First released in 1993 and long cherished as a semi‑mythical artifact, Swirl by Here stands as one of the defining documents of the early‑nineties Czech infatuation with shoegaze guitars – a homegrown counterpart to the genre’s UK canon that traded London drizzle for Central European melancholy. Often mentioned in the same breath as EOST’s Susurrate, it captures a scene discovering how far it could push volume, texture and introspection without losing its sense of song. Distorted chords blur into fog, vocals drift like half‑remembered conversations, and drums push forward with the urgency of a band convinced they’re catching a fleeting wave of possibility.
Three decades on, Swirl finally arrives on vinyl for the first time, remastered by Jan Kašpar (Obelisk of Light) to open up the record’s dense mix rather than flatten it. The new cut lets guitars surge and recede with greater definition – feedback blooms, harmonic overtones ring longer, and the low end anchors the haze instead of disappearing into it. You can hear the spatial work in Colin Stuart’s original recording more clearly too: the way rhythm and lead guitars are panned into a slow, tidal motion; how the voice sits just under the surface of the sound, neither buried nor foregrounded, as if it were another instrument rather than a narrative guide.
This edition also frames Swirl as part of a broader story. Alongside the LP comes Flower Noise: Here & The Story of Czech Shoegaze, a 20‑page zine that offers a long‑form dive into the band’s history and their context, written by Miloš Hroch, author of Whisper Aloud: Czech shoegaze between the East and the West. Rather than simply recounting dates and discographies, the text situates Here within the specific post‑communist atmosphere of the early ’90s, when new sounds and influences were arriving fast but infrastructure lagged behind. It explores how bands like Here absorbed My Bloody Valentine and Ride through cassettes and word‑of‑mouth, filtering them through local conditions into something both recognisably shoegaze and unmistakably Czech.
Visually, the release has been handled with the same care. Roman Havlice is responsible for artwork restoration as well as the zine’s design and layout, preserving the grain and colour of the original aesthetic while making it work in a larger, more detailed format. The result is a package that feels true to the era – no airbrushed nostalgia, just a sensitively updated frame for music that was always more about atmosphere than polish.
For longtime fans, this vinyl edition of Swirl is a chance to finally hear a foundational album at something like its intended scale, with space for the guitars to breathe and the noise to bloom. For newer listeners, it’s an entry point into a parallel shoegaze history that unfolded between East and West: familiar in its love of volume and blur, but shaded by a different light, a different cityscape, and a different sense of what, exactly, you might want to escape from or drown out.
