Recently, completely by accident, I came across a cover of “April” by Kino. It hit me so hard that I put it right up there with the original. I decided to share it with my wife—and that’s when I found out she doesn’t even know the song at all. Which, honestly, stabbed me straight in the heart. I genuinely have no idea how we managed to live together for 23 years if she knows Kino’s music that poorly.
As for me, I’ve been a longtime fan of the band. I remember laughing back in fourth grade during music class at a classmate who asked me whether I listened to “movie.” (In Russian, ‘Kino’ means ‘movie’). Yes, that’s exactly how I heard it. I even thought it was a funny idea—listening to movies. And I actually followed through: I bought a couple of reels and recorded all three episodes of my favorite film at the time, D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, off the TV—because I could listen to the songs from it over and over.
But back then I forgot about the band Kino. I discovered it and fell in love with it a few years later—right after I stopped being a diehard fan of another legendary group, Laskovyi Mai (or groups, really, since there were like ten different lineups touring the USSR). Yes—straight from Laskovyi Mai to rock. And like with a lot of things I did, I went all in.
And “April” is one of those songs I loved then, and still love to this day.
So anyway, I got completely hooked on a cover performed by Darya Chebotareva and The Rigans Band. Musically, the arrangement stays very close to the original, though it sounds more modern. And the female vocal here turned out to be more than solid:
After that I decided to see who else had covered this song, and how. Turns out there are quite a lot of covers (which is exactly what you’d expect—Viktor Tsoi is a legend of Russian rock). There are plenty of amateur ones, and some decent reinterpretations too. But besides the Darya Chebotareva version above, I found a few more interesting takes that I also wanted to share.
Trio DEEPFOLK performed it with a departure from the original arrangement, but with three-part harmonies from three female voices:
At first I wanted to file the version by Alisa Supronova from Saint Petersburg under “good amateur covers” and not include it here, but then I listened again and changed my mind. Yes, there isn’t much that’s distinctly her own here (as it seems to me), but I really liked the voice of this 18-year-old (at the time) girl:
And next come some, in my opinion, more unexpected variations.
The version by the band Aryavata felt more odd to me. But that’s probably because they decided to step a bit away from both the arrangement and even the original vocal melody. I usually like that less in covers, but the song sounds at least interesting in this interpretation:
What surprised me was realizing that Kino’s music is already being performed even by children’s choirs. In 2017, a children’s choir in Tiraspol performed “April” at a concert dedicated to the 55th anniversary of Viktor Tsoi’s birth. I won’t say this version has the same power as the original—or as the first cover on my list—but I couldn’t pass up choral singing (apparently my experience as the only boy in a children’s school choir still hasn’t let go of me):
And lastly, a completely unexpected version: “April” in German, performed by Polina Polyakova. I definitely won’t be able to sing along with that one, but in German the song sounds mesmerizing—it takes on a whole new shade:
That’s it for now. I might continue this as a recurring feature in the future.
