When the poplar trees whisper, the dead are talking. Or maybe it’s God, or memories of people no longer with us. Soundscapes and sonic notes are central to Richard Hronský’s third (bedroom) studio album, Pohreb (The Funeral) – following up thematically on his second release Closures. Squeaking of wooden floors, dim afternoon sunlight coming through the window with bird songs and static in the grandfather’s radio playing in the garage – the record entails the melancholy of growing up and saying goodbye to our loved ones and the world we shared with them. Deeply personal memories and audio sketches tell the oldest story of the life cycle and its inevitable end, but also continuation with generations that come after us.

Through the smallest audio details, Pohreb takes us to the village house of Richard’s grandparents and recollects their daily habits. What began as a need to record one's samples to create beats turned out to be an invaluable library documenting one period of life – audiospace, where lost things resist the passage of time. “For me, the sound is more powerful than the photograph itself,” Richard Hronský explains his relation to the sonic diaries he’s been keeping since the age of sixteen. “When I look at a photograph of myself in that grandparent's house, it doesn't have as much power or isn’t as valuable as the sound.” This intimate connection fuels every track on the album and creates a web of connections only partly accessible to the listener. Even though we cannot understand every reference and sound, the feeling of sadness, longing, but also reconciliation is familiar to everyone regardless of our family histories. Ultimately, we don’t need to make peace only with the absence of our ancestors, but also with the world, which is rapidly changing in ways we cannot predict.

One of the strategies to cope with the constant transformation is to preserve some traditions – whether they come as tones from a fujara, an old recording of a folk song by Slovak ethnographer Karol Plicka (used for the last track on the album), grandmother’s prayers overheard over the sound of television or the tones emanating from organ in the village church. “I reflect on tradition as something that moves, as a thing that is simply a product of the people, that's not closed, but open to criticism, reevaluation and living through over again.” Pohreb is part of this cycle of reinventions, a manual on how to immerse oneself in the flow of time.