Spring is finally here. Everything is waking up and hope is coming back into our lives. You can hear it in the Jaro / Spring series of field recordings by our favourite Czech sound artist Tomáš Šenkyřík. Kyiv and the whole of Ukraine are still resisting enormous russian aggression. On the album Kyiv Eternal, Ukrainian artist Heinali composed hymns to the capital, which had faced a five-week onslaught at the beginning of the war.
There are also three great reissues (Richter Band - Czech, Nenad Jelić i Laza Ristovski - Serbian, Oleksandr Yurchenko - Ukrainian), testaments to the vibrancy and innovation of the Eastern European experimental scene of the 80s and 90s. Don't forget to include in your AOTY list the debut album of the Emer project by Marija Rasa, a Lithuanian native living in Brussels.