FRANCO (Ukrainian band)

FRANCO is a Ukrainian rock band formed in late 2011 in Kyiv. Their music style is melancholic rock and electronic music with emotional vocals. The songs are about love and loneliness.
FRANCO's music crosses genre boundaries, combining various styles and sound palettes. It reflects a wide range of emotions - from tenderness and melancholy to energy and power. The lyrics skilfully penetrate the depths of human experience, raising questions about life, love, self-identity and the place of human in the world.
==History==
===Formation and name===
The band was founded by Valentyn Fedyshen in December 2011 at one of the rehearsal bases in Kyiv, near the Lisova metro station. At the end of January 2019, on the air of the radio show "Neprobudni" on the radio station "UA: Radio Promin", Valentyn noted that the name "FRANCO" was invented by chance, as a beautiful word and does not carry any hidden meaning.
===History===
The band's first performance took place on 8 March 2012 at the Barvy club in Kyiv. And the first recording, the single Tanho ("Tango"), was released only in early 2014. At that time, FRANCO considered themselves to be an indie rock band and used a classic line-up: guitars, drums and keyboards. This lasted until the end of 2015, when Valentyn Fedyshen completely changed the band's concept and reset the line-up. From then on, it was exclusively session musicians and drum machines. This period of FRANCO was filmed at a live performance at the SoundPlant studio in 2016.
On 14 February 2017, on Valentine's Day, the band released their debut album Tuneli ("Tunnels"), recorded together with Anton Blashchuk, co-founder of the Kyiv-based SoundPlant studio. It was with this release that the band's experiments with electronic sound began.
One of the highlights was the arrival of a guitarist, Yehor Lytvynenko. The band now has two musicians, and a drummer and a bassist have been added to the line-up. In the summer of 2017, Valentyn and Yehor started recording new material, and in the autumn they presented an emotional video live session of 4 songs at the ШООМ studio in Kyiv.
2018 proved to be a fruitful year for the band - they performed at several festivals, including MRPL City and Woodstock Ukraine, and in October presented the video "Tremor" (directed by Viktor Pryduvalov) and the album of the same name in November.
In 2019, FRANCO filmed another session from the studio, where they performed 3 songs - "Rysovi polya" ("Rice Fields"), "Nich i vyno" ("Night and Wine") and "Tvoyi pravyla" ("Your Rules"). The band also announced performances at the BarRockCo'19 festival in July and at Khortytsia Freedom in September.
A concert presentation of the new album was scheduled for 20 March 2020. Due to quarantine measures in Ukraine, the performance was cancelled.
On 4 March 2021, the band presented the video for the single Masha. On 14 June 2021, the band released the EP Live 2020 on music streaming services, which consists of 4 new songs recorded live in December 2020 at the Kaska studio in Kyiv. On 7 August, the band performed at the MRPL City festival in Mariupol.
In May 2022, FRANCO released the mini-album Dodomu ("Home"), and in December of the same year - a video with a cover version of the song "Zoryana Osin" by Vopli Vidoplyasova. The song features the bandura for the first time, played by the band's bassist Stanislav Dyachenko, and additional vocal parts are performed by the Spivochi Babusi (Singing Grandmas) ensemble from Novodnistrovsk.
==Band members==
Current members
*Valentyn Fedyshen – vocals, keyboards, lyrics, music (2011–present)
*Stanislav Dyachenko – bass, bandura (2021–present)
Former members
*Yehor Lytvynenko - guitar, keyboards (2017-2021)
*Illya Sydorenko - guitar (2011-2015)
*Varvara Zyuz - bass (2011-2015)
*Ihor Trush - drums (2012-2015)
*Rostislav Syotka - drums (2011-2012, 2016)
Session members
*Volodymyr Gusev — guitar (2016—2017)
*Oleksandr Seleznev - drums (2018—2020)
*Anton Blaschuk — bass (2018—2019)
*Ivan Kornienko - drums (2019)
*Stanislav Dyachenko - bass (2019-2020)
==Discography==
Studio albums
*2017 - Tuneli ("Tunnels")
*2018 - Tremor
EP
*2015 - E.P. 2015
*2017 - Tuneli (Remix) ("Tunnels (Remix)")
*2021 - Live 2020
*2022 - Dodomu ("Home")
Singles
*2014 - Tanho ("Tango")
*2015 - Regina
*2016 - Spyrt ("Alcohol")
*2016 - Ptakhy ("Birds")
*2016 - Holova chy sertse ("Head or Heart")
*2017 - Ty v meni ("You are in Me")
*2018 - Tremor
*2021 - Masha
Demo albums
*2013 - Merkuriy ("Mercury")
Category:Rock music groups
Category:Musical groups from Kyiv
Category:Ukrainian rock music groups
Category:Musical groups established in 2011