Toyen

The legendary guitar of the Czech music scene of the 90s Toyen was named after the world-famous Czech painter. The band was founded at the beginning of 1989 by three former members of the famous new wave group Letadlo, drummer Jiří Šimeček, bassist Petr Václavek and guitarist Ivo Heger with several other musicians. Gradually, she crystallized into a quartet with Petr Chromovský as a singer. With her mix of then-modern guitar pop a la Manchester with a typical Prague atmosphere, Toyen soon gained the interest of listeners and the media. She was one of the main acquisitions of the music association Nový horizont, which had its base in the first rock club of the "new type" Rock Café in Prague.

The song "Po ftópóch szímělých železnik" was one of the biggest hits of 1990. This was immediately followed by an invitation to perform in the USA, where Toyen was one of the first Czech bands to play, among other things, at the legendary club CBGB's. Her music video Last Free Swans - after the band switched to English - for the title track of the debut album, was included in the MTV broadcast. Toyen returned to Czech on the next album Malíř smutnej, recorded in 1993, when Ivo Heger was replaced by guitarist Jiří Křivka. The band played with him before the Depeche Mode concert in Prague. In 1997, she released the third album Ia Orana and went silent. Since 2009, he appears very sporadically on club and festival stages in the most famous line-up.