rather than anywhere fashionable, has decided the south coast deserves its own contribution to the genre: a producer's confession dressed up as a single, built on the rather endearing premise that he has identified a sixth love language, and that language is, conveniently, the one he happens to speak professionally.
Aeon Hyper – Space Cowboy
Cyprus seems an unlikely launchpad for interstellar travel, but Aeon Hyper has never been much interested in the obvious route, and that's precisely his gift. A Greek-born former Cornell student of philosophy and literature, he arrives at synth-pop already fluent in its grammar, then bends that grammar into something distinctly his own. *Space Cowboy*, his debut, sets out to chart a journey from Earth into hyperspace, and it makes good on that promise with real confidence and considerable charm.
I’m Not A Blonde – 11 (The Art Of Being A Couple)
Pop music has spent decades pretending that love resolves into a single, seamless organism — two halves clicking into a whole, the credits rolling on "happily ever after." Chiara Castello and Camilla Benedini, who record as I'm Not a Blonde, arrive at a more honest arithmetic. Their fourth album insists that 1+1 doesn't equal 2 but 11: two intact digits standing shoulder to shoulder, refusing to collapse into each other. It's a clever conceit, and rarer still, the record actually earns it.
Chris Wirsig – Case Closed – Music from True Crime TV
Television scoring is a strange trade. The composer labours in service of someone else's narrative, hitting marks set by editors and producers, and rarely gets to step out from behind the curtain to take a bow. Chris Wirsig, the Los Angeles-based composer behind the atmospheric backbone of "Ancient Aliens" and "The Curse of Oak Island", has finally taken that bow. *Case Closed* gathers five cues from his work on "Crimes Gone Viral", "Celebrity Crime Files" and "Sin City Murders" and sets them loose without the grainy reconstructions and breathless narration they once served — and the music turns out to be sturdy enough to stand entirely on its own feet.
Elysian Fields – Definition
It takes a particular kind of nerve to name your band after the Greek paradise of the blessed before you've played a single gig, and yet that's precisely the gambit Mark Roos and James Shumway pulled off in 1994, recruiting a recent Arizona transplant named Kerri Murray on the strength of her voice alone. The result, "Definition," recorded between 1994 and 1995 at Cliff Maag's Record Lab and only now finding its way to streaming services three decades late, is a record that wears its ambition lightly. This is mid-nineties Utah pop-rock with its sleeves rolled up and its heart, somewhat unfashionably for the period, worn very much on the outside.
East Duo – Chubina Chill
Tbilisi's East Duo arrive at this reworking with the confidence of a band who already know the tune works — their original "Chubina" did the improbable trick of colonising algorithmic feeds the world over, racking up streams in the hundreds of millions and prompting a frankly absurd quantity of strangers to film themselves dancing badly to it. The temptation, having stumbled into that kind of ubiquity, would be to chase the same rush twice. Instead, the duo have done something rather more interesting: they've taken the chassis of a viral hit and stripped it for parts, rebuilding it as something hushed, patient, almost devotional.
OpCritical – Liar Liar
Pop music has always had a soft spot for moral fury, and OpCritical clearly understand the assignment. "Liar Liar" wants to be a fist raised at the billionaire class, and it gets there without a moment's hesitation. The refrain — world on fire, funeral pyres, getting what you desire — lands with the blunt satisfaction of a great tabloid headline: punchy, rhythmic, impossible to forget once it's lodged itself in your head.
Kings County – What Now
Orlando's Kings County have arrived bearing the two things every aspiring hard rock band needs and almost none possess in equal measure: a producer with a genuine pedigree and a press kit that reads like a man trying very hard to convince you he's already made it. Chuck Alkazian, the studio hand behind Pop Evil and the late, great Chris Cornell, has been drafted in to give "What Now" its sheen, and credit where it's due — Pearl Sound Studios has clearly done the band more favours than five years of festival slots combined.
The Essence of The Universe – Bring All Your Lovers
Nobody asked for a band like The Essence of The Universe. Nobody knew they needed one. And yet here they are, Daniel di Porto Rosa and Nic Nikita — two Swedes who refuse to be identified, located, or explained — arriving with a single that hits like a fist wrapped in velvet, dragged across the face of a sleeping music industry and leaving a mark that won't easily fade.