Story
Akkad is a band from Bar, a small town in the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine. In 2006 five boys recorded twelve songs, handed them out on CDs and posted them on forums, but the songs were never officially released. This is the story of one album that waited twenty years.
A small town where everyone knows everyone, and a house of culture that brought them all together.
At first there were four of them: Oleh Pylypenko, Yevhen Valchuk, Andrii Kytsiuk and Taras Shevchuk. It was not a real band yet. They tried and they learned, and month by month what they played sounded less and less like noise.
Then Andrii and Taras stopped playing. The others carried on, but the line-up changed: Oleksandr Diedov came, then Taras Shcherba, and later Ruslan Kirpa.
Oleksandr arranged the hall at the house of culture. The boys got permission, and at the time that was the most anyone could dream of.
Oleh was sixteen. Everything on this album was written by him between the ages of sixteen and eighteen.
Their first show was in Tulchyn. They were very nervous, but it went well. The second show was already Kyiv: 17 May 2006, the Barvy club.
They began recording the album in 2005 at Air Force Studio and finished in early 2006. Dmytro Zaichuk recorded and mixed it. Roman Somyk played the violin on «Tudy de...». By the time the boys were touring festivals, the album already existed: they gave the CDs away, and that is how people got to know them.
The first festival was Chervona Ruta in Vinnytsia. Fourth place. After that, everything else began.
On 23 May 2006 pearl.com.ua published the list of those who had passed the audio selection for Perlyny Sezonu. Akkad was on it. 11 June: Kyiv, the Bochka club, live auditions from ten in the morning until six in the evening. Three hundred demos sent in, forty bands admitted. Bar among them.
24 June, Maidan Nezalezhnosti, seven in the evening. A festival concert for Youth Day. On the bill that night: Mandry, Skriabin, and the presentation of the Perlyny Sezonu line-up.
They were very young, and this was the main square of the country. They were proud of it. And the whole town was proud of them.
Before going on stage, Oleh, the singer, went up to Kuzma for a photo. They exchanged a few words, and Kuzma told him not to worry.
That same June, the jury of the Kyiv selection round of the Taras Bulba festival picked fourteen bands out of more than thirty. Akkad was eighth on the list. The final in Dubno fell on the very same days as Perlyny Sezonu in Zaporizhzhia, and the boys chose Perlyny.
«We got through to the final of the Taras Bulba festival in Dubno, Rivne region. But since it was also held on 14–16 July, we chose Perlyny Sezonu after all.»
July was Zaporizhzhia, the Raiduha cascade of fountains, three days in a row. Maria Burmaka closed the first night, Foma the second, Tartak played the gala concert. Sashko Polozhynskyi handed out the award.
August: Krolevets in the Sumy region, the first all-Ukrainian Pro Rock festival in the town park. Second day, fourth slot in the programme, a Radio ROKS banner behind them. No prizes there, the bands simply played.
«Akkad, with their lyrics and the piercing voice of the singer, scraped at the soul of every listener.»
1–3 September: Lutsk, the international UP fest. Three days. They played strong.
13 October: Rivne, the Gavana club.
Akkad's last live show was at the Nivroku festival in Ternopil, 14–15 October 2006. Nobody announced it was the last. After it, everyone simply went their own way, and the recordings stayed where they had been made.
They lay there for twenty years.
Then a post appeared on Threads. It was written not by anyone from the band but by a stranger who had stumbled upon this music. More than a hundred replies gathered under it: people wrote about Sertse Dzhennifer and remembered Akkad.
Oleh was working on a Sertse Dzhennifer album at the time. Reading those replies, he decided to first do what the band never did back then: release the Akkad album. Only later came the idea to rebuild these songs in a new way.
These songs were never officially released. Now they are. Enjoy.
