#naviband — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

NaviBand – Iliuminacyja (Иллюминация) (2017, Belarus)

As randomly chosen by survey* on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 959 on The List, submitted by lauhazn.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this album and band, given that the majority of the English Wikipedia article on them is about Eurovision, and most of what I know about Eurovision is ABBA-adjacent. All apologies – I’m not sure if it’s because I’m from Canada, but I don’t get the hype about Eurovision, and I sort of just zone out as soon as it’s mentioned…and, well, I maybe sorta kinda employ some filters when all y’all are live tooting about it on Mastodon. Mea culpa.

So, yes, NaviBand began to gain a fan base when auditioning to represent their home country of Belarus for Eurovision between 2014 and 2016, and then really shot to fame (both in Belarus and Ukraine) when they won that place for the 2017 contest, just after this album, Иллюминация, came out. Since then, the band has used their Eurovision attention for good, writing protest songs and getting involved in social activism particularly around the 2020 Belarusian protests. Potentially due to that, the band has since relocated to Poland, though I believe their albums continue to be in the Belarusian language.

Anyway, I enjoyed this one, despite my original misgivings with the Eurovision context! It reminds me – not of ABBA (even though the main duo is married, the other members might be too for all I know…)! – but a tiny bit of Of Monsters and Men. So, if you’re a fan of that uplifting indie folk/pop sort of sound, give this one a spin, and then perhaps check out their other albums on Bandcamp.

Songlink: NaviBand – Иллюминация
Songlink: NaviBand – Иллюминация
Discogs: NaviBand – Иллюминация
Bandcamp: NaviBand (note: doesn’t include this album)

*The survey choices that initially led to this spotlight were “White on white”, “translucent black capes”, “Back on the rack”, and “Bela Lugosi’s dead”. The last option was the winning selection (not surprising as the survey was posted on Halloween), and the survey result was translated as picking the album in The List that contained a word in the phrase – in this case, “Bela”, as contained in the country name Belarus.

#1001OtherAlbums #2010s #Belarus #indieFolk #indiePop #ListenToThis #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #NaviBand