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.
Open Horizon Records – Letting Go
Heartbreak songs usually arrive dressed for a party. They shout, they swagger, they rhyme "pain" with "rain" and hope nobody notices. "Letting Go", the new single from Lancaster's Open Horizon Records, does something braver and far quieter. It sits down at the kitchen table at two in the morning, phone face-up and silent, and tells the truth.
Layla Kaylif – WALKS ON WATER
Layla Kaylif is a magpie with an Oxford degree, a back catalogue that includes Leonard Cohen translated into Arabic, and a working knowledge of Nizar Qabbani's love poetry. "Walks on Water", the second single from her forthcoming album, is her most daring act of borrowing yet. It is also, happily, her most convincing.
Jasmith – Fader Zero
A fader at zero is a promise as much as a silence. The channel is open and the signal is waiting, and everything depends on the hand that moves it. Jasmith, a Singapore-based producer who tracked this single in England, has built a whole song around that moment, and the result is a confident, polished piece of electronic pop with a thesis it never has to shout.
Tarita – The Death of Peter Pan
Twenty years is a long time to leave a song waiting, and most songs would have sulked. Tarita, the solo project of Chennai-based psychologist Dr Sindhuja Sankaran, wrote "The Death of Peter Pan" at 21 and released it at 41. In between it lived on an old IBM laptop, unproduced and unheard, losing a stanza somewhere along the way like a sock in a launderette. That the wait has produced something this tender, rather than something merely nostalgic, is to everyone's credit.
Alastair Macduff – Kåtebol
A Glaswegian who has spent two decades in Sweden occupies a peculiar position: too Scottish to be Swedish, too Swedish to be Scottish, and therefore perfectly placed to notice what the locals no longer see. Alastair Macduff, now based in Gothenburg, has spent that time looking at the abandoned houses that dot the Swedish landscape, the *ödehus*, with their sagging roofs and curtains left to rot. *Kåtebol*, his first solo album, is what came back from the looking. It is a small marvel, and it is 35 minutes long, which makes it a rarity in itself.
Novaix Onyx – Close
Start with the admission, because the label does: Onyx is an AI artist. Words, arrangements, mixing decisions and creative direction are human; the voice and the visuals are generated. Novaix stamps this on every release, and the honesty clears the air. Nobody is being fooled, so the question becomes whether the music is any good. On *CLOSE*, it is better than good. It is the most coherent debut statement from a synthetic performer so far, and it would be a sharp record whatever its provenance.
Aner Andros – The Chakra Symphony
Plenty of musicians claim to heal. Few arrive with a Master's in jazz from Rome's Conservatorio Santa Cecilia, fifteen years restoring double basses, and the patience to build a seven-movement suite around the body's energy centres. Andrea Romanazzo, who records as Aner Andros, is one of the few. His debut is a serious, handsomely made piece of work. It asks to be heard from first bar to last, and it rewards anyone who obliges.
Al Swainger’s Pointless Beauty – Impure Imagination
Ask Al Swainger what his music is and he will, with a bassist's patience, decline to tell you. The album's liner notes confess that the question is the hardest one he faces, and that every tidy answer shaves off the strange, fragile and unresolved parts that made the work worth doing. *Impure Imagination*, the third record from his Pointless Beauty project, is the sound of a man refusing to be filed. That refusal could be tiresome in lesser hands. Here it is exhilarating.
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.
Danny Lu – 我渴望 ( I Long for You)
Pop music has grown so loud, so eager to be liked, that a song willing to wait for you feels almost impolite. Danny Lu's "我渴望," a Mandarin single written in the high desert of Santa Fe and finished many years later, does exactly that. It sits there, unhurried, with its coat still on, and lets you decide whether to come in.