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.
CASH L3WIS – Chrysanthemum Flower
There is a particular kind of hip-hop record that arrives shouting, all chest-thumping and bank statements, and there is another kind that walks in quietly, takes off its hat and asks how your evening's going. "Chrysanthemum Flower" belongs firmly to the second category, and it is all the more disarming for it.
Fierce Friend – Tokyo Rose
Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in 1937, and the world has never quite let her go. She has been sighted on desert islands, in Japanese custody and, in the more excitable corners of the internet, aboard a flying saucer. One durable rumour even had her as the voice on the wartime airwaves that gave this song its title. Alan Grice, who records as Fierce Friend, has gathered up the whole tangle of searchlights, static and folklore and turned it into a piano ballad that begins politely and ends somewhere near the edge of the map.
Brandon Archer – Where The Light Comes In
Optimism is difficult to do well in pop. Pitched too high, it curdles into the motivational poster. Pitched too low, it sounds like a shrug. Brandon Archer's new single, the title track of his forthcoming album, finds the narrow ledge in between and sets up a comfortable chair on it.
Seema Farswani – Born To Fly
The soft-rock anthem has been abused for decades. It has soundtracked car adverts, talent-show finales and the last ten minutes of countless films about overcoming something. Farswani knows this, and "Born To Fly" is built to survive the comparison. It opens with a lullaby's closeness and ends in a chorus for a stadium of daughters, and the journey between the two is more carefully judged than the genre's usual lurch from hush to thunder.
Innocent Darkness – The dark fungus
Ekeren is not a place one associates with the end of the world. It is a quiet, unglamorous district on the northern edge of Antwerp, all suburban hedges and tram lines, and yet from a home studio there comes *The Dark Fungus*, an EP that imagines civilisation dissolving into mycelium and dancing itself to oblivion. It is a preposterous conceit. It is also, against every reasonable expectation, a triumph.
Massimo Donelli-Paolo Rossi – Adorati Spiriti
Concept albums have a reputation for grandiosity. They tend to arrive wrapped in gatefold sleeves and self-importance, ready to explain the cosmos to a public that only wanted a decent tune. Massimo Donelli and Paolo Rossi have made something far rarer: a concept album with a beating heart and a conscience, and, best of all, restraint. *Adorati Spiriti* asks large questions in a quiet voice, and it is all the more persuasive for it.
John Michael Hersey – Quixote
Twenty-two albums in, a songwriter either repeats himself into oblivion or finds a way to make repetition itself the joke. Hersey has chosen the latter path, and *Quixote* is the sound of a man who has finally admitted that the windmill was never going to fall, and decided to enjoy the tilting anyway.
Ryan Yingst – A Nice Neighborhood to Have Bad Habits In
Raymond Chandler lent the title, from *The Big Sleep*, a line delivered with the sly relish of a man who knows exactly what the neighbourhood is going to cost him. Ryan Yingst, a folk singer from Hershey, Pennsylvania by way of a Pittsburgh jazz-guitar degree, a Nashville apprenticeship and, since late 2023, Philadelphia's gig circuit, has taken the joke and built six songs inside it. They are honest, handsome and quietly ruinous, and they are the finest thing he has put his name to.
Co.LeGa – you.Love
Digital romance has never sounded quite so uneasy, nor quite so danceable. "you.Love" arrives as the second salvo from Co.LeGa this year, and it lands with the poise of someone who has stopped worrying about whether electronic music can be both cerebral and physical, and simply gone ahead and made it both.
The Lazz – The Crown
Benjamin Lazzaro has spent four decades wielding a guitar, and it shows in the muscular confidence of "The Crown," the opening salvo of Act IV in his sprawling, Jungian-soaked concept saga. This is not a musician chasing trends; this is a craftsman who has finally built the machine capable of matching the scope of his imagination.
TrixxStarr – Enough
Some bands are formed in rehearsal rooms. TrixxStarr appear to have been assembled at the kitchen table. What began as the solo project of Dusty Starr, of Chihuahua and Les Biches, has grown into a family firm, with brothers Heli, C.C. and Darc pulling up chairs. On "Enough" the result is a band asking the question the rest of us dodge at parties: when do we stop chasing the things we've been told should make us happy? They ask it without a finger wagged and without a sermon in sight.
Peter Melodist – Fear
Thirteen is an odd age to hand someone a guitar-shaped microphone and ask them to say something true. Most who try it hide behind borrowed phrases, safe choruses, the sound of an artist rehearsing adulthood rather than living inside it. Peter Melodist does something more interesting on "Fear": he sounds like a kid who has already worked out that rock music was invented for exactly this — for turning the unnameable stuff in your chest into something you can play loud.