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.
Bardi Johannsson X d’Ant – Staring at Nothing
Reykjavík has always bred musicians who understand the value of silence, and on "Staring at Nothing," Bardi Johannsson and David Antonsson prove themselves fluent in that particular dialect of restraint. This is a debut collaboration that arrives fully formed, unhurried, and confident enough to let its atmosphere do the heavy lifting rather than reaching for anthemic gestures.
Reetoxa – Bottle
Steam pours from the ears of the girl on the sleeve, and by the second chorus you understand exactly why. "Bottle" arrives like a slammed cupboard door, all rattling nerves and chemical fizz, and Reetoxa treats restraint the way a shaken can treats a ring-pull.
FLORENT ADROIT – A CONTRE COURANT
Florent Adroit has never been a man to chase the crowd, and the title of his new single confirms it before a single note is played: to go against the current, deliberately, unfashionably, and with conviction. On the strength of what precedes it — the sleeper success of "Tout Va Bien" — this feels less like a follow-up single than a statement of artistic identity, arriving on the twenty-first of June with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he's building.
Strange Divine – Buried Deep
Debut singles rarely arrive this sure of their own silences. *Buried Deep*, the first offering from Strange Divine, doesn't so much introduce a band as withhold one, and the withholding is the point. Recorded somewhere in the industrial hinterlands of Birmingham — a city that has been quietly producing menace and melancholy in equal measure since the days of Sabbath — the track refuses the usual debut-single handshake. No hooks thrust forward for approval. No chorus arrives to reassure you that everything will resolve. Instead, a slow, deliberate descent, and a band confident enough to let a song simply exist in its own murk.
The Black Plague Doctors – DYNAMITE! (Audio Cinema)
There's a particular species of British music writing — the kind that used to fill the back pages of the *NME* in ink-stained fury — that reserves its highest praise for records that refuse to behave. *DYNAMITE! (Audio Cinema)*, the latest and most audacious outing from Atlanta's Jo-Fi and St. Gabe, operating under the deliciously ominous banner of The Black Plague Doctors, is exactly that sort of record: unruly, unwashed in the best possible sense, and gloriously indifferent to the sterile perfectionism that has calcified so much contemporary production.
Motihari Brigade – Problematic
Eric Winston has never been a man content to let a guitar simply ring out when it could instead interrogate you, and on *Problematic*, his band's third long-player, he sends his Stratocaster off to do exactly that — pacing the room, demanding to see your papers, asking whether you've really thought this through or merely absorbed the thinking of others. It is a record that wears its intellectual scaffolding (Orwell, Huxley, a dash of Socratic heckling) lightly enough that you can headbang first and footnote later, which is precisely the trick the best protest music has always pulled off.
R.J. Augustine – To My Favorite Person
R.J. Augustine's debut, *To My Favorite Person*, arrives as a sprawling twenty-track diary spanning a full eighty-two minutes, and the diary format suits him. This is contemporary R&B built on confession rather than spectacle — no chest-beating, no try-hard flexes, just a singer working through the wreckage and warmth of love with the patience of someone who has actually lived it rather than imagined it for a song.
SEBASTIAN RYDGREN – Midnight Confessions Pt. 1
Sebastian Rydgren has spent the last few years being interpreted by other people — talent-show judges, viral algorithms, the whole machinery that turns a promising voice into a product before it has decided what it wants to say. *Midnight Confessions Pt. 1* is the sound of that arrangement quietly ending. Released on his own label and built from the singles he's been dropping since autumn, it plays less like a tidy collection than like a young man finally being allowed to finish his own sentences.
The Colinizers – Gravitational Bull
Six years may have passed since "Gravitational Bull" first appeared, but the single loses none of its strange, cartoonish gravity on revisit. Released in June 2019 and animated in Berlin rather than filmed in some cramped Philly basement, the video is a far stranger beast than its title suggests — less bar-band swagger, more fever-dream fable, and all the better for it.
Ornnala – Au Diable
Pop francophone has a habit of mistaking polish for power, of sanding down the rough edges of female experience until what remains is palatable, radio-safe, forgettable. "Au Diable" refuses that compromise entirely, and the refusal is what makes it sing.
Keesha Blair – Access Declined
Keesha Blair's "Access Declined" arrives like a closed door that somehow manages to sound like an open window. This is a record built on restraint, and that restraint is precisely where its power lives. Too many songs about boundaries reach for fire and fury; Blair reaches instead for stillness, and the result is a single that lingers far longer than its runtime would suggest.
Paul Louis Villani – Who Do You Belong to Now? (Great Southern Land)
Melbourne has produced its share of restless troubadours, but few have arrived at disquiet with quite the unvarnished candour of Paul Louis Villani. His new single doesn't so much announce itself as stumble into the room, half-formed and urgent, clutching questions it has no intention of answering neatly.