Molchat Molchat Doma

UZ JSME DOMA are a Czech avant-garde prog band, who formed in 1985, with stylistic similarities to RIO bands such as SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA and STORMY SIX. Formed in Teplice, the band have been through many line-up changes (and problems with Communism) and have never stuck to a particular style, but they have always had a unique sound nevertheless…

Uz Jsme Doma spent the first years of its existence in underground Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet Revolution it was one of the first groups to storm out and establish an alternative rock sound for the new republic. Along with Plastic People of the Universe they became ambassadors of Central European rock, frequently touring the U.S. and establishing a cult following in America. If the PPU embody the Communist repression of the 1970s and 1980s in their gloomy, despair-driven music, then Uz Jsme Doma represents the exuberance of liberation. Punk in spirit, activists at heart, and strongly avant-garde in their dissonances, complex songs, and humor, they are the Czech Republic's best group of the 1990s…

Uz Jsme Doma are second only to the legendary Plastic People of the Universe in the iconography of maverick Czech rock bands, having emerged from a scene where "alternative" meant a lot more than just a marketing format. The Plastic People started battling the fascistic Czech government in the ‘60s, and UJD formed in 1985, just four years before the Velvet Revolution liberated the country's culture. It was then that Uz Jsme Doma finally began recording, and more than two decades later, singer/guitarist/pianist Miroslav Wanek still leads the band's idiosyncratic punk-prog charge on Caves…

For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She’s been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.

The fictitious tour of far-away lands continues, as anonymous artist Glåsbird follows the scratchy, folk-ambience of Norskfjǫrðr with a return to lonely arctic-island sounds. Novaya Zemlya is a Russian-owned island, stretching from just off the mainland between the Kara and Barents seas, with two islands split by the Matochkin Strait.