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.
Rusty Reid – Alchemist
There's a particular kind of American songwriting that British ears have always had a soft spot for: the dusty, plainspoken kind, the sort that sounds like it's been driving a pickup down a back road for three hundred miles and has earned the right to a little weariness in its voice. Rusty Reid's reading of "Alchemist," the second single from his sprawling new covers collection *Lone Stardust*, belongs squarely in that lineage, and he wears it well — though what he's actually pulled off here is rather more interesting than mere homage.
Alex Anoussis – Hi I’m AI
Pop music has always had a soft spot for the uncanny, for the moment a synthesiser sounds almost human, almost alive. Alex Anoussis takes that flirtation and turns it into the entire premise of his new single, handing the microphone over to the machine itself and letting it speak. The gimmick could have curdled into novelty within thirty seconds. It doesn't. Instead, "Hi I'm AI" arrives as one of the more disarming pop statements of the year, a record that treats its high concept with a light touch and a heavier hook.
Frederick James – Let Me Give You A Good Day
The Perth songwriter's third single arrives like a hand placed gently on a shoulder, and it lands with the force of something far heavier than its quiet arrangement would suggest. Frederick James has built his name on a kind of unguarded confession, and here he refines that instinct into his most affecting work yet.
Anjalts – Through the Fray
Anjalts has always operated on her own clock, the sort of artist who seems to compose by moonlight whether or not the moon is actually out. Since 2020 she has stacked up three albums of restless, shapeshifting pop, each one daring you to keep up with her. "Through the Fray," the lead transmission from album number four, doesn't just keep that streak alive—it sharpens her instincts into something close to a thesis statement.
SEBASTIAN RYDGREN – Midnight Confessions Pt. 1
Sebastian Rydgren has spent the last few years being interpreted by other people — talent-show judges, viral algorithms, the whole machinery that turns a promising voice into a product before it has decided what it wants to say. *Midnight Confessions Pt. 1* is the sound of that arrangement quietly ending. Released on his own label and built from the singles he's been dropping since autumn, it plays less like a tidy collection than like a young man finally being allowed to finish his own sentences.
Ghost of Panama – The Last Food on Earth
Keith Welham and Cristabel Liu have spent eighteen months proving they don't do anything the easy way, and their debut album confirms it with a kind of stubborn, magnificent confidence. *The Last Food on Earth* is not a record that wants to be liked quickly. It wants to be lived with, the way a difficult relationship is lived with — which, given its subject matter, is rather the point.
BFAULT – BACKMIND
Midnight has always been hip-hop's favourite hour, but Roi Buchbinder — recording as BFAULT — treats it less as a backdrop and more as a structural principle. *BACKMIND* doesn't merely take place at night; it behaves like night, unfolding in three deliberate movements that track the mind's slow drift from memory into chaos and out again into something like peace. Nine tracks, twenty-five minutes, one continuous descent and ascent — the album wears its architecture proudly, and it earns the right to.
Sipul – In The Still
Basements have produced more honest records than studios ever will, and Rochester's Sipul understand this instinctively. *In The Still*, tracked entirely under guitarist James "Spaz" Spaziani's own hand in bassist Al Bellanca's basement, carries the particular intimacy of a record made by people who answered to nobody but themselves. No clock was watching, no invoice was ticking, and the result is a collection that breathes with the unhurried confidence of musicians who could chase a strange idea down a hallway simply because they wanted to see where it led.
Keesha Blair – Access Declined
Keesha Blair's "Access Declined" arrives like a closed door that somehow manages to sound like an open window. This is a record built on restraint, and that restraint is precisely where its power lives. Too many songs about boundaries reach for fire and fury; Blair reaches instead for stillness, and the result is a single that lingers far longer than its runtime would suggest.
Paul Louis Villani – Who Do You Belong to Now? (Great Southern Land)
Melbourne has produced its share of restless troubadours, but few have arrived at disquiet with quite the unvarnished candour of Paul Louis Villani. His new single doesn't so much announce itself as stumble into the room, half-formed and urgent, clutching questions it has no intention of answering neatly.
Foxy Leopard – Same Old Sermon
Foxy Leopard's "Same Old Sermon" is a small masterpiece of restraint — a song that understands the slow erosion of a shared world is far more chilling than any thunderclap of conflict. Pulled from the forthcoming album *Before*, it lands at precisely the right moment in that record's arc: after the warmth of community and labour and courtship has been sketched in, and just as the first hairline cracks begin to show beneath it.
Andrei British – Alien Jazz Girl
Some records announce themselves with a slammed door; this one saunters in through a side entrance, swirling a martini glass that probably contains rocket fuel. "Alien Jazz Girl" wears its homage on its sleeve and its tongue in its cheek with equal confidence — Andrei British borrows the loose-limbed swagger of the Cantina Band, strips out the slapstick, and lets a lounge singer from somewhere considerably further than Tatooine take the mic.