#258
Kino is often mentioned as the most prominent rock group of the Soviet Union. I hadn’t really listened to them until recently, when I realised how much they get compared to The Cure. They were part of an underground scene mostly based in then-Leningrad, where post-punk was very popular and groups like Depeche Mode were obsessed over.
The band’s singer and songwriter Viktor Tsoi is the main reason for their fame, especially since he passed away at early age in 1990 and never even got to experience the fall of communism. Although never overtly political, Kino’s music was the soundtrack of young people’s dream of the more liberal West.
Kino released many albums, but most of them were only released on reel-to-reel tape by ‘labels’ like Yanshiva Studio and AnTrop. In fact there was only one legal record label, which was the state’s own Melodiya. In 1988 Melodiya finally gave up and reissued the 1986 album Noch, due to the group’s undeniable popularity.
Tsoi originally started Kino as a duo, with heavy influences from David Bowie. It wasn’t until 1983 that they became a full band, with just Tsoi remaining from the original version. He had narrowly managed to escape being drafted by feigning mental illness. This and the fact that he was half Korean probably says more about how he felt about politics, despite the universality of his lyrics.
Sadly, this has also resulted in the surviving members of the band, who still tour and release re-recordings of his songs, to refrain from taking a standpoint. For this reason, their music is currently co-opted by both patriots and the opposition – which makes it very problematic for me. But since Kino (in the original sense) split up in 1990, it could also be argued that it’s irrelevant.
In 2020, the reissue label Maschina put out a record called Любовь — это не шутка, named after Kino’s perhaps best song ”Love Is Not a Joke”. The album was recorded in 1986 but never released, although several songs appeared on other albums. ”Love Is Not a Joke” didn’t however.
In the US and Europe, people first got to hear 6 songs by Kino in 1986, when the compilation Red Wave: 4 Underground Bands From the USSR was released on Big Time, thanks to Joanna Stingray. The compilation became a phenomenon in the West with musicians like The Talking Heads and David Bowie having heard it. Joanna Stingray also released an English version of ”Love Is Not a Joke”.
