I'm not sure if anyone else here listens to this band, but Kino was a Soviet rock band active from 1981-1990. Coming out of the underground music scene in Leningrad, the band was headed by frontman and lyricist Viktor Tsoi. Notably, it featured Yuri Kasparyan on lead guitar, Alexander Titov on bass, and Georgy Guryanov on drums, with a few other members floating around in between those years. Western Post-Punk and New Wave music highly inspired the band and Tsoi cited the likes of The Smiths, Joy Division, The Cure, and Duran Duran as influences. The band was highly popular with Soviet youth, especially after 1986 when the band put out hits like "Gruppa Krovi" ("Blood Type") and "Khochu peremen!" ("Changement/changes"). The later was seen as an anthem for the late Perestroika period when the Soviet Union was on its deathbed and a new political paradigm seemed inevitable. It has also become a bit of a protest song in Eastern Europe over the years. The band split up in 1990 after Viktor Tsoi died in a car accident, and the impact of his passing and the outpouring of grief that followed was not too dissimilar from the death of Kurt Cobain. There's a popular saying in Russia and Eastern Europe "цой жив" which roughly translates to "Viktor Tsoi lives," a phrase that means while Viktor Tsoi is dead, his music and impact live on.

Probably one of my favorite bands that I discovered over the past few years. They aren't that widely known outside of Russia, although I think they have received more exposure lately due to films like "Leto" and the cult following they have on the internet.

Here are some of my favorite songs from them. There are English lyrics out there if you search for them, but some people have said that even straight translations lose the poetic simplicity Tsoi often conveyed in Russian.

Gruppa Krovi -



Khochu peremen! -



Pesnya Bez Slov ("Song Without Words") -



Кукушка ("Cuckoo") -



Лето ("Summer is ending") -