Václav Havelka + hosté (křest alba)

Václav Havelka, the central character of the band Please The Trees and one of the most prominent personalities of the domestic alternative music scene, returns after seventeen long years with a solo recording.

The album A Snake Crawling Up A Broken Ladder is released on 5/31/2026 by Animal Musicna LP, CD and digitally. The distribution in the USA will be provided by the publishing house Primordial Void, which will also release the title on audiocassette.

The concert form of the album invites the listener to the space between waking and dreaming, where the music acts as a subtle rite of transformation. Here, songs created during a period of physical limitation become a map of the inner landscape - a path along which consciousness learns to accept pain as a gate, not an obstacle.

Sound develops like breath, silence becomes an equal partner of tone, and words pulsate with the calm urgency of a mantra. Havelk's music opens up a space in which the boundaries between body and soul, past and present, individual and the whole dissolve. The motif of a snake climbing a cracked ladder turns into an archetype - a symbol of the slow awakening of life energy, which, despite its fragility, is constantly pointing upwards.

Concerts thus act as a silent initiation ritual: an encounter with music that heals not by escape, but by presence; which does not promise answers, but opens space for deeper listening. In this shared moment, the personal story dissolves and only the pure experience of being remains - subtle, luminous and transforming.

As guests on the album, James Toth (Wooden Wand), Ben Chasny (Six Organs Of Admittance, Marisa Anderson, Matt Swanson (ex-Lambchop), Tony Crow (ex-Lambchop, ex-Silver Jews), Thor Harris (Thor & Friends, Water Damage, Shearwater, ex-Swans), Ondřej Krátký, Rebecca Vera & Munly Jay Munly (Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Munly and the Lupercalians, The Denver Broncos), David Boulter (Tindersticks), Vojtěch Havel (Irena & Vojtěch Havel / The Havels), Alois Zatloukal, Tomáš Niesner, Dallas Acid, William Tyler (ex-Lambchop, ex-Silver Jews) Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart) and Dana Janssen (Dana Buoy, ex-Akron/Family).