Qarpa. inZhYR. /digi-pack/

If you are by chance not in the swim: Qarpa is the very group that was called Faktychno Sami before. This changing of the name is more than logical, because the front-woman of the group – Irena Karpa – has become during the recent few years a real multimedia person. She sings in the group, and professionally writes-publishes prose, and acts as an anchorwomen on TV, and sometimes amuses herself with travel journalism – in short, she manages everything and everywhere. Unambiguously she knows how to be ambiguous. It is difficult to say where from in this fragile girl there is such an enormous amount of kinetic energy – we have nothing but to observe with sincere fascination how the dissected waves fall on the both sides of the selected course... And the course is such that in the last albums – including this, new one – surprised ears of the audience hear more and more banter, quite hard and psychotropic electronic alternative. If you compare that with trip-hop, there is much more of trip (not to mix it up with a tramp or tripper!!) here, than of hop (please, do not mix this up with anything either...). And if you do not compare – that is just powerful and merry, varied and a bit reckless. Not so merry that one would explode – but as in the anecdote, when "no, thanks, it does not hurt – however, only when I laugh". This eccentric, bitterish humor impresses – with the "who cares" and sharp contrasts. In the end, this is bright anti-glamour – at that, almost glamour one. The border is thin – and, actually, the more interesting it is to follow that.

Anton Jozhik Leyba (Hedgehog)