Podcast: PARASOL ELEKTRONICZNY. Czech Republic+Slovakia, by Felix Kubin

Podcast: PARASOL ELEKTRONICZNY. RUMOURS FROM THE EASTERN UNDERGROUND #2. Czech Republic and Slovakia
Curated by Felix Kubin
A decade after the end of the communist regime, Czech and Slovakian
underground musicians began channeling the national legacy of
progressive dissident rock to virgin soil. Their new amalgams consist of
mechanical sound art, free improvisation, 8-bit folklore and industrial
club culture.
Link: http://bit.ly/lMEejg
Related info: http://bit.ly/jRPWiK

Summary:
Part two of PARASOL ELEKTRONICZNY. RUMOURS FROM THE EASTERN UNDERGROUND
explores the music scenes of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Our local
umbrella agents were Miloš Vojtechovský and Zuzana 'Friday' Přikrylová.
Miloš is part of an older generation that witnessed the transitory
period from the communist era to the Velvet Revolution in 1989. He is
currently one of the main curators at the prolific cultural center
Školská 28 in Prague. Zuzana, a journalist and media theorist from Brno,
was born in 1989. For PARASOL ELEKTRONICZNY she focused on the young
scene that has formed around folk-inspired club noise pop in Brno and
Bratislava.
While Prague's current underground consists of a fragmented series of
circles and sub-genres that tend to keep within their own boundaries,
the Moravian scene in Brno is more compact and strongly influenced by
the legacy of the European Rock In Opposition movement. The four artists
interviewed by Miloš Vojtechovský and Petr Vrba – Peter Graham (aka
Jaroslav Štastný), Ivan Palacký, Tomáš Procházka (aka Federsel) and Petr
Ferenc – grew up in these two musical epicentres of the Czech Republic.
They all mention progressive rock as an early influence but also point
out the importance of improvisation and Cagean aleatorics in their
music, which is an approach that doesn't yet have a long tradition in
their home country. According to Peter Graham, who graduated from the
Janáček Academy of Music in Brno, forward-thinking academic music was so
zealously suppressed by the communist regime that the alternative rock
scene - represented mainly by a dark visionary style of the Czech
underground school of rock groups as Plastic People of the Universe, or
DG 307 - became a haven for all younger generations of musical
dissidents.
'The 1970s and 1980s were the decades of the rigid Neo-Stalinist regime
installed by Soviet tanks in 1968 following Czechoslovakia's brief
experiment in cultural and political liberalisation. It was an epoch
that brought centralist control and conformism to the Czech arts. For
long years, official contemporary music concerts were grey and boring
affairs. Conservatism also ruled the music schools where composition was
taught. (…) [However, some composers] tended to see themselves as the
successors of the Czech avant-garde of the 1960s, i.e. of groups of
composers who at the time were ostracised and driven underground into a
position of musical dissent.' (Miroslav Pudlák, 'Czech composers in the
post-modern era', Chamber music – Czech Music CD Series 1, 2007)
When the situation of artists relaxed in 1989, the younger generation
was able to draw on a rich underground culture that had continued to
exist during the communist regime.
From the sound aesthetics of surreal Czechoslovakian films to the
expressionist soundtracks by Zdeněk Liška  (represented in this feature
by short jingles and film excerpts) and the late experiments of
Palacký/Graham and Petr Ferenc' Birds Build Nests Underground (BBNU),
many of the works share a fascination with mechanics. These take the
form of different organisms, such as Ivan Palacký's amplified knitting
machine, Jan Švankmajer's human food apparatus in the macabre film
trilogy 'Jídlo', and BBNU's improvised cinema of sound. Then there is
Tomáš Procházka, a musician from Prague who is involved in the DIY
multidisciplinary group Handa Gote and the neo-Krautrock band B4 and
also works as a puppeteer, following the famous tradition of Czech
puppet theatre with its taste for the demonic and grotesque. The
leitmotif connecting all of these artists is the incantation of
imaginary machines, sound alchemy and catoptrics.
As Zuzana Přikrylová's research shows, the younger generation is more at
home in the digital realm of playful, edgy beats and cut-ups and has
strong ties to club culture. Bands like Hugo & Zoe from Brno and Kyl
The Sistem from Bratislava have created something of a folk
exploitation craze, where improvisation is more evident in the social
context than in the music. During the interviews, their playful and
dynamic way of talking effortlessly shifts from statements to songs,
dramatic quotations and beatbox noises.
Michal Lichý of Urban Sounds Collective sees his roots in industrial
culture, modern architecture and noisy club music. Like Kyl The Sistem,
Lichý is based in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, where the scene is
less fragmented than its equivalent in Prague. 'We help each other,' he
says, pointing out how important it is that the collective can organize
events without external financial support. 'Everyone who comes to play
in Slovakia will find that the audience is very open-minded and
warm-hearted whereas the political culture is corrupt and mainly focused
on profit.'  In their typical sarcastic madcap style, Kyl the Sistem
express this in a simple phrase: 'The hearts are empty, we are
nihilistic but still full of love!.'
Felix Kubin, 2011.05.07  

Featured artists (in order of appearance)
Ivan Palacký and Peter Graham (Jaroslav Štastný) – Brno (CZ)
Federsel (Tomáš Procházka) – Prague (CZ)
Birds Build Nests Underground (Petr Ferenc, Michal Brunclik and Martin Ježek) – Prague (CZ)
Hugo & Zoe (Johana Merta, Ondřej Merta and David Merta) – Brno (CZ)
Kyl the Sistem (Mungular Bubu and BOOM Fonda Spacey) – Bratislava (SK)
Urban Failure (Michal Lichý) – Bratislava (SK)
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