Best Albums of 2016
selected by 8 Czech music critics

10
Sister/Body <BR>“Spells”

Sister/Body
“Spells”

Do you ever feel a hunger for some shamanism? Well, this album by the experimental electronic duo Sister/Body takes you to the middle of a ritual where unconsciousness meets inner demons.

Techno-based hybrid structures, voices blurred in echoes, synthesizers cutting out songs as inward laments. Dance eletronica for people who hate dance music.

♪♫ Listen: “Black Jacket Angel” + album stream

Sister/Body on Soundcloud, Bandcamp.

9
Acute Dose <BR>“II”

Acute Dose
“II”

Imagine King Krule starts to play resourceful guitar music in a British style and you are close to the idea how one of the most entertaining Czech guitar bands sounds like.

Inventive and ingenious melodies, distinctvie guitar sound, catchy hits played with ambitious casualness and precise spontaneity. These guys should have been born across La Manche.

♪♫ Listen: “First Rap” + album stream

Acute Dose on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook.

8
Rouilleux <BR>“The Spoils”

Rouilleux
“The Spoils”

How to be a noisy tormentor and a quiet, shady whisperer at the same time? Listen to the three-song-EP by Rouilleux. Fifteen minutes that emotionally wring you out.

Foggy and gloomy noise rock, which builds deafening wall of sound out of nowhere, with hints of dark jazz and electronic cracle. Dark (quarter)hour.

♪♫ Listen: “Traps” + album stream

Rouilleux on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, www.

7
Priessnitz <BR>“Beztíže”

Priessnitz
“Beztíže”

Priessnitz is a famous and one of the most influentual guitar bands of the 90s, captured in the atmosphere of a mountain mist and a small mountain town. It’s a “simple” alternative rock with distinctive bleak sound and lyrics looking for the melancholy of everydayness, written a sung by artist, writer a painter Jaromír 99.

Album “Beztíže” is Priessnitz’s first record after ten years and it is supposed to be their “swan song”. If that’s a true, their “last goodbye” couldn’t be better.

♪♫ Listen: “Mrzáci” + album stream (Spotify)

Priessnitz on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, www.

6
Sýček <BR>“EP”

Sýček
“EP”

Garage guitar breaker astride between post-punk and psychedelia, swirling in heady krautrock loops. The beauty of strong guitar riffs, noisy delight. And inbetween those sounds, from time to time, there are hidden brief lyrical shouts – half-haiku, half-Indian poetry.

Sýček are one of the greatest talents in Czech clubs. Their full-length debut album is highly anticipated.

♪♫ Listen: “Srdce” + album stream

Sýček on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook.

5
moin moin <BR>“Dawn”

moin moin
“Dawn”

An intimate in-room lo-fi folk at its best. Seven songs captured in a few hours, an acoustic and authentic nature-lyrical, mystic and symbolic poetry influenced by the experience of nordic countries.

moin moin, her guitar and her flawed, bursting sound close you within four walls of late night musings.

♪♫ Listen: “Sun and Moon” + album stream

moin moin on Bandcamp, Facebook.

4
Role <BR>“Rána”

Role
“Rána”

A perfect combination of radio pop and alternative? Definitely. This trio plays a straightforward dirty garage guitar pop filled with minimalistic “iceberg” lyrics, which hide the deepest truths in seemingly naive verses.

Scratches in sound, scracthes in soul, songs about love without using the word “love”. Role are postmodern new-romantics, which satisfy superficial listeners desperate for hits and contemplative listeners at the same time.

♪♫ Listen: “Když tě nikdo nevidí” + album stream

Role on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram.

3
Tomáš Palucha <BR>“Guru”

Tomáš Palucha
“Guru”

It is a guitar record, but very close to ambient music. It has dozens of strong and memorable guitar riffs, but riff is not the issue at all.

The theme is contemplation, meditation. The theme is to slow the stream of time, to put post-rock and drone music together and make all possible external music gradation internal.

Find yourself through this inconspicuous but majestic record, which crosses borders of countries and borders of time.

♪♫ Listen: “Selective Amnesia” + album stream

Tomáš Palucha on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook.

2
Flash the Readies <BR>“Kayos”

Flash the Readies
“Kayos”

Post-rock opus from the foothills of the foggy Jeseníky mountains. Thrilling soundtrack for a non-existing post-apocalyptic movie. Flash the Readies are masters of instrumental post-rock imagination and their last record is their supreme album.

Wall of sound, eruptions of concentrated energy, genre turn-offs, absence of post-rock clichés, epic and “cinematographic” instrumental stories that are so suspensful and immersive you don´t even get the chance to start eating your popcorn.

♪♫ Listen: “Obodin” + album stream

Flash the Readies on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, Twitter.

1
dné <BR>“These Semi Feelings, They Are Everywhere”

dné
“These Semi Feelings, They Are Everywhere”

It took dné five years to finish his debut record. One of the most talented Czech producers went through different life mishaps during that time so his sound’s change a bit from his early demos. On “These Semi Feelings, They Are Everywhere”, he presents fragile instrumental nocturnes of the modern age.

The album stands somewhere between a modern minimalistic classical music and stealthy electronic compositions. Intimate piano pieces meet hip hop structures and create nostalgic night monologues. Which, at some point, might remind you the “assembly” process of The Books or Zammuto.

If Chopin had a PC, he would sound just like this.

♪♫ Listen: “Driving a Car While Listening to Bill Burr’s Podcast” + album stream

dné on Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, www.