Neue Welt - Spánek ti bude peřinou (2025)

Before attending a festival, I have a habit of listening to each and every artist performing there not to miss anything interesting. And this brings sometimes fantastic results as has been the case of the Praha-based band I discovered before this year's Pohoda Festival. I can't wait to hear their artsy noise rock live!

The band makes me think of this year's comeback made by the French band Kwoon. Similar vibes when it comes to the artsy approach to rock that meets incredible noise where necessary. Also the instruments feel familiar: not everything is done by the guitars here. Quite the opposite, the big role is played by violins and piano keys that both add up to the incredible atmosphere of the new release. There are segments that feel like instrumental ambient, some other even almost like a big band meeting dark jazz. But most of the time, the Czechs focus on their beautifully weird art rock meets folk meets post-rock compositions.

I love every aspect of the album. The louder parts feel euphoric, the slower feel artsy, the ones with vocals are melodic and captivating. I genuinely feel like I discovered a hidden gem just outside of my country's borders. And as already mentioned, soon I'm gonna see the band live at Pohoda. If I survive til the middle of the night that is.

Spánek ti bude peřinou costs 7 EUR.

Check: Kdybych brečet mohl

Country: Czechia

Genre: noisy art-rock

Label: 6000 Ωveček

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Favorite Obsession - Bliss (2025)

Four years after their debut EP and only a month or so after their live appearance at Kraków's Shoefest, the young Czech band Favorite Obsession released their first ever full-length album entitled in the most shoegaze way possible. Bliss makes a promising debut with a number of melodies that are as catchy as one would like.

Recorded "in-between line-up changes, mental breakdowns and gender changes", the album presents a case study of indie rock music with a heavy influence from shoegaze and dream pop genres. There is a healthy dose of noise in this material (which was especially noticeable live!), but it's more about melodies, the fun from singing them aloud, the energy coming from the stage. At least in most of the songs because (Inside) I Bloom makes a beautiful, very intimate and emotional (just take a look at the lyrics, the song starts with "20 year old crisis/6 strings are helping me survive") ballad to provide some balance.

There is something weird going on in Taxi Driver and I can only assume that it's a way to stress that (Inside)... is such an important part of the album. If this is true, I'd make the silence shorter. Because it's not the end of the release! Of the engaging, catchy and very emotional release to be truthful.

Bliss costs 7.5 EUR (180 CZK).

Check: (Inside) I Bloom

Country: Czechia

Genre: noisy indie rock

Label: Golden Hive Studios

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Toothwalker - Reboot, Reinvent (2022)

Three musicians out of Prague make up Toothwalker, a band devoted to "combining a post-rock atmosphere with heavy riffs and modern electronica". Three years after their debut EP, they showcase their music on another one called Reboot, Reinvent.

The album is said to represent "an essence of [their] emotions from the past two years including the dark pandemic times" and is inspired by the nature of Czech Republic, the calmness and sanctuary it provides for people. And so the EP starts accordingly calmly, as if aiming to inject this natural peace into the audience with the beautiful and silent guitar sounds. However, as could be expected, the calmness lasts only about half of the first song when the guitar heaviness starts to take over. It feels heavy and smooth in the pretty atmospheric way. BURST, however, adds some of the riff-based heavy metal madness to the whole thing and it is surprisingly (for me) extremely attractive. Especially that it's balanced with ethereal backgrounds. I like how much unpredictability there is in the Czechs' music and how it still retains the atmospheric-building characteristics.

Reboot, Reinvent costs 2.99 EUR.

Check: BURST

Country: Czech Republic

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Ai fen - Daily Grief (2022)

Ai fen, also known as Ewelina Chiu, is a Polish-Chinese artist who is already quite recognizable here. She recently released her second album and while I used to associate her with modern experimental pop music, Daily Grief shows more of her airy and ethereal side.

While in general Ai fen is still all about the new, avant-garde approach to pop music, the pop that is everything but simple and boring, I find some elements from dream pop music particularly touching here. It's mostly about the artist's vocals, very often dispersed and whisper-like, contrasted with minimal bass lines, deconstructed club elements and extremely subtle electronica. In other places, they remind me of the glitch princess Yeule herself or the ambient pop dark eminency Nicole Dollanganger (like in The Muse) with their hinted emotional layers. While the nature of the vocals changes from track to track, the experimenting and fresh electronic music stays at the same, intriguing level.

The album was written under the influence of the pandemics and its regular negative impact on people's life, and is meant to cope with "grief beyond the general understanding as a reaction to a life shattering event", something we all have to deal with in those uncertain times. It comes as no surprise then, that the pinnacle of the album comes in COVID Techno, the only track here dominated by the dark disco vibes.

Daily Grief costs 6.5 EUR (150 CZK).

Check: Can You Believe?

Country: Poland/China/Czech Republic

Genre: dreamy avant-pop

Label: Tender Matter

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WatchCamp November-December '21 with Ai fen, Pierre Andersson Ek, Avalon Skies, Hiroe, Sweet Sore

Ai fen - Can You Believe?

The Polish-Chinese Czech Republic-based artist is already fairly known in the offstream environment here. This time, she comes back with a new single that showcases her airy but also very much experimental electronic pop with outstanding vocals. The single costs 1 EUR (20 CZK).

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Pierre Andersson Ek - Vår värld

The "artist and neighborhood rascal" from the southern part of Sweden creates nugaze music that can be carefully compared to the icons such as Nothing or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart; his music consists of loud and noisy guitars (with such a good quality to them!) and melodic, soft vocals; I love it. Two tracks cost 6 EUR (56 SEK).

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Avalon Skies - Wanderer's Dream

Antti Pihlajaniemi creates "electronic yet organic, earthly yet otherworldly music" which translates to a blend of electronica and minimal dark folk with very dark and airy atmosphere, sounding very Finnish-like really. The original version includes a metal-like voice in spoken word parts, but, to be honest, I prefer the second, instrumental version. The two versions cost 2 EUR.

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Hiroe - demos

The Philadelphia-based fresh post-rock band released their demos, and while I'm usually very hesitant towards demo material, this time it absolutely rocks. Two tracks present so much good quality guitar-based instrumental music that I can't wait to hear some more from the Americans. The album costs 7 USD.

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Sweet Sore - Resonance

The South African artist Justin Mitchell has been releasing singles and short albums for several years now. His new single presents a moody bedroom dream pop with barely audible vocals and a lot of background drones. The single with a short intro costs whatever you want to pay.

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Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi - Melodies in the Sand (2021)

Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi (or The Havels for the English-speaking audience) is a duo from Czech Republic that's together on the stage for over 30 years now (or even more as they were part of a band called Capella Antiqua e Moderna). It seems that their last album is an already a decade-old Tuláci V Zrcadlovém Sále so it's a good opportunity to refresh their works with this collection of songs taken from various part of the duo's career, called Melodies in the Sand .

The Czechs do great job in combining neoclassical instrumental music, mostly piano and heavy-sounding strings, with experiments with vocals that create a haze made of voices and whispers which is an utterly atmospheric and mysterious thing to do. Most of the compositions here are instrumental though. They are both minimalist in the sense of being created on maximum two instruments (as far as I can say) and dark/moody which doesn't always go together that well. They are also featured with an "ability to penetrate and enrich the innermost corners of a perceptive human soul, a gift which they share with sincerity and humbleness". And also, I'd never heard of them before so I consider myself lucky it finally changed.

Melodies in the Sand costs 7 EUR.

Check: That Which Glitters

Country: Czech Republic

Genre: dark neoclassicism

Label: Melody As Truth

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WatchCamp: casa, Coma, Places, Stereo Julia, 昴宿 Pleiades (2017) EN

casa - Sad Girls

Acoustic shoegaze, very slow and moody dreampop from Spain. Weeping of a guitar, delicate vocal and extremely sensible artist - Juan Díez. Two tracks for pay-what-you-want.

Coma - Black Moon

Post-rock from Malaysia, everything that should be there: on one hand well-crafted guitar energy, on the other, a unique, local-sounds-inspired approach to the genre. Two long tracks for 7 USD.

Places - Goodbye to Me (Traveller)

Czech dreampop, softly mesmerizing vocal in a tension-developing post-rock. Promising. The single costs 20 CZK.

Stereo Julia - Departure

Electronic backgrounds and post-punk vocals from New York, especially "Parts Untruly" makes a lasting impression. Both songs cost whatever you want them to.



昴宿 Pleiades - 蓋亞 Gaia

Awesome, mystically tuned and very loud post-rock from Taiwan. Great music. Two tracks for pay-what-you-want.

smetana - Háv Exkluzivity (2017) EN

Sad songs about feelings. This time from Czech Republic. The duo called smetana, instead of dreampop's softness, makes use of almost coldwave in feeling rawness and sad vocals combined with catchy melodies.

The best example of the latter is probably "Dno Snění" (Dream's Bottom) with appearing in almost every line, if I'm not mistaken, Mona Lisa. Jakub Hamari, who owns this cold, atmospheric voice, sings accompanied with the compositions by Honza Čapek, a real Renaissance man as he deals with every other piece of instrumentarium here. Actually every track by smetana has this ability to be hummed and melancholia-triggering at the same time.

The project's name is (probably) a tribute to Bedřich Smetana, the father of Czech classical music. The inspiration is really ambitious, the young and talented Czechs are worth closer look.

"Háv Exkluzivity" is available for 2 EUR (50 CZK).

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±0 - ±0 (2017) EN

Enigmatic name, four artists called only by single letters (M, O, R and Z) and music so close to coldwave. The Czech ±0 is together with Local Blood my most interesting discovery within the genre this year. Especially that the Slavic mix lets me understand some parts of the lyrics. Sad ones.

And so the album starts with very monochromatic description of Letna, one of the city areas in Prague. Next track sounds even more nostalgic, talking about a place somewhere in the world where you want to settle down and "plant gardens". Next songs are about things like the sad city of  Žižkov, smoking cigarettes and being alone. Musically speaking there's everything you seek in this kind of music - clear bass line, raw guitars and vocal that is both lacking emotions and in some weird way expressing a lot. It's dark with the darkness of a big, concrete city, it's cold with the coldness of grey sky and it's raw.

S/T album is available for pay-what-you-want.

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