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.
Cheryl Craigie – What’s Going On
Covering Marvin Gaye ought to come with a warning label. So many singers have stumbled into "What's Going On" thinking reverence alone will carry them, only to discover that reverence is precisely the trap. Gaye's original was never a museum piece; it was a live wire, cut through with grief, tenderness and quiet fury, and any cover that merely genuflects before it ends up embalming the thing it claims to love. Happily, Cheryl Craigie has done no such thing. Her rendition breathes.
Naoko Hiranuma – Sea of Light
Pop songs about summer romance arrive by the crate-load every June, most of them disposable, few of them worth a second listen come autumn. Naoko Hiranuma's "Sea of Light" belongs firmly to the latter category, a track that treats nostalgia not as a gimmick but as a genuine emotional architecture, built brick by brick until the whole thing glows.
Signate – Another Day In Paradise
Some covers arrive like a dare. Others creep up quietly, having spent ten years fermenting in a hard drive somewhere in Augusta, Georgia, waiting for the right combination of insomnia and nerve. "Another Day In Paradise" belongs firmly to the second category, and it is all the better for the wait.
The Bergamot – Tides
Sorrow rarely announces itself with a piano this patient. "Tides" opens like a held breath, a single chord left to hang in the room the way a difficult confession does before anyone dares finish the sentence. This is the kind of restraint most bands can't afford, because it demands a second act worth the wait. The Bergamot deliver one.
Adrielle Bow Belle – Freeze
Cold, in the hands of Adrielle Bow Belle, turns out to be the warmest possible subject. *Freeze*, her seven-movement song cycle, does the thing so few concept albums manage: it makes structure feel like feeling, rather than homework dressed up as art. Six years in the making, stitched together not by chronology but by a deliberate, looping logic — present, past, deeper past, childhood, and back again — it plays less like a tracklist and more like a nervous system remembering itself in the wrong order. Which, as anyone who has ever lived through trauma will tell you, is exactly how memory actually works.
A-jam Siin – Forever finding me
Leeds has a way of producing musicians who sound like they've been squeezed out of terraced houses and drizzle, and A-jam Siin belongs firmly to that lineage. *Forever Finding Me*, the debut full-length from this Leeds-based producer and songwriter, arrives not as a polished statement but as something far more valuable: a document of a mind mid-transformation, caught in the act of becoming.
Quiet as a Mouse – Nostalgia is fine…but…
Alex Moran has always sung like a man arguing with his own memory, and on this second full-length under the Quiet as a Mouse banner, the argument finally gets resolved on his own terms. Ten years and several continents removed from the Scottish scene that first championed him — Edinburgh, the BBC Introducing slots, the Daily Record's breathless proclamations — Moran has arrived somewhere warmer, sadder and considerably more assured. The title tells you everything before the needle drops: nostalgia gets its due, then gets politely shown the door.
Tulegon – Rovine
There is a particular breed of record that arrives without fanfare, without a label machine behind it, and quietly insists on being taken seriously anyway. *Rovine*, the debut full-length from Milan-based songwriter Tulegon, belongs to that lineage. Self-recorded, self-financed, self-everything, it carries the unmistakable fingerprints of a man who has spent twenty years scribbling lines into notebooks on trains between Puglia and Lombardy, waiting for the moment they'd finally fit together.
The Pixel Rain – Last
Something has shifted in The Pixel Rain's world, and you can hear it in the first thirty seconds of "Last." The Southeast London project, born from a self-titled 2023 debut EP and quietly building a reputation on industrial rhythm and synthetic dread, has finally let the guitars off the leash. The result is the most confident thing Áron Siegler has put his name to yet — a single that snarls where The Pixel Rain's earlier work merely hummed.
ShanDaria – Livin’
There is a particular species of R&B record that arrives not to seduce you, but to shake you gently by the shoulders and remind you that you are, in fact, alive. ShanDaria's "Livin'" belongs unmistakably to that lineage, and it announces itself with the unhurried confidence of an artist who has waited long enough to know exactly what she wants to say.
John Miller – Sexy Blueberry
Grief has a habit of arriving dressed for a party it was never invited to, and John Miller understands this better than most. "Sexy Blueberry," his new single out of Paris, doesn't so much announce heartbreak as let it walk in wearing champagne on its breath and mascara already smudged. The title alone tells you everything about the record's method: sweetness stitched to bruising, seduction laced with rot at the edges.
karlo bromsen – Parlin Papito
There is a particular kind of music writing — born somewhere between the inkstained fervour of the late-seventies weeklies and the wide-eyed generosity of the blogosphere at its best — that knows a small, strange, brilliant thing when it hears one. "Parlin Papito," the solo debut from Bromsen frontman Karlo Bromsen, is exactly that kind of thing: a record so disarmingly modest in its ambitions that it sneaks past your critical faculties entirely, and by the time you've noticed what's happened, you're already three plays deep and grinning like an idiot.