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 Sonic Travelers – A Heart’s A Terrible Thing To Waste
There is a particular kind of song that arrives at the end of a love affair not with a slammed door but with a held one. It is the song of the man who has already lost the argument, knows it, and has decided to be a gentleman about the whole wretched business. It is harder to write than the screaming kind, and rarer. The Sonic Travelers, the duo of George Aiello and John Ingram, have now given us a fine example of it.
Phyne – Brighter Than The Sun – Part II – Radio Edit
Phyne's Part I was a record for staring at your phone at 3am and feeling faintly ashamed of it. It was all low lighting, soft edges and the glow of a screen that knows too much. Part II drags the same lyrics out of that velvet booth, hauls them into the car park and turns the headlights on full beam. The words haven't changed, but the song around them has.
Meas & Riddie – Keep T Moving
The Roland TR-909 is nearly forty years old and has been declared dead, buried and sampled posthumously more times than any machine in history. Yet it keeps coming back, like a relative who turns up uninvited and ends up running the party. Meas & Riddie, two young brothers with a pleasing disregard for rules they probably never read, have invited it round again. On "Keep T Moving" it behaves impeccably.
The Graceland Conspiracy – We are chaos
Colin Crooks has made a lifetime's worth of racket with admirable commitment. PBR Streetgang put out singles on Good Vibrations, the Belfast label that made a habit of backing the gloriously unlikely. Bad Noise Monster, his current outfit, announces its intentions in the name. Anyone arriving at "We Are Chaos" with that history in mind will reach instinctively for earplugs.
Segana – Midnight Masquerade
Synth-pop has a habit of arriving at the party in a rented tuxedo, all sheen and no stories. Segana, the Sydney duo of Blair Djuna and Josh Paltoo, turn up in denim and trainers, sit on a graffiti-scrawled wall, and then make the neon sound dangerous again. *Midnight Masquerade*, their ten-song after-hours confessional, is a record of real swagger and, better still, real nerve.
escape the box – Dead Ends And Daydreams
Heavy music has always been a refuge for people who feel things too loudly for polite company. The best of it doesn't pretend otherwise. It plugs the feeling into a wall of amplifiers and lets it howl. Escape The Box, the Anglo-electro-metal duo of Ziey Kizzy and Dreadf4ll, understand this in their bones, and on *Dead Ends & DayDreams* they have made a mini-album that howls, whispers, and occasionally does both inside the same four minutes.
Hamish – Significant Others
Sixteen years is a long time for a record to spend in a pile of cuttings. Hamish's second album, the follow-up to 1999's *Picture In My Bag* (produced by Les Penning, best known for his work with Mike Oldfield), went missing, resurfaced, went missing again, and was finally rescued by a lodger. Chris Oldfield, late of Dreadzone, rented the cabin at the bottom of Hamish's Stroud garden and stayed to become the producer the songs had been waiting for. The result is a 15-track collection that sounds like a life's work assembled with love.
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.
More to Give – Popkanon, RarriQUESO, Jack Flash
A sufficient number of synthesisers can make almost any sentiment sound like a revelation, and pop has long confused grandeur with depth. "More to Give", the 22nd release from the Norwegian-Chicagoan songwriting trio Popkanon, arrives with a modesty that makes its ambitions all the more convincing. Credited alongside the Chicago Latin artist RarriQUESO and the producer Jack Flash, it is a song about stubbornness, the particular kind that survives a bad few years and still manages to look at a horizon without flinching.
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.