Kino (band)

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Kino Кино

Background information
Origin	Leningrad, USSR
Genre(s)	Rock, New Wave, Russian rock
Years active	1981–1990
Label(s)	MOROZ Records
Former members
Victor Tsoi (deceased) Yuri Kasparyan Igor Tikhomirov Georgiy Guryanov

Kino (Russian: Кино́, often written uppercase, pronounced key-no') was a Russian rock band headed by Viktor Tsoi. They were one of the most famous Russian rock groups of the 1980s.

The band was formed in the summer of 1981 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) as a punk rock band Garin i giperboloidy (after a novel of Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi Giperboloid inzhenera Garina, published in English as Engineer Garin and His Death Ray) by Tsoi, Aleksei Rybin and Oleg Valinskiy. A year later the name of the band was changed to Kino (Russian for ‘cinema’). Since rock music was considered "anti-Soviet", Kino, like the other rock bands, performed only in semi-underground clubs and at musicians' apartments (so-called kvartirniks).

In the summer of 1982, Kino's first album 45 (according to its length in minutes) was recorded together with the musicians of the band Aquarium. The album was slowly distributed through underground channels and gave an apparent fame to the group.

The bands first real hit was the album Noch (Russian for ‘night’) released in 1986; the six songs from the album were included in the Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands from the USSR compilation disc released in the U.S. in 1986.

Due to the beginning of the Perestroika era the band came out of the underground, and the 1988 album Gruppa krovi (Russian for Blood Type) together with the movie Igla (Russian for The Needle) starring Tsoi brought the band to the pinnacle of popularity.

During the next two years the band released another album and did shows in the USSR and abroad, attracting enormous audiences, until August 15, 1990, when Tsoi died tragically in a car accident near Riga. The tape with the vocal track for the new album survived the accident. The album was completed by the rest of the band and released in 1990 without a title, though it is always cited as Chornyy albom (Russian for The Black Album) since it has a wholly black cover.

Image:VTsoi.jpg

Victor Tsoi‎

The band's popularity in the Soviet Union was so extraordinarily high that after Tsoi's death, the words “Цой жив!” (Russian for Tsoi lives!) and “КИНО” appeared on every imaginable surface throughout the country. Writing these words became a kind of a memorial ritual among the fans of the band. Even today the slogan occasionally surfaces in urban graffiti.

Most Kino songs were written by Viktor Tsoi. Tsoi's lyrics are characterized by a poetic simplicity. The ideas of liberty and democracy were present (one song was named “Anarchy”) but, on the whole, the band's message to the public was not overly politically charged. Simple, yet poetic, thoughts about life, death and love, is what most Kino's songs are about. Daily life is embedded in Kino's vocabulary (for instance, there is a song about elektrichka, a commute train many suburbians use daily).

1 Influences
2 Band members
3 Discography
4 External links

[edit] Influences

The music of Kino has often been compared to contemporary English-language bands such as The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Joy Division. It is likely that these bands were a direct influence on the band. Kino's music also drew heavily on the Russian poetic songwriting tradition of singers such as Vladimir Vysotsky (see Bard).

[edit] Band members

Viktor Tsoi (Виктор Цой) – lead singer and guitarist
Yuri Kasparyan (Юрий Каспарян) – lead guitar
Igor Tikhomirov (Игорь Тихомиров) – bass
Georgiy Guryanov (Георгий Гурьянов) – drums

[edit] Discography

[edit] Studio Albums

1. 45 45 (1982)	2. The Master of Kamchatka *Начальник Камчатки* (1984)	3. This is not Love... *Это не любовь...* (1985)	4. Night *Ночь* (1986)
5. Blood Type *Группа Крови* (1988)	6. A Star Called the Sun *Звезда по имени Солнце* 1989	7. The Black Album *Чёрный Альбом* 1990

[edit] Compilations and Demos

1. The Unknown Songs of Viktor Tsoi *Неизвестные песни Виктора Цоя* (1982)	2. 46 46 (1983)	3. The Last Hero *Последний Герой* (1989)	4. Kino in Film *Кино в кино* (2002)
5. The Story of This World *История Этого Мира* (2002)	6. The Final Recordings *Последние записи* (2002)