Black Album (Kino album)
The untitled album (known colloquially as the Black Album (Russian: Чёрный альбом, romanized: Chorny albom), and sometimes just named Kino) is the eighth and final studio album of the Soviet rock group Kino. It was released in December 1990 by Metadigital on vinyl. The rough demo version was recorded in the Latvian village Plieņciems shortly before the death of the frontman Viktor Tsoi in a car crash. The remaining members of Kino completed the album as a tribute to Tsoi.
| Untitled | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | December 1990 | |||
| Recorded |
| |||
| Studio | Guest house in Plieņciems, Latvia (demo) | |||
| Genre | Pop,alternative rock, indie rock, folk rock, New wave, post-punk | |||
| Length | 48:08 | |||
| Label | Metadigital Moroz Records (1999 remaster) Maschina Records | |||
| Producer | Yury Kasparyan Igor Tikhomirov | |||
| Kino chronology | ||||
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The album's producer Yuri Aizenshpis said that the demo tape survived inside Tsoi's car when he crashed fatally, however the band's guitarist, Yuri Kasparyan, has disputed this and stated that it was in his own car and not Tsoi's.
The song "Cuckoo" ("Кукушка") is considered by many fans to be an unwitting swan song for the band. The song's themes range from mortality to existential guilt. It became one of the band's most well-known songs.
It was originally released on vinyl by the studio Metadigital in December 1990. On this original vinyl issue, no track names were given, just the text Producer: Yu. Aizenshpis and a photo of the band. A lyric sheet was included, but the songs were just titled 1 to 8. The track names were revealed on the 1994 CD reissue on Moroz. In 2021, the original album was remastered and reissued by Maschina Records; Yuri Kasparyan, Igor Tikhomirov, and Viktor Tsoi's son, Alexander, were involved in the production and approval process.