Rolling Eastern European Pop 2015

The other thread was becoming impossible to load so i thought i'd do a new rolling one for 2015.

This came out towards the end of 2014 but the 1200 YouTube views suggest its year of impact is still to be determined.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7tbqnpMC4A

K.A.T.Y.A - Videli. Her EP is out this week. Highly enjoyable Ukrainian electro-pop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuAEg28uIME

Dasha Shults - For Him. This is the first professional music video from Dasha Shults (Russia). Her debut album was absolutely wonderful but doesn't seem to have attracted any sort of audience yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XhcJ8UK4SU#t=17

Musya Totibadze - Radio: I don't know much about her, other than the fact she's the daughter of the reasonably successful Georgian painter Kote Totibadze. The song is fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0k837JFS0o#t=74

Katya Pavlova - Zaraman: Pavlova did the vocals for one of my favourite Russian dance-pop alnbums of the last few years - Alpha-Beta's Sbavte Gonor. Her own stuff is quite different but i'd listen to her singing anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXctA2BqF9A

Pussy Riot - I Can't Breathe. A tribute to Eric Garner, it's a departure from their usual sound - which is arguably a blessing. First record in English, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9uyHzH6Z_A#t=84

The new Maks Barskikh video is agreeably silly.

http://i.imgur.com/uMEJF9i.jpg

Maria Peszek will be back at the Scala on the 10th of May. Not sure if i'll be in London but i'd highly recommend seeing her.

Quite an evocative tribute to the Brat films from Pompeya:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzJFNJvL6mg

The song didn't grab me as instantly as 90 but it's growing on me.

Wonderful! Thank you for all this. Love the KATYA and the Pompeya is growing on me, too... Mostly great videos as well.

Lithuania's excellent Alina Orlova unexpectedly released a new album last week. Only live versions available on YoutTube at the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eTTnkDELtE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPX8mjeb-E

Polina Gagarina covering one of my favourite ever songs (Viktor Tsoi's Kukushka) in the manner of a Metallica power ballad isn't necessarily entirely successful but remains quite stirring.

Particularly over Yuliya-Peresild-as-Lyudmila-Pavlichecnko knocking off Nazis (it's from the soundtrack to the new film about the battle of Sevastopol).

Would DJ Rha's "I Was Wrong" be not pop enough or too blatantly political (once you see the video) for this thread?

No, that would fall squarely into the thread. The video is pretty graphic, tho.

Novorossiya seems to be developing an independent pop industry though I would probably take DJ Rha over nationalist ballads:

http://youtu.be/EvVjM9HblXE

Yeah, I'm a sympathizer, but the few Novorossiyan nationalist ballads (at least guessing from the accompanying videos) that I've seen have been a bit much. (Anyway, going to try not to turn a thread started by someone else into a political clusterfuck.)

Here's the DJ Rha video, and it is fairly graphic, although a lot of the worst parts have been fuzzed out visually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ClNjnfoD94

(Well I guess that itself is pretty graphic, but different from the gore that was obscured in some of the other clips.)

If you can look past the fact that this is a middle-aged white guy with dreads making reggae-tinged pop, Mama by Burito is pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4FvARQkhV8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJjjzarKotI

Psyched for the Alexandra Stan / Inna joint album, obviously. The lead single isn't amazing but has grown on me a lot.

Kasia Nosowska's band, Hey, is playing at The Scala in October.

http://scala.co.uk/events/hey-2/

The new Corina video is a low-rent rip of All Hands On Deck but the song is kind of great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpCVIkrhpiU

This year's Nyusha single is perfectly fine (to a non-Russian speaker), and I like the idea of Bollywood/Moscow house crossover (fan vid, I think):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUJ-rc5hhuk

Yes, it's excellent. She released the teaser trailer around a week ago but the official video is still pending.

Created a Spotify list for this thread but can't find most of the music... have made the list collaborative, so feel free to add songs I can't find with my non-cyrillic keyboard

ILX's Rolling Eastern European Pop 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

Sweet. Thanks!

I'm looking forward to the Kazakh rapper Skriptonit releasing a double-album later this year. Stil' and Kosmos (with Dasha Charusha) have been very good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx_n4iha3u4

Eto by Dinama is really fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWmhSbnayxc

There was a piece in The Guardian this week about Russian rappers increasingly using Soviet-era samples in their music with particular reference to this Timati / L'One track:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/29/russias-musical-new-wave-embraces-soviet-chic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP6lcaNVP7U

From the same label - Black Star - one of the biggest hits of the year has been MC Doni's Ti Takoi which doesn't go back as far but definitely takes inspiration from 90s-era Russian dance pop (and features Natali):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fix7P6aGXQ

Natan's Derzkaya has an interesting Kavkaz influence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPlhX6kcPC8

Naucz Mnie by Sarsa has been No.1 in Poland for the last seven weeks. idk, it has taken a while but it's growing on me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Qdu0jkihU

I prefer Natalia Nykiel's Bądź Duży, though. Good video too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0h_EhCnDpI

I'm convinced that Elena Gheorghe will remain one of the world's great pop stars however ludicrous the singles get:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQPCWp2A_Rk

There's probably a semi-interesting article to be written about Romanian stars borrowing heavily from Spanish and Italian culture both as a claim to the legacy of classic 90s holiday hits and in the context of the broader re-framing of projected national identity in the former Eastern bloc but i don't have the energy to do it.

Carla's Dreams fr Delia have the biggest hit in Romania at the moment with Cum Ne Noi and it's rather sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8-g8CpXdO8

I'm always impressed when a video in Romanian can rack up more YouTube hits than the number of people who can speak Romanian.

This is probably the best thing Anna Sedokova has done since leaving VIA Gra about ten years ago, which isn't necessarily high praise in itself. She's one of the region's great pop stars but hasn't been particularly well served by her material since going solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmSvEaiaxBM

The video has a Miles Aldridge / Guy Bourdin kind of vibe.

On the off chance anyone was wondering what Yulia from Tatu is up to these days, it's making mildly NSFW videos in aid of breast cancer awareness with the cast of Dancing With The Stars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovt8m3BbHyQ

The new Pasha Parfeny video is mildly charming if you can tolerate ukuleles. He was Moldova's Eurovison entry in 2012 and represented them as part of Sunstroke Project prior to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB6LcMMX47Y

The new Ira Levitskaya video is filling the void in my life caused by the absence of Verka Serduchka:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdOdCDFa1GY&feature=youtu.be

Lovely comeback single from Serebro, with an unsettling video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=114&v=IDixJgx8my4

Vremya I Steklo's Imya 505 has been one of the big Ukrainian hits of the summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=46&v=n3Go8ub9a1k

or rather:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDixJgx8my4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Go8ub9a1k

Alan Badoev seems to direct videos at the rate of about three a week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QresVuyw4Gk

I've liked everything Max Barskikh has done this year and HLOP, HLOP, HLOP is no exception. Badoev's other recent one is Natalya Mogilevskaya's fun Khudet'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbD-uLzAgqw

The 'ethnic banter' quotient is pretty high in the new Timati video but the song continues his very good streak. Giving up weak attempts to copy US rappers and buying in lazy guest appearances from international names is the best thing he ever did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP5Br2WUBNs

His label, Black Star, has been on a roll too. Yegor Krid's excellent Nevesta has been one of the biggest singles of the year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg3gwyoUrhE

The 'national' hip-hop trend has spread westwards with Badya and Svist's tribute to Belarus. It's no I LOVE BELARUS! but it's quite sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba32IyTwZDc

Drilling down to a niche within a niche within a niche, i've been listening to a lot of MC Anyuta recently. She has countless videos of downbeat semi-experimental Ukrainian hip-hop with out-of-time rapping and off-key singing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV5oAgng91I

The Sarsa Markiewicz album is solid - Indiana reminds me a bit of early, post-Pop-Idol Monika Brodka.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtw7jUBX_ys

I really love the Natalia Nykiel album Lupus Electro, which came out towards the end of last year. Zagadka Pawiego Wzoru, in particular, is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuFIl79rLXU

This is a quick, third-quarter reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and/or an album selection from each listed) are being updated to the thread-specific Spotify playlist as posted. I just did another top-to-bottom sweep prior to posting this message and have revised as of today with everything that's been added since first mentioned. Subscribe if you're into it!

It's 28 tracks and over an hour long.

Rolling Eastern European Pop 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

(also, that Natalia Nykiel track is dope as hell)

I'm wrapping this playlist for the year. If I missed something or if a track comes available sometime in the future, bump here to let me know and I'll add.

Rolling Eastern European Pop 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

A new thread will appear in due course but these from 2015 are good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGQLSObiTEQ

Christina Solovii - Trimai (melancholy folk-pop with a sweet video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONI5ALInQYQ

Antokha MC - Provoda (DIY electro-pop)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW7Jz0twIoo&index=25&list=WL

Ne Tvoe Delo - Lozh' (kind of darkwave i guess)

I'll just post my favorite Turkish 2015 single here.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjVl8a9gR20";>Ece Seçkin - Aman Aman</a>