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.
CHANNELS – MOTHER
Most of us were handed a set of beliefs before we were old enough to inspect them. Plenty of rock bands have written songs about the moment the inspection begins. Few have made it sound like an eviction notice served by the sky. "MOTHER", the debut single from Chicago's CHANNELS, does exactly that, and it is a thrilling first word from a band with plenty more to say.
suscie – to a passenger princess
Pop has always loved a girl in the passenger seat: the one who doesn't drive, doesn't explain, and somehow reads the map of your skull better than you do. suscie's new single takes that figure, gives her a cracked crown and a faraway stare, and sends her gliding through four minutes of sampled shimmer and chopped-up longing. It is a small record with a large ache, and it lands.
Brian Idle – Violets and Gum Drops
Brian Idle is a name that invites the lazy joke, and the joke is the best argument for the man. Forty-six years in the business, played out in the clubs and theatres of the Midwest and then the Pacific Northwest, on bills alongside Nicolette Larson, Zapp and Con Funk Shun: no idler ever kept that schedule. Those three names deserve a moment. Larson's honeyed West Coast polish, Zapp's talk-box swagger and Con Funk Shun's silk-lined grooves make a stern finishing school for any performer, and anyone who has shared a stage with all of them has learned where the pocket is and how to stay in it. "Violets and Gum Drops" is the sound of that education paying out.
Moon and Aries – In the Silence of the Hills
The first thing to go is the beat. Within seconds of "In the Silence of the Hills" opening, you notice what isn't there: no kick drum nudging you forward, no hi-hat ticking away the seconds like a nervous colleague. Moon and Aries, a duo whose records have usually carried at least a ghost of trip-hop pulse, have taken the drums out and left the room to breathe. It is a brave subtraction, and the single is the better for it.
FORRM – LIVE IN NYC ( MUSEUM OF ARTS & DESIGN 12.12.24 )
A rock band invited into a museum usually behaves like a guest who has been told not to touch anything. FORRM, recorded at New York's Museum of Arts and Design in December 2024, behave like people who have come to move the furniture, and the album that survives the night is bold, patient and quietly extraordinary.
Sheykh Forever – Fire in the Master’s House
Protest music has a habit of congratulating itself. It stands on a stage, clears its throat and informs the audience of what they already believe, while the rhythm section sits politely in the background doing as it is told. Sheykh Forever has no such manners. *Fire in the Master's House*, the fourteen-track debut-in-all-but-name from the London-based Iraqi-born Mostafa Al, drags the anti-war album onto the dancefloor and refuses to let it leave until everyone has sweated through their conscience.
Tallulah Rendall – Only Human
Most records about recovery are written from the far bank, by someone dry and composed, pointing back at the river. *Only Human* is written from the water. Tallulah Rendall's seventh album, which follows a toxic relationship and the death of her father from Covid, keeps the wet hair and shaking hands in the frame. It is all the more affecting for it.
Neighbourhood Tower – Channeling Darkness (Discovering the Light)
Start with the sleeve. A woman in sunglasses and scarlet lipstick sits beside a silver-moustached gent in a bottle-green suit, who pours red wine with the unhurried air of a man who has never been told to hurry. A tiny radio mast is stamped on the bottle. It looks like a Riviera holiday snap from a parallel 1978, and the music inside lives up to it.
TaniA Kyllikki – HUMAN
Songs that tell us how to feel about one another are never in short supply. Far rarer is one that simply asks, then trusts the listener to do the work. "HUMAN", the new single from British independent singer-songwriter TaniA Kyllikki, puts the question in its title, repeats it until it becomes a mantra, and wraps it in a dancefloor pulse that keeps the feet busy while the conscience catches up.
Watch Me Die Inside – Fantasy Girl
Johnny O.'s original is a love song of the old, certain kind, the sort that announces a girl and a destiny in the same breath and never stops to ask whether the girl has been consulted. Watch Me Die Inside, the Cyprus-based project orbiting the enigmatic figure of Aleph, takes that certainty and holds it up to the light until it starts to look like something else: a man talking to a mirror and calling it a woman.
Inverted Mirror – Automatic Earth
Somewhere between a Bristol basement in 1995 and a Berlin dance floor in 2002, a door was left ajar. Inverted Mirror has walked through it with a single synthesizer, a drum machine's worth of nerve, and a conviction that the avant-garde and the earworm were never meant to be enemies. "Automatic Earth" is his debut, the opening transmission from a project promising three singles and then an album. If the rest keeps this standard, the signal will be worth following.
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.