About old age, unity and struggle

Representing new music albums of 2023

Iggy Pop

NOM BELLE AND SEBASTIAN NINA Hagen LadyTron Ryuichi Sakamoto

Iggy Pop

EVERY LOSER / 2023

"Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!" - As Hunter S. Thompson would say about our hero. Already far, an elderly, 75-year-old rock-idol Iggi Pop began a year with an album about addictions, love, house and punk rock. In the video on the single, Struung out Johnny Iggi does not build illusions, but does not dissolve in a farewell bayopic. Although Punk Legenda compares himself with a wrinkled, even rotten fruit. Archival shots of stormy youth flash. Iggi has nothing to hide, his whole life is in front of the public. He pulled out and cut himself off. Life, at one time, did not remove this fruit from her branch in 27 or 56, although all the prerequisites were for this. Yes, he is just a lucky trait - a punk who has lived to the eighth dozen. He no longer has a place in the window with goods in a bright wrapper. I am not all tired of admiring the self-irony images of James Newella Osterberg Jr., it was with this name that he was awarded at birth. An eternally naughty child. We listen, filled with a drive and raw fury from The Stoogenes, the nineteenth album of Rock-Veteran.

• Listen to Spotify

• Style: punk rock

• Pay attention to:

* - Frenzy

- Strung out Johnny

- Neo punk*

Nom

General air / 2022

On November 3, 2022, the group NOM released the album "General Air", out of 12 songs. According to the participants in the team, they were recorded with the participation of all current artists of the group and invited professional friends.

“Poisonous irony, idiotic absurdity, unbridled gogot, bitterness, anger and new versions of some classical numbers - an exquisite musical set awaits the listener,” the annotation for release says.

I will give the final fragment - the words of Andrei Kagadeev himself. All in equal proportions: there is something to argue with and there is something to agree with.

“Some analysts optimistically believe that the prospects of Russian culture are not so bad. Say, having survived the stomillic genocide of Dzerzhinsky - Beria -Stalin, the country after the thaw gave out such diamonds in all areas of art and science that we are still proud of. This is true. There is only one “but”. Creative workers who brought the mentioned imperishable values ​​were deeply convinced that only a bunch of bastards Chekists interfere with society, and the rest of the country is going on the right course in the city of the Sun. And so everyone thought. Sincere faith united the population, making the Soviet people. She illuminated the path, helped to create and endure hardships. Vladimir Semenych, Bulat Shalych and Alexander Arkadyich - no exception. “On that single civilian ...”, “Take Lenin with money, so its price is high!”, “Two in the room-I and Lenin”-“Old Bolsheviks”, “Komsomol-Volunteers” and other “Ilyich’s covenants” always moved at the bottom of the soul. Now there is nothing left there except the Zolotny Taurus and the Boomer. And they brought in a cesspool of history. Happiness is not in money. In short, they crap in a large way. How and where to get out of the national <...>, to decide not to the current "stars" and the businessmen of politics-culture, but to those who can finally abstract from the inescapable existential squalor and laugh at themselves. What flag will young people of a wonderful future gather under? "Proletarians of all countries, connect!" I did not work. Maybe he will ride something like: “Nationalists, soldiers and criminals of all countries, go <...>!” I want to believe.

• Listen to Yandex.Music

• Style: Ironous Russian Rock

• Pay attention to :

* - "machine"

- "Emigrant Song"

- "2700"*

Belle and Sebastian

Late Developers / 2023

Not even a year has passed since the release of a Bit of Previous, which has become the first studio album in seven years, as we already have the opportunity to listen to the new plate of the Scots Belle and Sebastian. It is worth noting that the Late Developers was recorded at the same time as the previous plate. Last year, the soloist of the group Stuart Murdok admitted that he woke up with some melodies: they ended up in his head, and he only gradually collected an album of them. In musically, the new album covers the folk rock gamut in the shades of Sepia, which could be suitable for the 1998 album The Boy with the Arab Strap, to neon synth.

Their voices and energy is still from that era of the Indie Rock of the mid-nineties. Love, friendship and existential crisis are topics that you can sing at any age, however, over the years, you begin to look at your life more than years. If last year’s album was an excellent group of a group that reminded of himself, writing sincere texts and music with deep ideas, then Late Developers represents their more poppy side: more catching melodies, more bright emotions, more synthesis.

• Listen to Yandex.Music

• Style: Indie Rock

• Pay attention to:

* - Juliet Naked

- when Were Very Young

- I Donat Know What You See in Me*

Nina Hagen

Unity / 2022

For 11 years, the first record of the German punk icon Nina Hagen, under whose song the Angel Merkel itself went to rest. The former German chancellor, it should be noted, is an excellent taste . But our heroine rest still early. In her sixty -seven, Nina Hagen did not lose either insolence, nor enthusiasm, nor a grip, retaining her madman in perfect proportions. In Unity, original songs alternate with masterfully executed causes. There are four of them: Redemption Day Cheryl Crowe, the German version of Blowin 'In the Wind Bob Dilan (Die Antwort Weiss Ganz Allein Der Wind), Itsn Matter Now Bob Geldof and the magnificent 16 Tons Merla Trevis, which only the lazy did not perform. The Nina Hagen version is a worthy decoration of the album-a impudent-nuclear, supporting a common mood. Despite all the covers and duets with colleagues in the workshop, the album looks whole and self -sufficient. The theme of unity is in every song. Let's Enjoy The Unity in Our Community / There Is no Room for Negativity / Positive Vibrations / Surround the World's Nations.

What will Nina Hagen listen to, retiring? The answer is obvious: of course, yourself beloved.

• Listen to Yandex.Music

• Style: from punk rock to regga

• Pay attention to:

* - Unity

- 16 tons

- Die Antwort Weiss Ganz Allein Der Wind*

LadyTron

Time's Arrow / 2023

The seventh studio album of the Liverpool Sint-Pop-Pop-Pop-Partet LadyTron, the main theme of which was "the beauty, disposability and fragility of the culture that surrounds us, and the joy of liberation from these structures." Crystal melodies shrouded in ice textures and exciting arpeggio, as well as shugaiz, disco and industrial, which are combined in their company electronic style. Formed in Liverpool in the late 90s, in a short time they managed to gain the glory of the leaders of the electroclash and the electro-pop scene, and PitchFork described their music as a quantum jump forward. We listen to what the British prepared for us this time.

• Listen to Yandex.Music

• Style: Elektroklash

• Pay attention to:

* - City of Angels

- Faces

- The Dreamers*

Ryuichi Sakamoto

12/2023

In 2014, the medical diagnosis changed the life of Ryuichi Sakamoto. The pianist, composer and participant in Yellow Magic Orchestra made a disappointing diagnosis - throat cancer. For an adherent of macrobiotic nutrition, which carefully monitored his health for the last quarter of a century, this diagnosis was a blow. “Honestly, I don’t know how many years I am left,” he later thought in the 2017 documentary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Code”. “I do not accept anything for granted. The only thing I want is to leave behind music, for which I will not be ashamed. ”

Ryuichi then invested all his pain and struggle in the Async album, which turned out to be gloomy and introducing. The album of 14 tracks conveyed the melancholy admiration for Bach and the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, placing rare piano plays in electronic sound landscapes.

Almost ten years after the initial diagnosis and more than five years after Async, Sakamoto continues to make music, despite the fact that his fight against cancer continues. His last album, “12”, was recorded for especially difficult 13 months. After Sakamoto’s pandemic was diagnosed with pandemia, the rectum cancer was diagnosed: “From now on I will live side by side with cancer,” he announced. Sakamoto moved away from public life, and in 2022 the disease worsened until the fourth stage. Nevertheless, he began from time to time to conduct instrumental direct broadcasts in the framework of his series “Piano Game”.

"12" is amazingly minimalist in its arrangements. The tracks are entitled and located in the sequence in which they were recorded, which gives the album a sense of diary. Musical fragments mix with space and time. The rhythm of intense breathing remains in many plays, causing in memory the image of Sakamoto sitting behind the keyboard. Sakamoto looks at the inevitability of his own death, reflecting on the legacy that he will leave behind. But instead of mythologizing his life in narrative songs or excessively theatrical ones, he chose a quiet grace, more subtle and restrained than even his softest works. A restrained album talking about a lot.

• Listen to Spotify

• Style: Piano Ambient