SAMOTY (LONESOME HOMESTEADS), Galén, Prague 2026

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The post-folk duo Hmlisto (SK) has released Samoty. A conceptual album about the freedom and heaviness of life. And about searching for the place of traditional music in the modern world. The fourth album of the Hmlisto band, called Samoty (Lonesome Homesteads), draws on the more than thirty years’ experience of living in a remote homestead under the Vtáčnik hill in central Slovakia. Veronika Kicková and Ján Kicko talk about moments where the assumption of a simpler life faces hard reality.
The album consists of fifteen tracks: seven original songs, six traditional song intermezzos, a prologue and an epilogue. The traditional song intermezzos are not just accompanying ornaments but a part of the concept, interconnecting personal experience with roots. “The short folk fiddler intermezzos were intended to complement my current view with inspirations that have led me to it. Some grew quickly into full-fledged songs,” Veronika Kicková specifies.

Ján Kicko arranged the music and produced the album. Its sound is more contemporary and evocative: the authored songwriting and traditional music motifs intertwine with acoustic instruments, electronic planes, synthesizers and picturesque arrangements. “I had to find a new path for the new songs. I was quickly absorbed by how the disparate
shards started to interlock and respond to each other,” says Ján.

The originally written and traditional songs lead a musical and content dialogue of two worlds. A loose folk fiddler group has been put together specifically for this album. The group is called Slaďte Sláky and consists of female members of the traditional music ensemble Brezina from Boleráz, Slovakia, and is headed by Veronika Kicková, a self-taught violin player, as the prim (lead violinist). “I was not looking for a stylisation for the stage, nor an external
repetition of known traditional music approaches. I wanted to capture the intimate plane of traditional folk music, to explore what in it touched me so much many years ago that I yearned to experience it in its depth. I wore traditional folk work costume, I learnt to live and farm as in the old times, and along with that I learnt from local folk fiddlers to play old songs on the violin,” Veronika Kicková explains.

The record was released on June 5, 2026 at the Galén publishing house. It was preceded with two video singles Zachráňme Čechánky and Ťažná kobyla. The recording, mixing and mastering were made in the Zvukařská Dílna Brno sound studio, headed by Adam Pakosta.

SAMOTY (LONESOME HOMESTEADS) – PRESS RELEASE