Legends of the 1980s: the Kino group, or the story of how timeless music was born

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

About the phenomenon group "Kino" a lot has been written, music critics are never tired of being surprised that more than 20 years after the group's collapse, it has not lost its popularity. After the tragic death Viktor Tsoi skeptics argued that the film mania epidemic was provoked by this very event, and therefore interest in the group would soon fade away. But the most famous slogan of rock fans of the 1990s is "Choi is alive!" turned out to be prophetic: this music is still relevant today, the songs of the Kino group are performed by new rock idols and amateur musicians. It all started small …

One day in the summer of 1981, members of two Leningrad beat groups "Chamber No. 6" and "Pilgrim" went to the Crimea for a vacation. And there they came up with the idea of creating a common group called "Garin and Hyperboloids". Upon returning to Leningrad, drummer Oleg Valinsky, guitarist Alexei Rybin and bassist and songwriter Viktor Tsoi began rehearsals, but Valinsky was soon drafted into the army, and the trio turned into a duet.

In 1982, the members of the group met Boris Grebenshchikov, who invited them to work together at the studio. This is how the "Kino" group appeared. The name was chosen on the basis of brevity, capacity and "synthetic", that is, artificiality. The prevalence and ease of pronunciation played a much greater role in this than the semantic load.

In the early 1980s. this group could be heard only on apartment buildings, and in 1982 Kino recorded their debut album 45 (it was named for its total duration in minutes). The musicians of the Grebenshchikov group "Aquarium" helped the young group in recording. At the same time, an active concert activity began. In the fall of 1982, the group recorded at the studio of the Maly Drama Theater, but this recording was released only 10 years later under the title "Unknown Songs of Viktor Tsoi."

At the beginning of 1983, Rybin and Tsoi had disagreements: Rybin did not like Tsoi's unconditional leadership, and he, in turn, was dissatisfied with the fact that Rybin performed his songs at home. The leadership ambitions of both band members caused their collaboration to end. Later Rybin performed with the "Football" group, was engaged in producing and even wrote the book "Cinema from the Beginning".

In 1984 Viktor Tsoi was joined by guitarist Yuri Kasparyan, bassist Alexander Titov and drummer Georgy Guryanov. In this line-up, the group recorded the albums "Chief of Kamchatka", "Night" and "This is not love". The popularity of the group grew, the number of concerts increased, and Titov could no longer combine work at Kino and at Aquarium. In his place came the jazz guitarist Igor Tikhomirov, and in this composition the team worked until the very end.

In 1986 "Kino" together with "Aquarium" and "Alice" released a joint split-compilation entitled "Red Wave". This album was smuggled out of the USSR and distributed in California in the amount of 10 thousand copies. This was the first release of Soviet rock music in the West.

But real popularity came to Viktor Tsoi and the Kino group after they starred in Solovyov's film Assa, and then in Nugmanov's Needle. The song "Changes!" became the anthem of the rebellious generation of the late 1980s. In 1897, the album "Blood Type" was released, which critics called the most integral and mature work of "Kino". The group's popularity was also positively affected by the change in image: if earlier lyric songs prevailed in their repertoire, then during this period acute social themes and heroic pathos came to the fore, as well as the rhythmic monotony and laconicism of instrumental parts.

In the late 1980s. the real "cinema mania" began. The group performs not only in the USSR, but also abroad. In 1989, the album "A Star Called Sun" was released, the "Kino" group shot several video clips that were included in the rotation of the country's leading television channels. It would seem that bright prospects await them ahead. At the end of the year, producer Yuri Aizenshpis began to cooperate with them. The group was to become the first Soviet group to enter the international level - concerts were planned in Japan, Europe and the United States.

The recording of the new album was planned in France, but before that, the band members, after their performance at Luzhniki, left for a summer vacation. On August 15, 1990, returning from fishing, Viktor Tsoi crashed in a car accident. His death came as a shock to fans. With the departure of Tsoi, the group virtually ceased to exist, although they completed and released the planned album.

The songs of the "Kino" group remain popular to this day. In 2000, a double tribute album of cover versions of "Kinoproba" performed by famous rock bands was recorded. It was accompanied by large-scale concerts, which were a huge success. In 2010, the festival "20 years without" Kino "was held.

A about the death of Viktor Tsoi different versions and assumptions are still being voiced.