From my early days as a frequent showgoer, seeing Picastro has always felt like a little revelation. In the beginning of 2000 and up they were always promoted in Prague by adventurous collective Am180 and often played at 007 club (back then one of the most important places for independent music). Their sound was an idiosyncratic mix, where ultra fragile met with iron steel strong. Unique sounding guitars, which many have labeled as slowcore, melted with well arranged strings, minal drumming and most importantly, with characteristic, beaten sounding vocals of Liz Hysen which you just could not mistaken for anyone else’s voice.

Early odds has seen many bands working around the genre of slowcore or deriving the alternative folk formula, but just few of them maintained their existence till these days. Picastro is one of those bands. Technically its songwriter vehicle for Liz Hysen, she has always been in the circle of just a very slowly rotating line up. If we take her first demo from 1996 as the beginning of Picastro, it means her and Picastro has now 26 years of pretty active existence under their belt with seven long play records (one of them is collaboration with similarly devoted canadian duo Nadja).

Hysen’s latest effort is also her first mini album release in her discography. “I’ve Never Met A Stranger” is a collection of 5 cover songs. And as you could expect, they are definitely not played beat by beat, but rather wrapped around Picastro’s typical songwriter aesthetics which nowadays also includes a bit of a well crafted bedroom recordings vibe. Eclectic selection of cover songs includes bands and artist such as The Velvet Underground, Richard Dawson, The Silt, Elfin Saddle and Fire on Fire.

This mini album is released by Stoned to Death and will be followed up by Picastro’s new 7” (out during the first half of 2023).