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.
DEAN RÖK – Fire & Stars
Some men spend a lifetime treading boards before they learn to set fire to one. Diogo Lima, the Portuguese actor turned anthem-builder behind Dean RÖK, has clearly absorbed every lesson the stage ever taught him about timing, restraint, and the art of the grand gesture — and on "Fire & Stars" he cashes the whole lot in at once.
HANGAWI(fka SYLVIA M) – Anyway
Debut singles tend to arrive one of two ways: cautious, hedged, terrified of committing to a single idea, or naked and unguarded, betting everything on a feeling the artist hasn't yet learned to distrust. HANGAWI, the South Korean singer-songwriter formerly recording as Silvia M, has chosen the second path with "Anyway," and the gamble largely pays off.
Delta Fire – Love Stops First
Glasgow has never been short of bands willing to plug in, crank up, and dare the room to ignore them, and Delta Fire's third single arrives with the swagger of a group who know exactly which lineage they're auditioning for. "Love Stops First" doesn't so much knock on the door of 70s hard rock as kick it clean off the hinges, dust off the welcome mat, and invite Deep Purple and ZZ Top round for a pint.
Esteban Obando – Montreal (Feeling it All)
Two minutes and twenty seconds. That's the entire run time of the most unguarded thing to drop into the inbox this month, and it tells you everything about the calculation Esteban Obando has made: say it once, say it plainly, and get out before the spell breaks.
Mercy Kelly – Summer of Silence
Oldham has given us many things, but rarely has it given us a band quite so determined to sound like four decades of post-punk and stadium-rock distilled into a single, sweaty rehearsal room — and rarely has the gamble paid off so handsomely. Mercy Kelly, once a five-piece, have shed two members and emerged leaner, hungrier, and considerably more thrilling for it. *Summer of Silence* is the sound of a band finding exactly the shape it was always meant to be in.
Dorian – THE COLLECTION
Twenty tracks is a lot of evidence to submit on one's own behalf, and Dorian, an independent artist who has built his following one TikTok clip and one streaming playlist at a time, submits it without flinching — and the evidence holds up. *The Collection* arrives billed as a "best of," a claim usually reserved for careers with rather more grey hair attached to them, but pop's timeline has compressed so dramatically that a few years of consistent, well-loved releases now genuinely earns a victory lap. Played end to end, the record makes its own case convincingly: this is a catalogue worth gathering up, not padding out.
The Amanda Emblem Experiment – Lazy Sunday
Three tracks, two of them recycled and one of them new, and the whole exercise lands with the unhurried confidence of someone who has stopped trying to prove anything. Amanda Emblem made her case last September with *The Wood*, a ten-track album that stretched out, took its time, and asked listeners to settle in for the long haul. This EP does the opposite. It is *The Wood* with the fat trimmed and the bones rearranged, and the surgery suits it.
Tasha Solomita – Grey Light
There's a particular kind of record that arrives not as an event but as a conversation already in progress, and *Grey Light*, the new four-track EP from Brooklyn transplant Tasha Solomita, is exactly that sort of record. You don't so much listen to it as eavesdrop on it, the way you might catch the back half of an argument through a thin apartment wall and find yourself unable to walk away until you know how it ends.
Aurealis – Cursed
Pop music has always loved a haunted house, but few artists bother to furnish the rooms. Aurealis does. "Cursed" arrives not as a single but as a séance, summoning every doubt you've ever swallowed and handing it a microphone.
Janger – Interspace
It takes a particular kind of nerve to drag Underworld's most over-quoted vocal fragment out of its glass case fifteen years after Trainspotting turned it into shorthand for chemical bliss, and have the cheek to make it sound like a discovery again. Janger, a CalArts product with a half-decade gap in his discography and apparently no fear of ghosts, pulls it off — mostly by treating the sample less as a totem and more as debris, something washed up and half-dissolved rather than triumphantly restored.
Keesha Blair – Truth Always Shows Its Face
There is a particular kind of song that arrives not to entertain but to confront, and Keesha Blair's "Truth Always Shows Its Face" belongs unmistakably to that lineage. It is neo-soul built less for the dancefloor than for the long drive home after a difficult conversation, the kind you have with yourself in the rearview mirror. Blair, the songwriter and creative director behind Divine Purpose Music, has built her short catalogue on exactly this premise: that healing is not a hook but a process, and that pop music can still afford the patience to trace it properly.
Rootless – Dam Mast Qalandar
There is a particular kind of ambition that announces itself not through volume but through lineage, and Rootless — the Glasgow-based collective who have made a virtue of being from everywhere and nowhere at once — wear theirs like a second skin. Their new single, "Dam Mast Qalandar," takes on one of the most over-recorded, over-sampled, near-untouchable pieces in the qawwali canon — the song Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan turned into a kind of devotional Big Bang — and dares to ask what happens when you run it through a Roma fiddle and a Glaswegian postcode. The audacity alone deserves a hearing.