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.
The Bergamot – Tides
Sorrow rarely announces itself with a piano this patient. "Tides" opens like a held breath, a single chord left to hang in the room the way a difficult confession does before anyone dares finish the sentence. This is the kind of restraint most bands can't afford, because it demands a second act worth the wait. The Bergamot deliver one.
Fanny Alexandra – Breathe!
Every so often a single arrives that doesn't so much announce itself as exhale into the room, and "Breathe!" belongs to that rare, unshowy category. Fanny Alexandra has built her reputation on candour — the sort of unguarded, diaristic songwriting that makes you feel like you've stumbled into someone's private confession — and this latest offering tightens that gift into four devastating minutes of cinematic ache.
Bodo Bifroest – À Travers Paris
Cities are notoriously difficult to translate into sound without lapsing into cliché — the accordion, the postcard chord change, the tourist-board shimmer. Bodo Bifroest sidesteps all of it. "À Travers Paris" doesn't try to paint the Eiffel Tower in synth pads; it captures something harder to notate: the particular hush of a city after midnight, when the pavements go glossy under sodium light and every stranger seems to be walking somewhere important.
Stefanie Michaela – Carefree
Pop music has spent the better part of a decade drowning in self-diagnosis. Every chorus a confession, every bridge a breakdown set to synth pads. Against that backdrop, Stefanie Michaela's "Carefree" arrives like a window flung open in a stuffy room — not because it ignores struggle, but because it has the confidence to set the struggle down for three and a half minutes and simply breathe.
Quiet as a Mouse – Nostalgia is fine…but…
Alex Moran has always sung like a man arguing with his own memory, and on this second full-length under the Quiet as a Mouse banner, the argument finally gets resolved on his own terms. Ten years and several continents removed from the Scottish scene that first championed him — Edinburgh, the BBC Introducing slots, the Daily Record's breathless proclamations — Moran has arrived somewhere warmer, sadder and considerably more assured. The title tells you everything before the needle drops: nostalgia gets its due, then gets politely shown the door.
Tulegon – Rovine
There is a particular breed of record that arrives without fanfare, without a label machine behind it, and quietly insists on being taken seriously anyway. *Rovine*, the debut full-length from Milan-based songwriter Tulegon, belongs to that lineage. Self-recorded, self-financed, self-everything, it carries the unmistakable fingerprints of a man who has spent twenty years scribbling lines into notebooks on trains between Puglia and Lombardy, waiting for the moment they'd finally fit together.
RSM – Life is…
There is a particular breed of European prog band that treats the studio the way a cathedral mason treated stone: patiently, devoutly, and with an eye on something larger than the immediate commission. RSM, the Łódź-based trio steered by guitarist and keyboard player Rafał Szewczyk, belong unmistakably to that lineage. Their second full-length, *Life is…*, is a record built not for the algorithm but for the armchair — the kind of album you sit with, lights dimmed, from the needle-drop of track one to the last decaying chord of the closer, and emerge from thirty-odd minutes later slightly rearranged.
Christopher Hawkins – Where the world can’t find you
Sheffield does not announce itself gently. It rises in concrete and steel, in the brutalist terraces of Park Hill, in the clatter of a city built on industry and stubbornness. It seems fitting, then, that Christopher Hawkins — a composer raised within earshot of that skyline — should choose those same grey ramparts, rendered by Mandy Payne's unmistakable brush, as the cover for his fifth and most quietly devastating record to date.
John Miller – Sexy Blueberry
Grief has a habit of arriving dressed for a party it was never invited to, and John Miller understands this better than most. "Sexy Blueberry," his new single out of Paris, doesn't so much announce heartbreak as let it walk in wearing champagne on its breath and mascara already smudged. The title alone tells you everything about the record's method: sweetness stitched to bruising, seduction laced with rot at the edges.
karlo bromsen – Parlin Papito
There is a particular kind of music writing — born somewhere between the inkstained fervour of the late-seventies weeklies and the wide-eyed generosity of the blogosphere at its best — that knows a small, strange, brilliant thing when it hears one. "Parlin Papito," the solo debut from Bromsen frontman Karlo Bromsen, is exactly that kind of thing: a record so disarmingly modest in its ambitions that it sneaks past your critical faculties entirely, and by the time you've noticed what's happened, you're already three plays deep and grinning like an idiot.
Yung Yuee – The Real Yuee
Every so often a record arrives that refuses to be filed under the usual headings. "The Real Yuee" is one of those. On paper it reads like a straightforward hip-hop single with an accompanying video, courtesy of a New Haven newcomer with a producer credit for Rico Got That Fye and studio time booked at James Grant's QVR. On the strength of what actually plays through the speakers, it is something far stranger and more affecting: a document of a young man cataloguing his own unravelling, weeks before circumstance would rewrite the terms of his life entirely.
Amarah – Invisible Light
Pop music built around the search for hope can curdle into greeting-card sentiment within a single verse. Amarah avoids that trap almost entirely on "Invisible Light," a single that trades easy comfort for something more patient: a slow accumulation of atmosphere that only releases its full weight once the chorus finally arrives.