Black Album (Kino album)


The eighth and final studio album of the Soviet rock group Kino was released in December 1990 by Metadigital on vinyl, without a title. It has become known colloquially as the Black Album, and sometimes just Kino. The rough demo version was recorded in the Latvian village Plieņciems and according to the guitarist of the group Yuri Kasparyan, finished on the 14th of August that yearthe day 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.
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. It was later revealed in a Russian forum that there were 2 copies of the demo, and the surviving tape from Tsoi's car were later used for release by Maschina Records in 2021, an Estonian-based label.
The song "Cuckoo" 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: Yuri 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 by Moroz. In 2021, the original album was remastered and reissued by Maschina Records; Yuri Kasparyan,, and Viktor Tsoi's son, Alexander, were involved in the production and approval process.

Track listing

Tracks 9 and 10 were added to the 1996 remaster by Moroz Records. As stated above, the tracks did not have names until 1994, so fans made up their own names for these songs.

Personnel