Eva Sajanová and Dominik Suchý. Photo by Šimon Lupták

“What I like about Bratislava is that it is not in the ‘centre’ of the European scene”, says Adam Badí Donoval of the label Warm Winters Ltd. “Although I’ve tried to see the label in the context of the European experimental scene, the fact that I’m here helps me not to feel pressure and compare myself so much to others”. A few years ago, he was involved in a label in London, but since moving to the Slovakian capital, his perspective has changed. “Bratislava is quite internally connected; there is a lot of mutual support, even regarding venues, bookings, and labels. We don’t see each other as competition. We are part of the same ecosystem. The scene is friendly and warm,” he adds.

“We have similar strategies, and we help each other. We have a newsletter, and we promote each other’s albums,” says Jakub Juhás of the Mappa label. Sometimes, people ask me to compare different music scenes across Central and Eastern Europe, and each is different (as I’m trying to show in this column). But when I think about the respective ecosystems in the countries of the former Czechoslovakia, this seems to be the strongest.

In 2022, I covered the Czech music scene, but it’s also worth noting how much it’s intertwined with Slovakia’s. Last year, for example, saw the fantastic Synthetic Bird Music compilation, which gathered artists from both countries as well as the wider continent. In April, Warm Winters released PRAH, a compilation bringing together artists from the Slovak and Czech underground, the first in a series of small celebrations of the label’s 5th birthday.

Warm Winters and Mappa, as well as labels such as LOM, Weltschmerzen, Skupina, and Stoned To Death – a Czech imprint that pays particular attention to Slovak music – are creating a solid hub for the local music scene, although the word “hub” doesn’t quite do justice to the participants’ DIY, ad hoc methods. “There is very little media reporting on interesting [Slovak] music, mostly individuals, blogs, or very niche projects with small outreach,” says Robert Repka of Weltschmerzen. “Large media houses and their journalists are still trying to understand the use of electronic devices in music production.”

Donoval says there’s room for growth in the wider cultural media landscape of Slovakia. It’s encouraging that a small magazine called 3/4 is starting to increase its output thanks to a new collaboration with other Central European magazines, and a year ago Donoval started the Táto Strana Európy newsletter about music from the region, initially only in Slovak but now published in English. Nevertheless, musicians are often reliant on Czech coverage in publications like Full Moon or the broadcasters Radio Wave, who dedicate space to forward-thinking contemporary music. “Mappa has existed since 2016, when many platforms, blogs, and magazines disappeared. But it’s still about freelance journalists who can push them to The Wire, The Quietus, or Pitchfork,” says Juhás. A few writers have now also united on the Easterndaze platform, which has been covering the Eastern European music scene for a long time and was revived in 2024 by Lucia Udvardyová, and offers a comprehensive archive of projects, scenes, venues, reviews, interviews and more.

“Bratislava is not a big city, but you can hear experimental music in T3, Fuga, A4, Pakt, or LOM space,” says Juhas, the last of which he works for as a booker; he and others tQ speaks to cite festivals like NEXT, Halp, Sensorium, as well as the Less Is Sound project and the Plnka concert series. There is also activity on the periphery in regional art centres like Banská Štiavnica, and Festival Hviezdne Noci in Žilina, while a monthly Skupina X Mappa show on Kiosk Radio by Jakub Juhás and Jan Solčáni provides an international reach.

Richard Hronský – Closures
(Warm Winters)

Hronský describes himself as a ‘computer musician’, which defines him to an extent – in a post-internet reality, he builds his own world. This is immediately audible from the first minutes of Closures, music that hinges on silence, nostalgia, and emptiness in the spirit of Philip Jack or The Caretaker, consisting of spatial ambient passages, reprocessed environmental recordings, electronic loops and baroque samples, all under a cloud of stratified noise. It’s disturbing, sad music, sometimes harnessing brass instruments – funereal sounding music full of heaviness, sadness, and anxiety. In long, slow building tracks, Hronsky intersperses small interludes to intensify the album’s themes of death and loss and passing away amid a dreamy, hazy cloud.

Bolka – Smutné Stropy
(LOM)

Matúš Kobolka is like the Dadaists – Smutne stropy is a conglomerate of breaks, collages, pulsations, uneven rhythms, poetics, references to folk, rap, popular music, Czechoslovakian art and more. He turns everything upside down and records short form anti-radio hits using glitches, cuts samples and minor melodies, that provide a soundtrack to a twisted reality. Take the broken rhythms in ‘Karabinka’ which is vocal-driven until the appearance of an accordion at its conclusion. ‘Minúta Techa’, meanwhile, features a beat that constantly stutters and slows, circulating like a broken record or cassette. ‘Mokré Štvrte’ searches and probes around motifs until finally cosmic modulated vocalisations appear, after which the finale explodes into gabber.

Adela Mede – Ne Lépj a Virágra
(Warm Winters/Mappa)

Adela Mede speaks and sings in tongues. She uses her voice to straddle worlds and cultures like a shaman, weaving stories from the periphery with a subtle use of electronics and guest vocalists. Her voice is used as an additional instrument, guiding her through resounding and meandering stories where she brilliantly de-emphasises verbal identity. It is natural and vulnerable in its simplicity, sometimes operating in a specific context, sometimes working simply as another layer of sound. Its sonority in both Hungarian and Slovak is felt especially in the poignant, droning repetitions.

Line Gate – Trap
(Mappa)

This contemplative music in the vein of Éliane Radigue and Paulina Oliveros mesmerises. Two tracks, lasting 25 minutes between them, are short by Michal Vaľko’s standards, but still draw you into his minimalist world. He builds on the sound of the hurdy gurdy in a way similar to La Tène or Yann Gourdon. The tantric drone explores an infinite-sounding, meditative space of suspense and uncertainty, with Vaľko’s voice modulated to make it sound as if there is a dialogue between female and male vocals. This creates a lyrical polyphony; layers interweave and melodies ring out, but ultimately it’s minimalist – a poignant shaping of infinity.

Daniel Kordik & Tomas Pristiak – Kanárik
(Weltschmerzen)

Acoustic instruments, field recordings, and electronics are the basis for creating emotional, compressive stories on Kanárik. There are delicate piano sounds, broken beats, field recordings, and synthetic glitches. In the vein of Raster-Noton releases, the music bubbles beneath the surface as if a dream could explode. My imagination says the canary from the title can’t get out. I hear a sound that resembles an animal, but it might as well be a sonic imagination. An afterimage of acoustic and electronic sounds, a soundscape in which an abstract rhythm is built up by beats, pulsations, and unexpected sounds. The tracks are long, developing gradually, but they are highly varied; the further the music gets, the thicker (‘Zvonku’), and finally, a delicate piano melody covered with wry glitch interventions (‘Stav’).

URN – Self Sabotage
(Stoned to Death)

As URN, Jakub Volovár explores a less obvious definition of guitar music. On ‘Self Sabotage’, the composer plays with the traditional moods and musical formulas associated with the instrument – he plays bluesy, sometimes very jazzy – but all the while there is an aura of mystery, an uncertain, paranoid state hovering over his music akin to the bands playing the Road House in Twin Peaks. It’s music that floats freely without any drastic twists and turns; free-flowing impressions, albeit encapsulated in circular song forms. It sounds like a case study of an instrument but also a case study of loneliness – the delicate handling of the guitar, the straining of sound, the painting of melody, and the escapist playing.

Ankramu – Krása
(Rieka)

Although this is post rock, there are no walls of sound. No breakthroughs or ecstatic raptures. Following a six year break since their previous album together, Jozef Krupa on drums, Michal Matejka on guitar, and Michal Kramár on bass and cláves weave road songs with a suggestive rhythm section and spacey-sounding guitar, sometimes with a minimalist tinge, at other times with bluesy, spacey uplifts. You can hear some references to the Chicago scene of the 1990s here, but the whole tone is changed by Kramar’s falsetto, which gives the songs a lyrical character. That said, it is full of anger and disappointment, with the hopelessness of the world, and perhaps even a sense of reconciliation with its embrace of transience.

Eva Sajanova & Dominik Suchy – Decision Paralysis
(Weltschmerzen)

Dominik Suchy’s building, wheezing synths and electronics meet Eva Sajanova’s delicate, poignant vocals. Although there is austerity to the sounds here, there is also a maximalism – Decision Paralysis is at its best when, as on ‘NeTitulovaná, it employs dense layering and psychedelic variations, letting Sajanova’s voice appear subtly. She impresses with her phrasing and vocal techniques, at times abstract and surreal. Sometimes subdued, sometimes wild, this human element contrasts brilliantly against synthetic instrumentals, always close but never overwhelming one another.

And, to close, here are two forthcoming releases worth keeping an eye out for:

Michaela Antalová & Adrian Myer – Zvony II
(Mappa)

The initial idea for Zvony came during the Covid-19 lockdown. Drummer Michaela Antalová and Norwegian double bass player Adrian Myhr forged a plan to combine elements of Slovak and Norwegian folk music, resulting in their 2021 debut album where Antalová plays the flutes and Myhr employs the double bass. On their second album, they utilise not only traditional melodies, but contemporary music and trance-like passages. Field recordings augment the contrast between their two instruments, creating a colorful mix at the meeting point of the musical mythology of the two countries’ musics. It is not so much folk as a way of exploring different compositional techniques using these instruments, exploring their many possibilities.

Michaela Turcerová – forthcoming solo album
(Mappa)

With the MMMM Saxophone Quartet, Turcerová has recorded an album at Pragovka, a large factory hall, with Kolektív Ruiny, who look at rejuvenating abandoned industrial landmarks. This will be her first solo album – an exploration of the saxophone using highly saturated amplification, revealing hidden micro timbres within the instrument’s body. It’s amelodic and abstract playing, swishing and rustling though wildly appealing through its use of different modifications of the key system and air column, finding an instrument that is full of textures. The album is inspired by various percussive traditions, which you can hear in a danceable opening and melodic outlines appear, too, all gathered on a record that brings the saxophone’s guts up to the surface.