Päfgens - Westend (2026)

The Slovakian couple who has been releasing their music for some time now as Päfgens already appeared on this blog with two albums. But I couldn't ignore the 6th one in their discography either: a beautiful but also utterly melancholic, hopeful but dark like an autumn day ambient pop for emotional people.

As the artists say, this album was born "when we bought a drum machine with the intention of making pop songs", which can hardly be further from what eventually happen. The slow ambient pop ballads made with acoustic guitar, whispering voice and various field recordings, fill out the air with never-hurried atmosphere of wistfulness. And when I wrote that the album was "born", it's not a coincidence as it is dedicated to the couple's baby, as they summarize it: it "is a memory of those who are no longer with us, but also a celebration of new life".

And you can hear it both in the lo-fi, fuzzy sound that makes the songs so much more intimate, as well as in the lyrics with the poignant "everyone you know will leave" sentiment repeated endlessly in Poprad that for me became the focal point of the whole album already at its beginning.

Westend costs 7 EUR.

Check: Poprad

Country: Slovakia

Genre: lo-fi ambient pop

Päfgens - Der Regen (2022)

Päfgens - Der Sturm (2019)

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Besna - Krásno (2025)

After three years since their debut, the Slovakian outfit Besna shows us their sophomore album called Krásno. The Black metal here is only marginally seasoned with the "post-" suffix and while usually it makes me throw a bit, in this case the band's music works really well. I think it's also darker than before, but maybe it's because the world grew darker as well.

The title of the album translates to "Beautiful", which is slightly surprising. There must a good deal of irony in that as the worldwide situation is far from being beautiful (the band supports the Ukrainian war effort for example, and this crisis is nowhere close to an end, but the point is that the artists are aware and focused on what's going on, politically speaking). The lyrics supports this thought as, among traditionally metal-kind of poetry, there's this sentence (taken from the title track): "Indifference feeds hopelessness, indifference only feeds hopelessness". Indeed.

Musically speaking, the message is conveyed in the blackest of the ways: angry screams, guitar noise and fast melodies. My favourite track is the most deceiving one as Oceán prachu sounds like a peaceful instrumental interludium for the most part, but suddenly develops into pure musical anger. Again, indeed.

Krásno costs 7 EUR.

Check: Oceán prachu

Country: Slovakia

Genre: (post-) black metal

Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

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Päfgens - Der Regen (2022)

Jana Kočišová and Filip Drábek, two modern nomads, come from Slovakia, they created their band in Warszawa, Poland and currently make their music in Berlin, Germany. Just like the artists, their music is also travelling, "moving from shoegazy and dreamy naive folk into loops and oscilative drones". The latter is reached on Der Regen.

Their new album "comes from nowhere, takes you to a place for a moment and leaves as suddenly as it came. Subtle, yet very strong." The subtlety is the keyword here: the music is based on acoustic sounds that get looped and changed all over so they create tiny mazes of mesmerizing sound. And those mazes lead us through tiny worlds filled with field recordings that make them alive. The strength of the duo lies in their ability to create soundscapes that generate so much atmosphere, one that may be lighter or darker, but they can also create some really unnerving pieces too, with the album's last, slowly building up Nylon that ends the whole album with gloomy sounds of bells.

Der Regen costs 5 EUR.

Päfgens - Der Sturm (2019)

Check: Nylon

Country: Slovakia, Germany

Genre: atmospheric ambient

Label: Solanum / Econore

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Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

Besna are from Bratislava, Slovakia and create "mournful melodies and mad screams from the Carpatian underneath". Their heavy music is complimented by folk inspirations and a good deal of atmosphere building. We can now check it out on the band's debut album called Zverstvá.

The band has this unique ability to successfully combine the aggression and rapidness of black metal with catchiness and attractiveness of the tunes. Yes, it is extremely loud and guitar-heavy, there are only metal-like screaming vocals, it does sound violent and desperate and its this music's advantage, no doubt about it. But there's also a good flow, the compositions are very much engaging and entertaining, not only for the metal music lover - also post-rock aficionado would find it very appealing.

Besna seem to take inspirations from the might of nature (in L'adovec with its touching similes: "A snowflake falls, followed by another/ A blizzard of lies/ Beneath a ton of sediment/ the truth is altered") and folk art. The latter is not only about the beautiful cover art that uses a minimalist take on eastern folklore, but it's also about the construction of the songs that, when you think about it, is not so different from the traditional folk music.  

Zverstvá costs 4 EUR.

Check: Spev Drozda

Country: Slovakia

Genre: atmospheric black metal

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Get Lost, Wire Avenue - United in Nothingness (2019) EN

Get Lost, Wire Avenue is another one recently post-rock-esque projects from Slovakia on the blog. The Bratislava-based band showed not that long time ago a short but impressive EP called United in Nothingness.

The album speaks about the void that is here shown in quite a positive way, as a place potentially for something new. That's where the title's unity in nothingness comes from, perhaps this was the way the music project came to be as well. The first track called Spiral Staircase / The Siren's Song makes a peaceful post-rock dominated by monotonous and mesmerizing sequence sounding like an improvisation on air horn. The second one is a piece of very dark ambient that in Screams of Hope  transforms into very guitar and raw-riffs-driven post-rock.

United in Nothingness costs 2 EUR.

Check: Spiral Staircase / The Siren's Song

Country: Slovakia

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Jób - MMXIX (2019) EN

Named after Jozef Cíger-Hronský's book's title band from Slovakia is in their very first career stages and have just released a debut EP, but you can already tell, there's something intriguing about them. Let's then check MMXIX.

The album starts with post-rock typical samples with a movie dialog, still it's awesome that this time it's in Slovakian and not in English. After that the artists keep showing again and again that they know what the post-rock world is all about. In their music there's quite a lot of rock guitar and compositions based on riffs, but on the other hand, it's not overused. And finally, very well done finish in the shortest but also most intense Tak ešte ďalší október. Waiting for more.

MMXIX costs 5 EUR.

Check: Tak ešte ďalší október

Country: Slovakia

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Päfgens - Der Sturm (2019) EN

They come from Slovakia, created the band in Warsaw and reside in Berlin. Exactly to this nomadic life style point when talking about inspirations. The couple of artists Jana Kočišová and Filip Drábek released in February a very interesting album called Der Sturm.

In the first place, the duet creates atmospheric electronic music, from ambient soundscapes to delicate noise. It is all shown on the album, form the first, mesmerizing track to that last one, reigned by unsettling, nervous pulsations. It creates this difficult to define atmosphere of intense emotions blended in peaceful, all things considered, music. Worth checking out.

Der Sturm costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: 7:57

Country: Slovakia/Germany

Genre: eclectic drone

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WatchCamp January'19 - Brise-Glace, Former Hero, otom, Sleepwalking Baseball Club, Veneer (2018) EN

Brise-Glace - Primer Coma

Unmixed demo from two years ago by the French band and for an unmixed demo from two years ago - it's really good. Soul-crashingly beautiful with its dense but also peaceful post-rock and melancholic atmosphere. Two tracks costing whatever you want them to.

Former Hero - Ecotone

Two songs by Mike Jones honouring the memory of his mother who recently passed away. And so these are very sad, dense ambient-neoclassical compositions from the York-based musician sounding very different from what he usually does. Two tracks cost whatever you pay.

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otom - snowfall

What can I say, I love the sound of otom's music. This thick shoegaze and dreamy atmosphere is what I look for in this genre. I hope for a longer album by the Japanese soon! The single, together with an alternate version cost 3 EUR (300 JPY).

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Sleepwalkers Baseball Club - Grow Wings

Re-written song from the debut album by the Seattle-based project whose motto says "Dance like the world is on fire. Because it is". Synth-pop shoegaze in which, what unusual for the musician, there is more romance than nihilist atmosphere. The single costs what you pay for it.

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Veneer - Spheres

The Slovakian Veneer comes back after many years and 15 years after their debut. And it's good news as they create some fittingly airy and atmospheric trip-hop. The song costs what you want to pay.

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