It's a matter of hats: The Hatters are blindfolded, Alice Cooper is Reborn

Alice Cooper is reviving her band 50 years after disbanding, Kanye West is releasing a new version of the controversial album, and The Hatters are playing the lab. In the midst of the holiday season, the music industry doesn't even think about slowing down. Moreover, the stylistic range of high-profile novelties is the widest: from rock and rap to avant-garde. Izvestia chose the best.

The Revenge of Alice Cooper

The real rock industry event is the Alice Cooper band reunion. 50 years ago, the band created by Alice Cooper broke up. The soloist began his solo career and became a true legend of heavy music. His comrades, however, also turned out to be notable figures, although they did not surpass the leader in fame and status — for the general public they remained Alice Cooper participants.

Unsurprisingly, thoughts of a reunion have surfaced more than once since then. Unfortunately, guitarist Glen Buxton, the author of the classic School's Out riff, passed away in 1997, but the rest of the founding fathers maintained a good creative form and performed together several times, and also appeared as guest artists on Cooper's own recordings. However, the fans, of course, were waiting for a full—fledged studio reunion under the band's name - and now the time has come for it.

The album with the simple title The Revenge of Alice Cooper will be released on July 25 and will contain 14 main numbers plus two bonus tracks, including Return of the Spiders 2025, which is a remix of a song from the album Easy Action (1970). It's a tribute to Buxton, as is What Happened to You, built on a riff from an old demo tape. There is another surprise: on Black Mamba's first album single, the great Robby Krieger from The Doors performs the lead guitar part. In general, for rock lovers of the 1970s, the new CD should become a kind of time machine. And even if the participants in the recording are between 77 and 79 years old, I want to believe that they are still young in music.

Kanye West — Bully

In recent months, the flow of trash news from Kanye West has subsided — or maybe no one is paying attention to them anymore. Well, really, what else would he shock the audience with? Confessions of sympathy for Hitler and demonstrations of banned Nazi symbols? It was. The naked exits of his wife Bianca, with whom he is either divorcing or not? Everyone has already lost count of such stories. The saddest thing is that the endless media noise drowns out the creativity of a crazy, but still talented artist, and all this is perceived as something background.

So the Bully album, the early versions of which Kanye posted on social media in March, was practically lost in the information field — there is no comparison with the hype around Donda and even Vultures, which marked West's return "to the big game" after the first wave of "cancellation". But true to his specific approach to work, Ye continued to finish the record, and the final version of Bully should appear on streaming this month. It will feature songs that were not included in the March sets, and well-known tracks will have a different sound. However, the spirit of the record as a whole is unlikely to undergo major changes: Bully remains primarily a soul record, with lots of samples from the 70s and a generous autotune, as on Kanye's triumphant 2008 recording 808s & Heartbreak. But it's all the more interesting to hear all the material brought to mind. Even if its creator has lost or lost his mind.

The Hatters — "Blindfolding"

The Hatters band seems to have finally switched to singles instead of longplays. Since 2023, after the release of the extended version of "I Love You as I Go", Yura Muzychenko and his comrades have not pleased the public with full-length releases. But their singles are pouring out like a cornucopia. In just less than 2025, the Hatters released seven tracks on streaming platforms.

Interestingly, the design of the covers for those releases that do not relate to films or other special projects is almost the same.: boxes with toys that look very similar to the lab. Maybe this is a hint that they will eventually come together in an album? We'll see. In the meantime, we're listening to the latest of the tracks: "Blindfolded." The beauty of it lies in its paradoxical and allegorical nature. "Can you blindfold me?" / I'll see the light anyway," Muzychenko sings against the background of an elastic bass guitar riff. And it remains to be seen whether we are talking about censorship, optimism in difficult times, or something else. Well, I wonder why the track is named with the phrase "Blindfolding", and not the "I see the light" repeated in the chorus.

Music is even more confusing than poetry. And it's a bouncy alternative rock with grunge vocals and a lyrical accordion that is so unexpected in this context (although expected in The Hatters' songs). But if there is a signature irony of the "hatters" here, it is well hidden. And the main motif may well turn into a stadium chant, which, presumably, will sound much more life-affirming than the song itself.

Three degrees of freedom. Music > Cinema > USSR. Alexander Kneifel

Oleg Nesterov, known to rock lovers as the soloist and leader of Megapolis, has been stubbornly pursuing his ascetic project "Three Degrees of Freedom. Music > Cinema > USSR". As part of it, he brings the film music of Soviet composers back to life, who are both bright figures of the avant-garde: he releases digital releases and vinyl records with original recordings, publishes books with texts by the musicians themselves, their associates and colleagues, and uploads materials online. First there was Alfred Schnittke, then Oleg Karavaichuk, now it's time for Alexander Kneifel.

He is perhaps the least "media-minded" figure (although this word is not very appropriate for all of Nesterov's characters) and has neither hit films like Schnittke nor the aura of a crazy genius and urban legend like Karavaichuk in his arsenal. And I can't even call him a classic — after all, it's only been a year since he passed away, and he still doesn't seem to be a classic, but our contemporary.

He has always stood apart and, perhaps, therefore, did not fall under any convenient definition. A minimalist? It seems so, but it seems not quite. The author of sacred music? Perhaps, but not only; and, most importantly, this is some kind of unique view of religion. So his movie stories are just as strange, individual, and clearly outgrowing the films they were created for. Having collected compositions from almost all the tapes of the 1970s and early 1990s, to which Kneifel wrote music, Nesterov shows this side of his work not at all as applied, but as not inferior in experimentation to academic compositions. The digital album was released at the end of June, with a vinyl record ahead. Well, on July 12, Nesterov will arrange a multimedia concert with spatial sound "Alexander Kneifel. The Orchestra of Loudspeakers" on the New stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater.

Izvestia Playlist

We traditionally include in our playlist both the songs mentioned in the review and those that, for one reason or another, were not included in it, but deserve your attention. In this case, it's a version of the Bashkir hit Homay, sung by the folk band Ay Yola with Dima Bilan. This unexpected collaboration happened at a music award ceremony, and recently a studio version appeared on streaming services. Another fresh track, not mentioned above, is another single by Burito, which stubbornly adheres to its concept of a monthly release of three mini—albums. Well, how not to combine D. Bilan and B. Dylan in one compilation: the cover version of the immortal Knockin' On Heaven's Door in the new instrumental version of Peaceful Melody sounds especially peaceful.

Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»

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