Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Even the Forest Hums is a time capsule from a nation with a contested past and an uncertain future. It is a compilation of Ukrainian songs and instrumentals from 1971 to 1996, assembled by Kyiv archival label Shukai Records and US reissue specialist Light in the Attic. The project’s original aim was to cover experimental rock and pop from all parts of the USSR, but the focus narrowed to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022. The result reveals the richness of the music made there in the last decades of Soviet rule and the first years of independence.Recorded live in 1976, Shapoval Sextet’s “Oh, Get Ready, Cossack, There Will Be a March” turns an old Cossack song into a psychedelic jazz-rock jam — using patriotic folk sources was a way of getting around Soviet musical prescriptions. “Dance”, by film soundtrack composer Vadym Khrapachov, has a brooding electronic bassline, made on one of the few western synthesisers in the USSR, but ends with a jolly instrumental coda. Khrapachov composed it for Flights in Dreams and Reality, a lauded 1983 film about a midlife crisis, interpreted as a coded critique of the grey hopelessness of Soviet society.Some tracks seem to have little bearing on the events of their era. Valentina Goncharova’s “Silence”, released in 1989 as the Berlin Wall fell, is poised on the cusp of ancient and modern times with its unearthly electronic noises, delicate percussion and a primitive melody played on a wind instrument. Others make conscious links between old and new, such as a disco version of a folk song called “Play, the Violin, Play”, sung by Tetiana Kocherhina and released in 1990, a year before Ukrainian independence.That particular piece comes across as a curio to my ears, more interesting for what it represents than as a song to return to. But most of the 18 tracks have musical value in their own right. Closing number “Beatrice”, by Lviv-based pianist Ihor Tsymbrovsky, is a standout. Released in 1996, it is an idiosyncratic torch song with reverb-treated piano chords and countertenor singing, at once stylised and emotive.★★★★☆‘Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996’ is released by Light in the Attic/Shukai Records
