Kryštof released the album Půlnoční hřích after five years. They won't go on tour with it

The Czech band Kryštof released the album Půlnoční hřích on Friday, October 9, their first studio recording in five years. It contains eleven tracks, and on the day of release a video for the song Oblohy půl was added. Rádio Expres ↗

Official video for the single Oblohy půl:



The album features four guests. Listeners already know two of them from previously released singles: rapper Sergei Barracuda appears on the track Moviestars, and singer Dominique Alagia on the title track Půlnoční hřích, which the label says is among the most-played songs on Czech radio. On the track Rubín, songwriter beira sings, and the closing track Hrej kapelo was recorded by Kryštof together with the band Jelen. Rádio Expres ↗

"I consider this album our peak. Maybe it's because it came together incredibly spontaneously, without pressure and surprisingly, yet it still incredibly reflects the feelings I'm carrying through life right now," said singer Richard Krajčo. The recording was produced by Johny Rainbow and was made at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios and at Daft Studios in Belgium. Rádio Expres ↗

Krajčo described the details of the album's creation in an interview for Aktuálně.cz. The band already finished seven of the eleven songs last winter at Gabriel's studio, recorded the remaining four in April in Belgium, and the album was mixed in early May. When he announced the concert break last September, he reportedly had only two songs written; in November the band recorded seven and prepared others in advance, so the material for the whole album was created in two months. This time the other band members were also more significantly involved in the arrangements. Aktuálně.cz ↗

Krajčo also admitted he wasn't at all sure whether another Kryštof album would ever come about. In his view, the previous album Halywůd was marked by covid, while the new one was marked by his approaching fiftieth birthday. The song Vzpomínky deals with the finiteness of life, and the singer describes it as an imagined conversation with God; during the summer pre-release listening sessions at a winery in Zaječí, some fans cried while listening to it. By contrast, the track Patrick Swayze, about a fifty-something who comes to a bar and realizes the girls address him formally, is written with a lighter touch. It thus follows on from the earlier songs Tak nějak málo tančím, about turning thirty, and Na viděnou, about turning forty. Aktuálně.cz ↗

What led him to bring in guests from other genres was the effort to stay in touch with contemporary music while not losing his own identity. Moviestars actually dates back to the Halywůd era, and from the start Krajčo had envisioned it as a collaboration with a rapper. He discovered both Dominique Alagia and songwriter beira on TikTok. He invited the band Jelen for the closing track because it fit the genre there. He says it was precisely this track that his children agreed on as well, having called it a "Balkan banger" from the start. Aktuálně.cz ↗

A reviewer for musicserver.cz called the single Oblohy půl something of a hit. According to the review, the song starts out as a folk ballad, gradually builds, and follows in the footsteps of the best of the band's older work, classics like Cesta or Zůstaň tu se mnou (Za sny). In the video by the directing duo Tomáš Treťo Tretiník and Juro Zmatek, a couple in love is portrayed by Janka Balková and Richard Galdun. musicserver.cz ↗

Not all the reactions have been favorable, however. A review on iDNES.cz ran under the headline "Za hřích to nestojí. Kryštof dodal jen další úhledně zabalený produkt" ("Not worth the sin. Kryštof has delivered just another neatly packaged product"). iDNES.cz ↗

There will be no tour to accompany the album. The band's concert break continues, and Krajčo concedes there might be at most a few exceptional performances; for their most loyal fans, the band is planning two release parties. He justifies the break by saying that Kryštof had performed essentially non-stop since 2012, and he himself was approaching the point where he would start treating music as just a job. After two big concerts at Strahov in 2017, he says he "burned out a bit." Today he recalls that period as an adventure: the band had brought in 80,000 light-up wristbands from abroad and had no idea whether they would actually work, so one night they laid out about a hundred of them on the ground and tried switching them on. He wants to return to the stage only once he genuinely feels like playing again. Aktuálně.cz ↗

The nearest big opportunity to hear the new songs live will be May 29, 2027, when Krajčo celebrates his fiftieth birthday with a concert at Prague's O2 arena. Rádio Expres ↗ However, he says not many new songs will be played there, as the evening is meant mainly to trace his path as a songwriter. Aktuálně.cz ↗

Kryštof in an archival shot from a concert. Photo: Michal Maňas / Wikimedia Commons, license CC BY 3.0