In today’s Romanian society, few topics have the power to polarize as much as Manele (the more commonly used plural for manea) music – a genre of contemporary pop music with Oriental/Balkan influences – owned, produced, and played by the Roma societies spread for centuries throughout various geographic areas of the country.
Published November, 2024
A talk with the representatives of Ankali & Planeta Za, underground gems of the Prague night life, inspired by a random visit to the venue by Bori for MMN Magazine.
Published November, 2024
Zosia Hołubowska’s music comes alive with multilayered mythical environments, emotive landscapes, fairytale-ish characters, and mystical concepts engraved in plots profound and unique in their conception and execution, well-rooted in time while defiantly spiraling towards the unknown.
Published November, 2024
Nina Maštruko’s write-up on the past ten years of Zagreb’s underground music scene.
Published October, 2024
Gábor Erlich presents ICKPA (spark in Ukrainian), a Kyïv-born festival promoting underground music and culture from Ukraine, Georgia, and beyond.
Published October, 2024
Taking the example of a recently launched large-scale EU cooperation project of 10 festivals to understand how they’re paving the way of the future of electronic live music.
Published October, 2024
An analysis of the tulnic – a woodwind instrument found only in the Apuseni Mountains.
Published October, 2024
The underground music scene in Budapest is alive with the rebellious energy of female artists challenging both the status quo and the lingering sexism of the industry.
Published October, 2024
It’s not the end, but it’s an end of an era — UH Fest concludes its second chapter this week.
Published October, 2024
Interview with composer, performer and music researched Elia Moretti about his artistic motivations, practice-based research in the context of institutional precarity, and his interest in outsiderism and unfamiliarity.
Published September, 2024
S2N gathers some of the most interesting artists, performers and speakers working with community radios from across Eastern, Central and Northern Europe. Curated and hosted by Cashmere Radio and Easterndaze, S2N has emerged from several years of discursive and creative online collaboration with community radios from across Europe.
Published September, 2024
Hayden Potter visits the experimental electronic music gathering in the rolling rural landscape of the Jizera Mountains.
Published September, 2024
Budapest-based composer and DJ Obwigszyh discusses his residency in Sweden, his creative methods, his upcoming material, and a new project.
Published September, 2024
Interview with Andrei Yemelianov – explorer, seeker and gatherer of early jazz, rock and lyrical pop song samples from the Caucasus through his label Maqame Daxe (“beautiful melody” in Circassian).
Published August, 2024
Prague-based Czech producer and DJ Martina Svobodová on turns the focus on herself with her debut album, released on the esteemed Mexican label Infinite Machine, seeking self-understanding by healing the wounds life can inflict on each and every one of us.
Published August, 2024
The 4th edition of Slovak experimental n:ear festival took place in Banská Štiavnica, central Slovakia. Focusing on all kinds of experimental music, the festival combines local and international artists and perfomers with a wide range of artistic expression, also with allusions to traditional music.
Published August, 2024
Exactly one year to the day since the release of his last album Smutné stropy (Sad Ceilings), one of the most remarkable Slovak recordings of the last year, the follow-up EP to Žiadzasamy is being released via the Weltschmerzen label. Bolka studied sonology in The Hague.
Published July, 2024
It can be challenging to pinpoint the precise origins of hyperpop as a musical genre. The term was first used in the 1980s in connection with the Scottish band Cocteau Twins, but they can hardly be described as the predecessors, let alone pioneers of the genre.
Published July, 2024
The illiberal frenzy has hit Georgia hard. Gábor Erlich sketches out some of the key challenges facing this tiny gem of a country in the South Caucasus — including its creators, selectors, promoters, clubs, venues, electronic music scene, and its entire civil society as such. Essentially: of 2024 in Eastern Europe.
Published July, 2024
At the brink of the emerging summer tropical heat, we spoke to experimental duo SSRI about urban illness, the creative process behind their new album, and Łódź’s thriving musical scene.
Published July, 2024
This year, you don't have to choose which small festival to attend. We've looked into what to expect from the joint venture between Pavilon and Terra Kontra this July in Felsőtárkány.
Published June, 2024
Founded in 2013 by Bulat Khalilov and Timur Kodzoko, Ored Recordings is a pioneering label dedicated to documenting and preserving the traditional and post-traditional music of the North Caucasus. Through field recordings, dinner parties, communal gatherings and local festivities, the label has captured a wide range of musical traditions and manifestations, from Circassian epic sagas to Cossack songs and Sufi rituals in Chechnya.
Published June, 2024
At the age of the great alienation and dopamine addiction due to short format content dump, creating something that sticks and brings people together can feel like a task for Sisyphus. Promoters and organisers fight for audiences and venues and challenge themselves by finding the perfect date for their release or event.
Published June, 2024
Written by Tiiu Meiner The ways we move our bodies are deeply ingrained in us and influenced by cultural teachings. These movements, collectively shared and practiced, play a significant role in shaping our societies, becoming living repositories of our cultural heritage.
Published June, 2024
At first glance, the sonic worlds of Ukrainian labels Muscut and Shukai sound very similar. While the aesthetics of both share the sound of the nostalgic allure of blurred, overdubbed tape loops, they diverge in their creative approach.
Published June, 2024
The PÉNZ collective coined (invented?) a trademark sound and vibe within the Budapest nightlife scene. Considering that they’ve been active for almost a decade, perhaps it’s not too much of a stretch to discuss their “life’s work”.
Published May, 2024
We continue our collaboration with the Oramics collective, focusing on the north Polish collective DEKONSTRUKT. Here you can read an interview by Zosia Holubowska with KAROLINDA, a musical project by a queer interdisciplinary artist Karo Linda, who is fascinated by bass, strong beat, and skittering rhythms.
Published May, 2024
Between Lučenec and Banská Štiavnica, Jakub Juhás, founder of the mappa label, forms soundscapes that naturally wander between the real and the fictional. Be it sonic ecosystems of ponds or eclectic electronics drowned in the meditative sound of organs.
Published May, 2024
Oramics is a queer feminist artist platform established in 2017 to support and empower femme, non-binary, and queer artists on the Polish electronic and club music scene and to promote music from the Eastern-European region. To give more context you can check out the podcast research showing that despite a wide range of talents and initiatives, artists from the area are rarely invited to show their art in international podcast series.
Published May, 2024
Not many bands have had as big an impact on me as Makrohang. I was in mourning for quite a while when they disappeared from the scene.
Published May, 2024
He discovered his musical role models on TV Očko when he was thirteen years old. He grew up listening to alternative pop by Ethel Cain and Lana del Rey, and developed his own musical expression in the folklore ensemble Romka.
Published April, 2024
Lukasz Polowczyk is a Berlin-based sound artist, poet, and educator. His artistic practice is based around the protocols of translating the poetic intentionality of an idea across a variety of expressions and media.
Published April, 2024
The festival Nebuloza hosted to some 130 people over the weekend of 18-20 August 2023 near Koceljeva, an hour away from Belgrade. While mixing different genres of electronic music, this underground event stands out from a rave culture struggling to survive in the face of Serbia's traditional venues and festivals.
Published April, 2024
Line Gate, currently an one-person project of Michalovce-born and Prague-based musician Michal Vaľko, started with first public performance in 2011, later reformed as quintet consisting of Marta Laurincová (cello), Ľubor Kučera (bass), Jakub Lysý (piano), Michal Vaľko (guitar, vocals), Martina Mazániková (drums), which released their first album Split Lines in 2013.
Published March, 2024
In talks with (Működésben in Hungarian) is a new series started out on MMN Magazine, that features interviews with notable figures of the local Hungarian and international electronic music scene. The focus of the interviews is on artistic practices and creative methods, but of course, each interview touches upon other topics too, may that be a more specific or a general one, including past events or future plans.
Published March, 2024
In this article we talk about independent music journalism, challenges and solutions, and a new project to tackle some of the challenges and implement some of the solutions.
Published March, 2024
Bratislava-based label Warm Winters Ltd. strives to weave a tender musical tapestry.
Published March, 2024
Or the idiosyncratic topography of contemporary Slovak folk-music
Published March, 2024
Where is the new generation of Slovak rap heading? Slovakia is a small country with large regional disparities. This results in the experienced binary division into the more developed West with the capital city Bratislava and the East, which remains in the shadow of the Western part.
Published March, 2024
With the ATOPIA collaborative residency, Rokolectiv Festival brought together Ukrainian musician Maryana Klochko and Bucharest producers Ion D and Inana to work on new music outputs. On this occasion, we caught up with Future Nuggets’ Ion D and Inana to talk about the Romanian music scene, pop, TikTok, and speculative philosophy.
Published July, 2023
Live broadcast event on December 9, 2022, including a panel on community radios moderated by Ieva Gudaityte. December 9, 2022 sees the second Easterndaze On Air radio day.
Published December, 2022
Community radios from Central and Eastern Europe connected through the Easterndaze Berlin platform. Easterndaze Berlin On Air facilitated conversation and exchange between diverse voices which you can follow both locally and all over the world.
Published June, 2021
From March to September 2021 As the world is unraveling this past year, cultural events in physical space remain postponed indefinitely. Most of these happenings have shifted online with artists and audiences atomized across the world, connecting via 0s and 1s.
Published June, 2021
The 3rd edition of our Berlin encounters brought together collectives, thinkers, ideas and people from avantgarde digital sonics of Conditional vs Serious Serious, to manele vs Brazilian performance courtesy of Paradaiz and Voodoohop to art to techno/electro/acid from Forbidden Planet and Mechta, to talks about the relevance of notions of East and West nowadays, the precariousness of cultural endeavours and necessity to be active and try to change existing societies in the face of adversity (rising rightwing, nationalism, xenophobia, lack of resources, etc). Here are some of the moments.
Published December, 2019
On Saturday the accompanying talk curated by Kajet Journal is held at the exhibition and space of ZÖNOTÉKA in Neukölln, and takes up central topics on the theme “Subcultural Peripheries: Remapping the East”. Event takes place on Saturday from 4pm, Facebook event here.
Published November, 2019
The Brasil-Berlin cultural underground activist collective Voodoohop pioneered the new Latin American downtempo sound. Though it was started in Sao Paulo, Brazil, their party series has since expanded to a Berlin outpost with events appearing regularly around town at different venues creating a multi sensory tropical cabaret.
Published November, 2019
Forbidden Planet is a label, radio show and party started in Montreal, Canada. They operate partly from Berlin, and their sound pays homage to the subterranean basements of the German capital (especially in its more underground, 90s semblance).
Published November, 2019
PARADAIZ TAPE MAȘINA is a DJ duo based in Bucharest that exclusively plays original hand-picked muzică de petrecere and early Manele cassettes. Manele is a musical genre from the Balkans, also described as contemporary Romani wedding music.
Published October, 2019
Conditional is a record label dedicated to forward-facing electronic and computer music, established in 2015 by Calum Gunn and based in Berlin, Germany. Releases are primarily disseminated on cassette tapes, but have included vinyl, CDs, lanyard, t-shirts, video games and posters.
Published October, 2019
Serious Serious is a label/collective based between Vienna and Tallinn. Their roster varies from cut’n’paste maestro Ratkiller, to existential beatmaker Benzokai and several artists from the Tallinn underground.
Published October, 2019
THIRD EDITION OF FESTIVAL CONTINUES TO PAIR ELECTRONIC MUSIC COLLECTIVES OF EASTERN EUROPE + BERLIN TO CELEBRATE DIY ARTS & COMMUNAL ETHOS 28-30 November 2019 Various venues in Berlin Tickets for each event can be purchased directly at the door. The Easterndaze x Berlin festival once again invites artists, actors and activists from the electronic music scene of Eastern Europe to Berlin, pairing them with locally-based labels/collectives for live performances, DJ sets and talks.
Published October, 2019
Cranky bow is the psychedelic step-son of Gábor Kovács. A weird and often absurd collage-project that deals with the forgotten members of the audio-spectrum.
Published June, 2019
The compilation was inspired by the concept and initiative of Easterndaze festival as for collective collaboration bringing together three different art projects but similar mindsets, geographically, virtually and symbolically. Formed in Montreal, 2012, Total Black is a record label presently based in Berlin releasing noise, industrial, power electronics, and experimental music.
Published November, 2018
FESTIVAL SHOWCASES COLLECTIVES OF EASTERN EUROPE + BERLIN SECOND EDITION FROM NOV 28 - DEC 1 2018 AT VARIOUS VENUES Beyond folklore clichés and Cold War discourse, below the radar of the tastemaking music press, DIY, alternative, independent music scenes are thriving in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2010, Easterndaze has explored and mapped local DIY scenes operating in a digital realm, introducing the creative personalities and collectives behind them to provide context.
Published November, 2018
Timur Dzhafarov aka John Object is a producer based in Kiev, Ukraine. We met & interviewed him in autumn 2017, while waiting for a gig in Kiev’s Plivka.
Published August, 2018
https://www.mixcloud.
Published May, 2018
ACC Records is a new label established in 2018, drawing upon the longstanding activities of Flora Pitrolo who has been tirelessly documenting music made before – but not exclusively - 1989. She works as a radio journalist on the London community radio Resonance FM, and is an avid listener and collector.
Published March, 2018
https://www.mixcloud.
Published February, 2018
Intruder Alert is a crew based in Warsaw. Navigating in the murky waters of “post-club” music, referencing rave (with projects such as “Sentimental Rave”), acid, techno, “global” ambient and various mutations of DAW-driven bass music.
Published December, 2017
We are starting a new collaboration with Berlin’s experimental radio Cashmere. Listen to our first show below, exploring the topics of capitalism, geography, with plenty of new/upcoming musics from our friends and beyond.
Published December, 2017
Umbra is the solo project of Belgrade-based Marija Balubdzic. Umbra is a music project she started as a teenager.
Published September, 2017
The new video called ‘Másik Hold’ (the Other Moon) by Budapest-based Gergő Ofner is an interesting, pseudo-political trip accompanied by another young Hungarian artist’s strong audio poem. The subway line no.
Published August, 2017
https://www.mixcloud.
Published July, 2017
low income $quad is a Croatian imprint, operating since 2015 as a DIY project rather than a business, without any fucks given, as it’s self-proclamatory title implies. It’s focus lies firmly on the dance floor, embracing its gritty corners, full of detours and delineations while sticking to the 4/4 formula.
Published July, 2017
Two noteworthy compilations have popped up in the space of a month showcasing the best of Polish underground/bedroom electronics. Although it’s slightly ridiculous to group musicians according to their passport - there’s no such thing as the Sound of Poland, or the Sound of Hungary, these two compilations are a vigorous example of the thriving state of this tiny, but increasingly exciting scene.
Published June, 2017
Endless Illusion is a Prague-based collective which has been exploring various forms of analogue sound through genres like minimal wave, electro, acid and techno. Aside from organising events and a radio show on the respected Dutch radio Intergalactic FM, they also release music – the current under an eponymous name and historical under the moniker Jupiter08.
Published May, 2017
Although the international reputation of the country, whose PM hailed illiberal democracy as his preferred NWO, is not the best (to say the least), there’s a parallel culture that largely operates independently of state-run infrastructure, creating several microcosms with their own audiences and worldviews, implicitly turning against misogyny, discrimination, narrow-mindedness, and reflecting the techno-dystopian times we are living in at the moment. “…The goal of our underground is to create a second culture, a culture completely independent from all official communication media and the conventional hierarchy of value judgements put out by the establishment”, wrote Ivan Jirous, a member of The Plastic People of the Universe, in 1975.
Published April, 2017
The Budapest-based label Farbwechsel has been relatively dormant in the last two years, but that wouldn’t be obvious from their latest opus magnum - a 17 track compilation that gathers producers from their roster, friends and like-minded knob-twisters. Sonically, it’s as diverse as its title promises - from the straighter strains of techno and house of the likes of Imre Kiss and Mike Nylons, through weirder, more quirky endeavours by the likes of 12z and academic and sound artist Zlatko Baracskai.
Published April, 2017
Bratislava’s music scene is vital. There are several noteworthy producers, projects, clubs and lately also labels.
Published April, 2017
Three years after his brain-twisting, mind-expanding, lucid sonic opus that was his self-titled debut album on our sister label, Baba Vanga, the elusive Czech artist returns to our imprint with his new outing, deepening the fractured rhythmic structures while oscillating in a territory that touches upon “techno”, or “house”, but always ends up in a space that’s decidedly his own. It’s a type of music that falls within the cracks, and willingly so.
Published March, 2017
The mysterious, obtuse and bare-knuckle avant-garde There Is No Conclusion is a release from the collective improvisations of Krzysztof ‘Arszyn’ Topolski, Tomasz Duda and the duo formerly recognized as Paper Cuts (Wojtek Kurek and Lukasz Kacperczyk), released on Warsaw based label Pawlacz Perski. It’s three pieces of abstract sounds and free jazz orientated improv music; two of which ascend the ten minute mark, fighting structure and linear characteristics of ‘traditional music’.
Published March, 2017
Artyom Astrov is a multifaceted artist whose area of interest transgresses music, visual arts and poetry. He currently lives and works in the Estonian capital Tallinn.
Published February, 2017
I read somewhere a little while ago about the link between electronic music and the historical and artistic movement of post-modernism; that some of the greatest and most interesting electronic music has deeply rooted influence and perhaps elements of post-modernism within it. Said elements were defined as heightened forms of musical abstraction, minimalism, avant-garde and experimental to counteract the ‘blandness’ of the previous period (Modernism), and many more.
Published February, 2017
Won James Won is a collective of musicians based between St Petersburg and Moscow. Established in 2003, the noise/rock band has put out a number of releases, cementing their status as one of the most prolific artists on the Russian underground scene.
Published February, 2017
Asio otus’ latest album hovers on the liminal borders - oscillating in a ghostly non-space, a soundtrack to a landscape that is still and content with its non-suggestive desolateness. Asio otus is the moniker of Marton Toth, a Hungarian producer currently living and working in Portugal.
Published January, 2017
The timeless quality of music tends to be overestimated. A stamp of time, a diary of a singular moment never to be repeated again, a confluence of various impulses and influences add character, carving out shapes and patterns from a mass of nondescript time-space.
Published December, 2016
We have collaborated with Norient for several years now, exchanging articles and having been invited to their “Seismographic Sounds” exhibition which they curated at CTM Festival in Berlin. “The network for global and local sounds and media culture” has been digging around the world to source new sounds and, importantly, the context they were created in - preceding and spearheading the surging interest in global sonic cultures.
Published December, 2016
Far above these steep gorges, on unreachable plateaus, there are pastures of mountain’s wild life. A verdure under direct pressure of gray clouds.
Published December, 2016
“And so begins the final dramaIn the streets and in the fields” Well, this article will be about the lyrics of the Hungarian rock band GUSTAVE TIGER, because they have very strange lyrics.Those are full with historical, mythological and literary references.
Published November, 2016
Pawlacz Perski is a Warsaw-based label that embodies the sprawling cassette underground by releasing genre-less music, a luxury allowed by running a tape label without having to worry about flogging products and targeting audiences. Their latest - 37th! - release comes courtesy of the inanely titled Computer Says No project by Jakub Pokorski.
Published November, 2016
We were invited by No Fear of Pop to present our upcoming event in Berlin. We played a lot of tracks and talked (quite a bit).
Published September, 2016
Czaszka is a relatively new addition to the sprawling tape scene. Established by Polish expats Michal Fundowicz and Karolina Pietrzyk and Oliver Spieker living in Edinburgh and Berlin respectively, Czaska is hard to categorise in terms of sonics - and better so.
Published September, 2016
My friendship with Justyna Banaszczyk (aka FOQL) has begun thanks to Darek Pietraszewski (who runs the label Pointless Geometry with Kaśka Królikowska) who introduced me to her music. It had resonated with me very much and as a result she played at one of „za duszno” parties (which I organize together with Piotr Tkacz).
Published August, 2016
September 28 - October 9, 2016 (Silent Green Kulturquartier, Lichtblick Kino Berlin) Beyond folklore clichés and Cold War discourse, below the radar of the tastemaking music press, DIY, alternative, independent music scenes are thriving in Central and Eastern Europe: from electronics and noise to ironic-deconstructive takes on traditional and marginalized local musical styles like Manele and Chalga. The blog Easterndaze (easterndaze.
Published August, 2016
In autumn 2015, I was working on an article about the Slovak music scene on Bandcamp for contemporary culture magazine ¾ (that issue has plenty of writing on Slovak music). The main method was to scrape the metadata of all releases with Slovakia related geographical tags and map it all out based on labels, volume of releases, genres, and geography.
Published July, 2016
Genot Centre is one of the latest additions to the thriving tape label scene. As has become typical for this medium and its milieu, their output is eclecitc, ranging from drone to footwork.
Published June, 2016
In January 2016, Norient invited us for a talk at CTM Festival. Listen to the podcast from our lecture entitled: Easterndaze: DIY Sonic Topographies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Published May, 2016
Mazut is a new duo that emerged from the thriving Polish underground music scene. Centred around the wonderful (and prolific) imprint BDTA, Mazut (waste oil in English) is an experimental platform for venting rage with doses of tranquility.
Published April, 2016
Meteorismo is a Prague-based label which explores a so-called invisible scene. It sources obscure recordings from various remote areas – both musical and geographical.
Published April, 2016
Új Bála is a solo project by Gábor Kovács, a Hungarian musician and visual artist. Active in numerous music projects, Új Bála sees him embrace the (basement) dancefloor.
Published April, 2016
This special podcast was made for Norient’s Seismographic Sounds exhibition that took place in 2015/2016 at various events and venues, including ZKM in Karlsruhe and CTM Festival in Berlin. The theme of the exhibition aims to offer broader perspective of global happenings within the music scene and its wider contexts.
Published March, 2016
Somnoroase Pasarele. The birds that left the cage.
Published February, 2016
Traumas are sketches from life. Life is made of traumatic sketches.
Published January, 2016
Puma & The Dolphin at first may sound a little strange. The combination of these two very different animals has become the name of the new project by the Bulgarian producer Nikko Names, known for his beat-driven duo 1000names associated with Project Mooncircle.
Published December, 2015
Identity as a fluid interstate, forever becoming, never being. Benzokai’s benzoid beats and haunting vocal delivery – at times adopting an animalistic, beastly form - are a dystopian paean.
Published December, 2015
ghettopalm: https://www.youtube.
Published November, 2015
It’s only fitting that this record has come out on the Estonian label Eesti Pops - not shying away from pop, without necessarily having to rely on its emptied out tropes too much. What is pop anyway these days? Far from being a dark and occult paean to Crowley’s magick, this “Magick” freely shifts between ambient/drone/post/dance/synth/kraut/pop/vocal experiments.
Published November, 2015
Out of the bona fide hyperactive Polish sonic underground, BDTA is the wonderfully odd standout - releasing anything from Bulgarian field recordings to a number of idiosyncratic records by the likes of Fischerle, Wsie or Bartek Kujawski. Uncompromising and weird (not in a premeditated way) is their ethos.
Published November, 2015
Molly’s debut on the Czech DIY label Stoned To Death Records is a bona fide journey into the world of synthetic sounds - with plenty of noodling, twisting and tweaking, filtering and arpeggio(ing). No wonder one of the tags on his Bandcamp album page is John Carpenter, the legendary synthaholic.
Published October, 2015
Kokum’s sound harks back to those times in musical history that cherished the primordial and the raw. A ritualistic narrative inspired by his interest in “primitive ancient things” and his search for what is irredeemably lost.
Published October, 2015
There’s something primordial about noise. The rawness and unhindered ways of sound, the sound almost hijacking its maker and using him or her as its medium.
Published September, 2015
“Ātman is a Sanskrit word that means inner self or soul. In Hindu philosophy, especially in the Vedanta school of Hinduism, Atman is the first principle, the true self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essence of an individual.
Published August, 2015
Before the fall of communism, holidays in Bulgaria used to be - apart from Croatia - a package holiday bliss for sea-hungry workers from the Eastern European region. Cheap and cheerful, the Bulgarian seaside with its Black Sea was a treasured annual getaway.
Published August, 2015
Bartosz Zaskórski is a Polish illustrator and occasional musician. According to his own words, he likes to draw “ trash-like things the most”.
Published July, 2015
“A BMW is waiting for me in front of the house, calm down…” “I don’t give a fuck about the world, or you…” “I took half a crystal last night, and today a whole spiral” Existential drone courtesy of Výklenkové Reznancie is the perfect backdrop to the brutalist socialist realist legacy - one of the largest concrete block estates in Central Europe called Petržalka. Its mildly post-apocalyptic look typical for Eastern European socialist housing is somehow made more forlorn and dystopian in Bratislava.
Published July, 2015
From April 17 to June 12, 2015 we have tried to encapsulate what we have been doing in the last five years through a gallery exhibition and a series of events, which aimed to highlight the thriving DIY culture that has flourished in this region. Dozens of excellent music videos, which - with a dose of inherent irony - employ and subvert the cliches of “Eastern topography” - the concrete blocks (ghettos, right?), the ostentatious display of consumer goods, and the lo-fi aesthetic (more by necessity than choice) were displayed in the pristine white cube gallery space Higgs Field in the centre off Budapest as part of the two-month OFF Biennále Budapest, which was basically a statement against the current political status quo in Hungary.
Published June, 2015
When I first heard Střed Světa - after his friend sent us his demos - I was on a train embarking on another monotonous ride through picturesque environs of the Czech and Slovak landscapes - from valleys and plains of Southern Slovakia to the green hills, woods, flickers of sunshine and small industrial towns of the Czech Republic, passing by like flickers of visual hallucination. It was probably sometime in 2011.
Published May, 2015
Experimental electronic music in Slovakia may be overlooked by the public, but its scene is not only quite big, but such a music has quite long and rich tradition here. During the socialist era in the Eastern Bloc, possibilities for creating such music were very limited.
Published April, 2015
From 17th of April until 12th of June 2015, Easterndaze is curating a an audiovisual exhibition in Budapest as part of its OFF Biennale exhibition in the Higgs Gallery. At the forefront of the two month event are music videos, as well as events which aim to centre around labels which constantly push the boundaries of their respective fields.
Published April, 2015
In the past, we’ve written about Gruska on Easterndaze in connection with his project Binmatu, his label LOM or the festival ZVŮK. This interview focuses exclusively on Gruska’s active work and thinking about field recordings.
Published April, 2015
Visionaries & Vagabonds is a long album. Over one hour long, which is really ambitious considering that many artists are not able to show consistent results over such a length.
Published March, 2015
Erik Sikora lives and works in the Mecca of eastern Slovakia, Košice. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and in Slovakia is known as the one who can naturally, without artificial means, drugs or any other devices cause unbounded joy, delight, and release of endorphins, simply a process he calls “Tešba” (Joy).
Published March, 2015
If you take a look on the album notes, you will find out that some excerpts of this release were recorded in 2009 already. And that is actually not the time when Tatratank started to make music.
Published March, 2015
Noise, gushing confusely and irregularly out of life, is never totally revealed to us and it keeps in store innumerable surprises for our benefit. Noise School is a tape compilation released in the beginning of the year by the defiantly DIY label Trash Can Dance, run by the effervescent Gert Moser, a cook by day, an avid patron of Estonian underground by night.
Published March, 2015
The idea to release a split came from ◊►≈ sometimes in the sumer of last year. It was a good challenge for us because we had just bought a synth few months prior to that and started to work on new material.
Published March, 2015
Farbwechsel’s inaugural vinyl release aims high. This compilation contains 4 tracks, 2 of them Farbwechsel’s core (Route8/S Olbricht) alongside their likeminded fellows.
Published February, 2015
Decay, decomposition, destruction. Kh'lulu is a fledgling 20-year old musician based between Moscow and Belgrade.
Published February, 2015
The Annual Art Birthday celebration is a worldwide tradition established in 1973. When Fluxus artist Robert Filliou set the celebration day for 17th of January, happenings, concerts and other expressive forms of paying tribute to the alma mater of society’s soul took place.
Published February, 2015
A shimmering coating envelopes the buoyant beats, that retain an inherent nostalgia, not in a sentimental sense, but in a sense of extatic retro bonvivant atmosphere. No wonder one of his unwitting influences was Hieroglyphic Being, notable for his idiosyncratic approach to dance music.
Published January, 2015
I stumbled across the mysterious tumblr Future Nuggets five years ago, which professed to champion “psychedelic sounds and obscure musical hybrids collected from the dark and hidden corners of romania”. The calling of the wild, the touch of Orient, Romania basks on the thresholds of East and West, and during our repeated visits - first in 2010 - and then later in 2013, we have met many people who have managed to make their positioning on the double periphery an advantage (periphery within Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe as a periphery of Europe, in general).
Published January, 2015
Two idiosyncratic compilations/mixtapes have come to light at the murky period of the end of the year, perhaps - unjustly - lost amid the glitzy xmess lights and bonhomie. Both are authored by one of the most intriguing personas of the Czech experimental music scene Jára Tarnovski.
Published January, 2015
2014 has been great for music. Many new musicians, albums, labels came to life, presenting adventurous and uncompromising music.
Published December, 2014
Samčo, Brat Dážďoviek in the unconventional music waters of Slovakia, as well as the Czech Republic, is a well-known character. With the look of a perpetual nomad, he moves through various musical genres, turning them upside down, armed with playfullness of a child, bending and deconstructing them, until they reach a point where they profess the sign of “Samčo-esque” poetics.
Published December, 2014
Farbwechsel’s recent releases are becoming more different, offering a broader range of musical genres. This change is welcome since their lo-fi and dreamy house-driven sound slowly started to become a bit worn-out.
Published December, 2014
The deep, bassy echo chamber emits sound into uncanny and slightly disquieting stillness, cloaked in serene atmospherics, designed to lull its listener into a state of bromazepam trance. Aleksandra Grünholz is a Warsaw-based musician and graphic designer, whose project We Will Fail, has slowly carved its mark onto the post/dance scene of Poland and beyond.
Published December, 2014
Új Bála is side project of the singer of Der Tanz, a Hungarian noise-rock band. Whilst in his band, he transforms into a Ian Curtis-like crooner delivering his baritone with intensity and fervour, Új Bála is more introspective or introverted.
Published December, 2014
Slovakia is not only a small, but also quite an isolated country. Due to its mountainous terrain, it takes a lot of time to travel inside the country, and the biggest towns (Košice, Bratislava) are located on periphery.
Published November, 2014
Not so long ago the Slovak Publishing Exitab launched into his world and a well hidden secret child born in silence, from one day to the next. Its sublabel Proto Sites adopted almost naturally a status of a platform aiming at a more abstract position of electronic music, the area that is open for far horizons, and in which it is possible to repeatedly spend time.
Published November, 2014
LOM has started a new series called „Fields“ and right off the bat, its first release offers two Slovak musicians, both of them members of the Urbsounds collective, one of the first Slovak experimental labels with punk flavoured ethics. Daniel Kordík (also one half on rhytmic noise duo Jamka) has previously released field recording album covering sounds of Syria.
Published November, 2014
Amen Tma is a project of Danky & Acidmilk. The ideas, sounds, atmospheres and thought processes on the album Insect Phonetics Research had been growing for three years.
Published November, 2014
Jozef Tušan has decided to remain musically active despite the fact that his main project BIOS is now put on hold. As he still operates from east Slovakia, Košice, it is quite difficult for him and his musical partner to keep the project steady, although they still have ocassional concerts as BIOS, the focus of both band members has shifted towards different projects, БРАДА in case of Boris and in Tušan’s case, O // //.
Published November, 2014
“I work with artists for freedom of work and creation, it is important. I value the spirit of collective creation, searching for joy of free energy.
Published November, 2014
Andrej Danóczi is a rare beast on the Slovak experimental scene. A self-proclaimed lonesome rider, a workaholic (operating between experimental film, music and photography) living in Trenčín (Western Slovakia).
Published November, 2014
We met under the town hall clock, the venerable Old Town of Tallinn, built between 13th and 16th centuries, a living museum of sorts. Neat, clean, pretty and quiet.
Published October, 2014
Future Nuggets is a collective based in Bucharest, Romania. The sprawling capital, the last bastion of self-contained anarchy spiced up with oriental flavours and post-communist malaise.
Published October, 2014
Saturated media ecologies. Hypermediated economy of attention.
Published October, 2014
It took almost two years to finish this album and rumours circulating in the Bratislava scene regarding Amen Tma (which roughly translates as Amen Darkness) were hidden under a veil of mystery. Apart from a couple of live performances and singles put out quite a long time ago, Amen Tma remained silent working on their debut release entitled Insect Phonetics Research.
Published October, 2014
With its almost 60 releases spanning over a period of five years over a continuum of formats physical and digital, the Slovak label Exitab has become an influential platform for local producers of mostly accessible, beat-oriented electronica. With its sublabel Proto Sites it ventures into more abstract and dreamy, synthy territories as manifest on its first release.
Published October, 2014
Gábor Lázár is back. Not much time has passed since we - positively - reviewed his previous album and now his reach bounds to get even wider, as Boomkat’s label The Death of Rave has decided to support this young Hungarian experimental artist coinciding with the rising interest in the Budapest music scene which slowly, but surely infiltrates international music magazines.
Published October, 2014
“In Romania we have the advantage of oriental culture, it was close and everybody talks about it as if it was something bad. But it’s good, we have an advantage.
Published September, 2014
ZVŮK has launched its journey across Bratislava urbanism in September 2013. It was then that Jonáš Gruska, the head of the Slovak label LOM which gathers artists from various corners of experimental music, chose the spot under the bridge Apollo in the capital for his event.
Published September, 2014
Whereas in his other project, Lightning Glove, the sense of urgency and pervasive feeling of impending omen, was created largely via the lyrics of his brother, the editor of one of the few proudly modern left-wing Czech magazines A2larm Jan, Ondřej makes a statement on his new solo record via the sonic. Apart from the anodyne “This is an emergency” sample in the second track, though the rolling bass professes this with heightened sense of paranoia.
Published September, 2014
Transient Zones is a festival that took place earlier this year in Prague. Over a few days, a group of artists moved and shifted from one location to another, creating temporary autonomous microzones of sound, reclaiming the public space for a brief moment from its functionalist nature - a space to shift from the 9-5 to shop or sleep, a sonic détournement.
Published September, 2014
The Blank Stare is a “project focused on mapping the Slovak experimental music scene through series of documentary movies”. Technically, the second episode easily beats the first one.
Published August, 2014
There is a science surrounding modular synthesizers, attracting modern alchemysts of sound, eager to tweak something worthwhile out of the cold steel, dreaming of wires. The Warsaw-based producer Mirt has been making music in various formations for 15 years.
Published August, 2014
Slovakia may not be the most religious country of EU, but it’s certainly the country, where religious structures, especially the Roman-Catholic Church have exceptional influence. Naturally, there also exists a Christian music scene in Slovakia as a sort of autonomous subculture.
Published August, 2014
Laura Luna de Castillo is a Mexican multimedia artist living in Prague. Composing tracks and working with sound are her means of bringing forth imaginary atmospheres.
Published August, 2014
More than a year after the EP of the Foma duo, the Czech electronic label Ressonus, which usually does so on a sporadic basis though always accompanied with carefully prepared limited edition CD and download artefacts, announced a new release. Coinciding with the straightforward techno-industrial record of the American project The Agromaniac, which was inspired by Harlan Ellison’s post-apocalyptic novella “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, is also the new material of Selectone, a project of the label head David Rambousek, whose history dates back to 2004 and the Mufonic imprint.
Published August, 2014
There is a thing with remixes, an almost philosophical question. Shall they eclipse the originals, shall they pay homage to them, or rather totally arbitrarily, like the ol’ Aphex Twin used to do, throw in a random track.
Published July, 2014
There is a quality to live music that often is lacking from bedroom or studio recordings. The slow, meandering build up, in anticipation of the climax (or anticlimax), the getting-lost-in-music, and the consensual surrender to the sonic mind-alteration.
Published July, 2014
As Muslimgauze’s magnum opus gets re-released and re-listened by a new generation of listeners, and his numerous epigons emerge and disappear, the merging of Oriental tropes in Western electronic music doesn’t seem to cease to interest up-and-coming producers in occidental bedrooms. Many question the earnestness of the ventures of the likes of Vatican Shadow, but this discussion, we rather skip here.
Published July, 2014
Our shadows will be roaming through Vienna,wandering through the courts, frightening the lords. (Princip’s prison cell inscription immortalized in a Belgrade graffiti) On 28.
Published July, 2014
Hovering on the fringes of Slovak experimental music, the Noize Konspiracy collective remains uncompromising in their ethos and works. The punks of the noise scene, kind of.
Published July, 2014
Brno, the second city of Czech Republic, has seen a gradual upsurge in underground sonic activities, aided by its ample student populace - both at the art and technical universities - resulting in a very interesting mix where art and technology come to each other’s service. The crew behind the DIY Arduino-based instrument Standuino is based there, now busy with the increasingly successful Bastl Instruments, who, coincidentally, also lent its support to the latest Brno electronic export - the label Bukko Tapes.
Published June, 2014
A never-ending bipolar fight between the Good and the Evil, on a personal level, on a historical and society level, on all levels. There are days, which are dark, clouds hovering low, it’s hard to breathe.
Published June, 2014
Establishing experimental and improvised music in Belgrade is a challenge: there are just a few funding opportunities, a conservative music education and a missing infrastructure. But musicians as the sound artist and composer Svetlana Maraš are moving back to Belgrade after years abroad and build up a new scene – with enthusiasm, good ideas and international collaborations.
Published June, 2014
The effect of music is various, to entertain, provide an escape from everyday mundanity, incite, excite, sedate, inspire or bore. Then there is music that evokes certain moods and vibes, that hovers somewhere between reality and dream, between conscious states and the subliminal.
Published June, 2014
Just before I started to listen to Triple Sun’s latest album on the recently launched Forum Absurdum imprint, related to the Bratislava-based DIY club Fuga (one of the best industrial venues in the city), I’d heard the new Plastikman album. Triple Sun - Overture by Triple Sun For some reason, it seemed as if these two were distant relatives of the lysergic lineage.
Published June, 2014
Samčo, brat dážďoviek is a rare beast. As one of the very few ones in the electronic scene around here, he doesn’t shy away from the context.
Published June, 2014
“This is the story of apocalyptic times for Bog in ancestral lands of his country. Bog lives in Romania, Bucharest, a young girl half-naked and wild.
Published May, 2014
The split between two of Poland’s leading electronicians appears on a slightly lesser renowned, but nonetheless noteworthy imprint - compared the Sangoplasmo or Mik Musik - called simply BDTA after its owner Michal Biedota. Paweł Kulczyński, better known under his nom de plume Wilhelm Bras, has mastered his modular synth, tweaking and twisting them to get an undiluted analogue extract building and adding new sounds and layers, usually ending in a technoid rhythmachinism.
Published May, 2014
What is a sound of a country? House, techno, folk, trap, rap, hip hop or jazz? Of course, such simplistic generalisations are superfluous, though it is still interesting to hear what a certain group of musicians from a certain geographical context might produce, influenced - either consciously or subliminally - by the surroundings (or is this plain determinism)? Of course, we are not talking about Eurovision type of national/istic trite, but genuine music created at a certain time, in a certain place. The new compilation entitled simply and boldly as !CZECH2, presents the up-and-coming producers based in the Czech Republic (there is also a Mexican and an American artist both based in Prague included).
Published May, 2014
Is the no-input technique getting so popular in the Czech and Slovak Republics? Definitely not, but this compilation can give you the false impression that this may as well be true. Still, the contributors here are worth your attention and it would be a shame not to mention this release out now on the Czech netlabel Signals from Arkaim.
Published May, 2014
Lubomir Grzelak is a staple of the new Polish underground scene, running one of the first cassette experimental-electronics labels in Central/Eastern Europe Sangoplasmo (you can listen to our Radio Wave interview with the man here), which with its thirty releases has cemented its position as one of the leading hallmarks of strange sonics in this region. Lubomir, based in Warsaw, apart from running the label, is also a producer and DJ in his own right.
Published May, 2014
“Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together and they add up to a story of a life.
Published May, 2014
Last week, we brought out our fifth release on the Baba Vanga imprint. And similarly to the previous releases on the label, the decision to release it came very quickly.
Published April, 2014
Another release on the Hungarian scene is something different than the traditionally more club friendly output of the Budapestians spearheaded by the likes of Norwell or S Olbricht. But still, the connection is there, as Gábor Lazar is graduate of the Faculty of Music and Visual Arts in Pécs, which is an institution also attended by S Olbricht in the past, one of the rising artists of the Farbwechsel collective with a handful of releases on internationally acclaimed labels.
Published April, 2014
Prague has had a fairly thriving minimal/synth wave scene in the last couple of years, mirroring the upsurge of interest in forgotten obscurities created on primitive equipment in Western European countries such as Germany, Belgium or France in the 1980s, packed and polished for 21st century listeners by labels like Minimal Wave. Jan Jiskra aka Moduretik has made music since 2001.
Published April, 2014
Following in the footsteps of the SicSic Tapes Alpár/Carla Under Water/S Olbricht split, is another proof of the healthy state of Budapest’s electronic scene, the numerous impromptu collaborations and happenings, improvised sessions or heavy analogue synth abuse hosted by the splendid Ballacid studio housed in the concrete housing estate of Új Pest. After Martin Mikolai released his well-received solo album on Opal Tapes last year, he has shunned ego-masturbation in favour of introducing further talent from the Hungarian capital, the Magyar Zodiak Club, as they say.
Published April, 2014
This Slovak release seem to have popped up through my feed a couple of days ago out of nowhere and immediately caught my attention. It can be almost considered as an intentionally secret release, as this project has no label support nor have I noticed any promotion anywhere.
Published April, 2014
Wojciech Kucharczyk is one doyens of Polish electronic music scene, as well as visual artist and a graphic designer. Operating his Mik Musik sonic empire since 1994 (!), Kucharczyk is a tireless evangelist, championing new artists (recently, notably including modular wizard Wilhelm Bras or the idiosyncratic Czarny Latawiec), and his zeal has been reinforced two years ago, when he resurrected the Polish imprint to present an exciting new sound of the Polish underground.
Published April, 2014
One can always find something charming in a primitive and almost vulgar expression of music. This split tape serves as a shining example.
Published April, 2014
Zdeněk Liška is one of the most significant Czech film composers, his electronic and electro-acoustic compositions finding its visual accompaniments - for his film scores are not secondary to its filmic coupling - in the Czech New Wave or for films of Jan Švankmajer. Eerie and surreal, his sound work create an extra layer, an autonomous sonic universe, that is almost a synaesthetic radio play, dispensing with the need for images, and at the same time reinforcing them in the imagination of the listener.
Published March, 2014
For tracklist click here: Tracklist:Superskin - Suspicious Minds Superskin - Drown Superskin - Descent Somnoroase Paserele - 18_01 Somnoroase Paserele - 18_08 Somnoroase Paserele - 17_04 Střed Světa - Ozvena Zmackana Opodal Střed Světa - Travinou Obkliceni Střed Světa - untitled, unreleased Střed Světa - Tvorem v tíží země (Basic House Rub) Lightning Glove - Dream On (Ketamine God) - unreleased Sister Body - Secret Turned to Revulsion Heroiny S Olbricht & Carla Under Water - No Message (The Key) S Olbricht & Carla Under Water - Birds Nightmare Carpet - untitled Shamnelism - Shamnelism Plevna - Imperios Future Nuggets Střed Světa - Tvorem pod sluncem S Olbricht - III1 Synus006 - Dist_Black Jonáš Gruska - Lunars
Published March, 2014
Meteorismo is a Finnish-Czech label, focusing on “weird music and sounds, lo-fi experiments, home made avantgarde, outsider music, freak out and all kinds of music which is does not fit anywhere.” And this is what you get, albeit the concept of “weirdness” is a strange one, “weirdness” is relative, and nowadays, when it has been co-opted ad nauseum, is weird still weird? Terrorismo is a result of a Federsel & Mäkelä “pretending to be experimental music curators”.
Published March, 2014
Although the activities of the Prague based Klangundkrach collective seem to have been put on a halt as of late, the legacy of this post-noise label/collective, which was quite an extraordinary achievement in Central Europe (check out our podcast about this scene here), remains. From the fertile sonic soil of this relatively small group the increasingly successful Lightning Glove, now signed to Tesla Tapes, has emerged.
Published March, 2014
Phaerentz is a solo project of Petr Ferenc, a Czech music journalist and musician, renowned mostly for his hauntological project Birds Build Nests Underground. His latest release is simply entitled III, and this descriptive minimalism is also an encapsulation of this project - no frills, the focus is placed on sound, in an almost acousmatic way.
Published March, 2014
A documentation of a scene that is fluid, happening, developing into various directions and styles. Blank Stare is a new audiovisual project that aims to document the fledgling Bratislava underground scene (you can read more about the city’s electronic scene in our features here, and here and here).
Published March, 2014
Exitab, the Slovak label, is on fire. The handful of releases that have come out in the last 6 months, make for an impressive manifest of the Slovak alternative scene, mostly (but, not completely) spearheaded by this label.
Published March, 2014
One of the most interesting and idiosyncratic Bulgarian electronic musicians, Esem has been crafting out his own species of sonic experiments with consistent inconsistency for more than a decade now. Esem’s works include 3 LPs, a collection of field recordings, many digital releases for experimental labels like Merck, deFocus, Sutemos, Mahorka and the legendary Kahvi netlabel, and his latest Aquanaut EP, which was released last Christmas via Bandcamp.
Published February, 2014
“PL2UA compilation is an expression of solidarity and support of Polish musicians for people who suffer as a result of clashes in the Ukraine. By providing their music in digital form, the artists want to help those in need and those that require support.
Published February, 2014
The original, 16-minute long EP called Obete Sekty was not only one of the best releases that the Slovak label Exitab put out, it can also, without any doubt, be considered as one of the best Slovak alternative releases of the last decade. The project, which was originally recorded almost 10 years ago was finally released in 2011 and now, after three years, Tomáš Ferko also known as Teapot has decided to revisit this piece, strongly connected with the memories of his hometown, Prešov, with the help of his friends.
Published February, 2014
Very tribal. Those two words resonated through my head as I put on the latest RSS B0YS release and rhythms started to emanate in my room.
Published February, 2014
The Budapest scene of the last few years has garnered attention, because of its cross-pollinatory nature, specific sound revolving around the Farbwechsel label. Lo-fi house, analogue electronics, vintage techno have become staples of sonic map of the Hungarian capital.
Published February, 2014
There is music and sound that without any ornamentation or sycophantic tropes manages to evoke specific almost synaesthetic evocations. It is almost as if it didn’t need a particular source or origin, it is acousmatic, as if it existed alone, emitted into urban decay, those areas abandoned by the well-to-do and successful.
Published January, 2014
Snezhana Bezus, apart from supplying this very page with insightful news and findings from the Sofia sonic underground, is also involved in the Sofia Beats club night. 1.
Published January, 2014
Samčo, brat dážďoviek is a Slovak musician and an enigma, with an affinity for subversion of national identities and all sorts of ideology recontextualisations. He is also an expert in obscure music, check out his article about the Czech and Slovak Bandzone scene here.
Published January, 2014
Pavel Niakhayeu is a Belarusian electronic musician (Pavel Ambiont, Nieviadomy Artyst) whose recent releases include Pagan & Urban (2013), Dare To Know (2014). He also runs the Force Carriers label and is a lecturer of ‘Contemporary Music Culture’ and ‘Creative Industries’ at EHU - Belarusian university in Vilnius, LT.
Published January, 2014
Nikola Vitkovic is a Belgrade-based promoter and label owner at Nauk, musician himself as the wonderful Magma Trakt and an overall expert on what is hot and what not in Serbia. Joking, he simply just has a good eye and ear for worthwhile music - old or new.
Published January, 2014
Once again, as the old year meets the new, we are looking back on the musical happenings. The first one is by Anek from the Cáry Mlhy blog from Prague who will offer his insights and highlights of 2013 on the Czech underground music scene.
Published January, 2014
Some time ago Mik.Musik.
Published December, 2013
Every week on Wednesday Czech Radio’s Wave station, we try to present a project, label, in a short interview format. Our show Východiska (you can check the archive of the show here) aims to map the latest happenings on the independent music scene in Central and Eastern Europe.
Published December, 2013
The unpredictability of the ‘no-input’ technique is one of the most intriguing things that you can come across when playing with your mixing board. And the worse the mixing desk, the better the feedback that your 'instrument’ can produce.
Published December, 2013
If you had an opportunity to watch the teaser video for the latest Sky to Speak release and you made it to the end, you could have noticed the Exitab label logo reworked by Matúš Hnát. This green retro version reminded me of the opening sequence of Blade Runner.
Published December, 2013
Signals From Arkaim is a Prague-based imprint, following in the footsteps of CC-licensed, virtually existent releases of the once thriving netlabel scene. They mostly focus on uncompromising fringes of the experimental underground, but also have such releases as the noteworthy mixtape consisting of soundbytes from Czechoslovak TV series.
Published December, 2013
Jonáš Gruska is a Bratislava-based sound artist working under several guises - for instance the audiovisual project Binmatu, mastering engineer and label owner. His many activities revolve around sound - its physicalities, propensities and possibilities.
Published December, 2013
Martin Blažíček is a Prague born film/video maker and media artist active since 2000, either solo or as a part of various groups. Michal Zbořil makes electronic music with a focus on oscillating synthesized sound textures and has been part of several groups as well.
Published December, 2013
The main idea of ’Eastern European Immigrant Dances in America’ was to mix music from so-called “east” (or better - “non-western music”) with electronic music, especially club music. The first part is longer, and much broader from geographical point of view - from Caucasus through Warsaw and Moldova to Detroit and Atlantis (this island of Plato).
Published November, 2013
András Cséfalvay is a visual artist and musician from Slovakia. Winner of the Oskar Cepan prize for emerging artist, Cséfalvay has also been increasingly active on the music scene, recording gentle, fragile and bona fide sentimental songs in his bedroom.
Published November, 2013
It’s been a whole year since my first contribution to the Easterndaze project. Call it fate or accident, but today, upon this anniversary, my topic is, just like back in 2012, the latest WTF is SWAG various artists compilation.
Published November, 2013
Red For Color Blind by Easterndaze on Mixcloud The podcast created by the makers of the Red For Colour Blind blog, which is dedicated to an “invisible scene”, gathers various projects from the fringes of the Prague post-noise underground, mainly associated with the label and DIY collective KLaNGundKRaCH, which, coincidentally celebrates its 6th anniversary this November. Aside from Czech producers and ensembles, it also features foreigners active on the scene including Core of the Coalman or Romano Krzych.
Published November, 2013
Published November, 2013
The internet made it possible for every user to distribute his or hers music in quite a democratic way, while the development of mobile phones, computers and all of those cross-overs made it possible for everyone to make his or hers own musical recording - even if it’s recorded with poor microphones on a cellphone by someone who doesn’t know shit about music. Take these two things together, and what you have is a sort of minor music revolution.
Published November, 2013
The grandiosity of club music created on the axis of HD sonic gloss and compression-on-the-master become a criterion itself. It may seem rather awkward to mention it here, but there’s a great lesson to be learned from the opening sequence of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers.
Published November, 2013
The Romanian project Nava Spatiala, whose Miron Ghiu has done a fantastic remix for fellow Romanians Somnoroase Pasarele whose album ABECD appeared our Baba Vanga label, are one of the proselytizers of dark techno and its industrial, offbeat guises championed by Downwards’ Samuel Kerridge or Blackest Ever Black. They hover between the eerie, paranoid territory of narcoleptic soundscapes, industrial and meandering atmospherics.
Published November, 2013
Field recordings have been used and abused in music and sonic art forever, but it’s the method of processing and juxtaposition, which causes the effect. Syria is by default a rewarding sonic source for any zealous field recorder, buzzing with sounds and boasting with an enviable musical history.
Published October, 2013
“soundscapes is a pair of waveform explorers who like to experiment with compositions, arrangements, sequences and non-sequences..
Published October, 2013
‘Lincoln Sea’ is an almost 40-minutes multilayered composition, divided in two parts to fit the vinyl format. It’s a second Robert Piotrowicz solo album this year, coming after enthusiastically received ‘When Snakeboy is Dying’.
Published October, 2013
Sultan Hagavik is a Polish duo which manipulates tapes and tape players, “no digital signal processing, all the way analog”. Their plunderphonics is deconstructive, mashing, mangling, disassembling the source material, in this case old Polish records and whatnot, but remaining sensitive to its source, caressing it after all the taunting.
Published October, 2013
12z sessionz Podcast by Easterndaze on Mixcloud The 12z sessionz started as a weekly rehearsal in 2012 for practicing purposes on free electroacoustic improvisation in a Budapest flat. As the project developed, 12z members started to invite friends to join the weekly improvisations, to get inspirations from very different styles and record the jamming.
Published October, 2013
Farbwechsel has become a staple and a nurturing umbrella for several up-and-coming Hungarian producers, acting as a catalyst for the diverse and noteworthy Budapest electronic scene of the last two years with Martin Mikolai at its helm, who produces music under his moniker S Olbricht. The Opal Tapes artist has also created a specific sound - hazy, dance-oriented and nostalgic, which have also been translated on the output of his own imprint.
Published October, 2013
Somnoroase Păsărele, named after a famous eponymous poem by a Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, is a duo from is a duo from Romania, based between the coastal city of Constanta and the capital Bucharest. Gili Mocanu is an established painter and together with Elena Album, also a visual artist, they have started a musical endeavor, quirky and tactical, organic yet otherwordly, witty and utterly serious at the same time.
Published September, 2013
The Exterritory compilation series strives to present the best up-and-coming music from Central Europe - Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, aka the V4. It is the third installment of the annual sonic list, focusing mostly on electronics and new forms of the aural underground.
Published September, 2013
Mis on techno? Publishing experimental technoid live jams made 22 years after its initial recording may sound as abstract as dubbing in a Portuguese SuperSponge commercial. But, in fact, the idea behind it appears quite clearly.
Published September, 2013
On September 5th Bulgarian electronic duo Big Tiger launch their second release - “Music from Planet Earth” EP, courtesy of Australian label DRTY SHDWS PRJKT. Exactly 36 years earlier NASA launched their Voyager spacecraft in an inspiring attempt to explore the depths of our Solar System and hopefully communicate with potential alien lifeforms by means of the famous Golden Record containing the Sounds of Earth.
Published September, 2013
Jonáš Gruska is an Institute of Sonology graduate, runs the LOM label and creates music under the Binmatu alias. His latest release comes courtesy of the Russian label Cyland Audio Archive on polycarbonate squares.
Published August, 2013
Lutto Lento is a lone ranger, making uncompromising decisions when it comes both to publishing and making music. Living in Wroclaw, Poland for some time now, he decided to move to Warsaw to change his life forever.
Published August, 2013
Dwutysięczny, a Polish quartet shrouded in mystery, is releasing its first album before the end of August via Sangoplasmo Records. I asked one of the members, for the time being identified as RD, if that enigmatic aura surrounding the quartet was created consciously from the beginning: “Yes, but it was the result of our awareness that people tend to take hints from the names of involved musicians before even listening to the music.
Published August, 2013
Budapest, as I have experienced over the last year, is slowly turning into a hotbed for offbeat electronics, vintage dance and experimentalism. In spite of the recent politial, economic and societal state of the country /dubbed “Orbanistan”/, much of which has featured prominently in global media as of late, the music scene, especially the dance one, has been thriving.
Published August, 2013
Lutto Lento Another Polish project belongs to the boss of the idiosyncratic Sangoplasmo label, the tape imprint that has carved its niche over the few years of its existence with quirky, outthere sounds by local as well as international artists, including Ensemble Economique or Decimus. Lubomir, Sangoplasmo’s heart and soul, also produces music, under the guise Lutto Lento.
Published August, 2013
Imre Kiss is a fledgling Hungarian producer, who is currently based in London as a freelance graphic designer. He is part of the burgeoning Budapest dance/electronic scene, underpinned by the Farbwechsel label.
Published July, 2013
In spite of the increasingly weird political situation of Hungary, the absurd new laws and changes in constitution, nationalism and other xenophobias, its underground music scene has been blooming, largely unaffected by the cuts in arts funding. Plenty of new ensembles, projects and labels have come out in the last two or three years, most notably imprints and crews surrounding them, like Farbwechsel and Last Foundation.
Published July, 2013
Thinking about the sacrifice in the name of music, it’s ever so hard to imagine a publisher, not being a musician at the same time, as a person willing to give it all away. Grzegorz Tyszkiewicz is heading Bocian Records, one of the strongholds of experimental sonorism these days… …actually, it’s Grzegorz who’s the stronghold itself.
Published July, 2013
Another mysterious project appeared on the roster of Budapest’s prolific synth label Farbwechsel. The latest addition to the imprint is called A i w A, a producer with hidden identity yet strong artistic concept.
Published July, 2013
LOMcast by Easterndaze on Mixcloud LOM is a Slovak experimental label, focusing on the avantgarde, electroacoustic, and adventurous. It started in 2011, when Jonas Gruska, LOM’s heart and soul, was studying at the Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands.
Published July, 2013
The period between 1967 and 1993 in the former Czechoslovakia was marked by ominous atmosphere that pervaded the society following the Prague Spring of 1968, manifested through the so-called Normalization. One of the tools of the regime was censorship of the media, thus, lot of creators either had to completely cease working in their chosen artistic field, or channel their creativity through allegories.
Published July, 2013
Střed Světa’s idiosyncratic opulent sound world has received a release on our affiliated Baba Vanga records earlier this year. The remixes by the likes of Basic House or S Olbricht followed in June.
Published June, 2013
Andrej Danóczi is a lone runner of the alternative scene in Trenčín, Slovakia. The spectrum of his activity is wide, he makes commercial music but also challenging experimental collages, often in lo-fi, amorphous areas.
Published June, 2013
Martin Mikolai, S Olbricht, is one of the staples of the burgeoning new Budapest electronic scene, which manages to thrive inspite or thanks to the alarming political and societal situation in this country, as the label head of the Farbwechsel imprint, that has been championing and releasing several noteworthy musicians since its inception a couple of years ago. Martin studies electronic music and media at the academy in southern Hungary in Pécs.
Published June, 2013
Our latest podcast is the weirdest stuff we are publishing, a totally manic melange of voices, recordings, samples, gabba, slam poetry, Slovak songs, electronics, and whatnot. In a way, reminescent of The Residents’ sonic mischief, Samčo delivers 34-minutes worth of material dug out from his own aural archive as well as his own label Varovec Produkšns.
Published June, 2013
Our friend Střed Světa released an eponymous debut album earlier this year on our little baby, the Baba Vanga label. The idiosyncratic producer, who prefers to work in his Bohemian seclusion, has recontextualized years of sonic activities into a remarkable journey that bubbles, floats, crackles and hypnotizes.
Published June, 2013
14-year old Hungarian producer Alley Catss, whose music and overall attitude towards the world seem to be centered around nothing, released his latest batch of sonic weirdness earlier this month. Withdwr is a collection of 8 beautifully crafted experimental lullabies that will soothe your ears and brain with their raw, unpolished softness.
Published May, 2013
Last Foundation is a relatively new imprint curated by Gábor Lázár, operating from the burgeoning Budapest electronic music scene. Though you wouldn’t even know it, since their roster includes stars of the international noise and experimental scene including Ekoplekz or Russell Haswell, which they release on tapes, usually as split releases with their local affiliated producers.
Published May, 2013
Sound that is perceived per se, with all its physical features and emotional effect on the listener, who perceives it as something subliminal, that goes under one’s skin without the need to rely on melody or harmony. Binmatu “is a ‘priest of sound’, delivering complex air pressure modulations towards ears, presenting certain degree of divine experience - connection with higher powers.
Published May, 2013
12z is an improvisational project from Budapest, whose regular weekly sessions in their Buda flat overlooking a park and the famous Gellert hill, have lead to a full-fledged album, recorded not in Budapest, but in a countryside hut. 12z’s Marci Kristof has told me that he doesn’t think music that is aimed at live contexts, should be statified on record.
Published May, 2013
The inherent lofi quality of bedroom-pop is often an alluring even if unwanted side-effect of the production process. This is also the enthralling aspect about the music of the young Slovak songwriter Katarina Kubošiová.
Published May, 2013
CS Industrial has recently started as a Facebook page digging out Czech and Slovak industrial and EBM tinged videos and tracks from the period between 1982 and 2010, in a way effectively creating an online archive documenting the birth of Czech and Slovak electronic scene, which considering the political and societal conditions at the time this music was made, is also an expression of the then zeitgeist. The industrial electronic scene, with its guttural alienated atmospheres and paranoid undercurrents in Czechoslovakia has always been strong.
Published May, 2013
It’s almost exactly three years since we started this, our Eastern adventures, sonic explorations, meeting amazing people, listening to great musics, climbing up the Soviet monument in Varna with Жълти Стъклa, to visiting cold wave musician and artist Wojciech Bąkowski in his flat in Poznan, chatting to animal activist and artist Penka Popova in Plovdiv, and impromptu broadcasting from the great diy radio Kanal 103 in Skopje at midnight. this video, featuring some shaky footage from our travels, was made by our friends a while ago, maybe it’s time to post it finally ;) Thanks to Fundaluka for making it for us! <3(Source: https://player.
Published April, 2013
RSS Boys linger in secret, though they recently appeared on the Wire Tapper CD, their identity or whereabouts remain cloaked in a veil of mystery, aside from the fact that they release their prolific output /their latest album proper appeared in March/ on the acclaimed Mik Musik! and are part of their Secret Editions, alongside artists like Pawel Pesel /whose great release Ekscentryzm was released last year/ or Mangrove Mangrave whose release is equally pleasing the adventurous ear. All of them share a certain kind of sonic aesthetics taking its cues from slow, mangled techno and psychedelic atmospherics.
Published April, 2013
Samčo, brat dážďoviek is a peculiar phenomen on the Slovak sonic scene, an epitome of weirdness that is not a try-hard, but rather a genuine expression of artistic intention. His March EP, entitled Európske hlavné épéčko kultúry /European Capital EP of Culture/ is a pun on the increasingly controversial European capital of culture project in the eastern Slovakian city of Košice.
Published April, 2013
The Timisoara-based duo Makunouchi Bento make soundtracks for their imaginary movies. At times opulent, adventurous sonic textures are woven into a tapestry of imagination, transporting the listener into non-descript moments in time, a gentle, fragile odyssey that is peculiarly haunting, playful and dreamlike.
Published April, 2013
Polish theory of relativity by Easterndaze on Mixcloud A special podcast prepared by Jacek Plewicki from the great music magazine Glissando. Here, he highlights some personal highlights, unreleased material as well as forthcoming gems, picks and special tracks sourced from the vaults of contemporary Polish sonic underground.
Published April, 2013
Route 8 emerged from the sprawling Hungarian lofi scene that mostly encompassed guitar-driven and quirky electronic acts. Route 8’s sonic trajectory verged towards the dancefloor, the dancefloor of slow, hypnotic tunes made on analogue hardware.
Published April, 2013
RSS Boys, the enigmatic project emerged last year as part of Mik Musik’s Secret Editions series. Their quirky techno has already caught our ears with their debut release, and recently, their track appeared on a Wire Tapper CD.
Published March, 2013
Lightning Glove is a Czech project that emerged from the murky circles of the Prague noise/psychedelic collective Klangundkrach. A trio, accompanied by a visualist, Lightning Glove strive to resurrect rave from its sad sold-out existence, as they told us in an interview: The music has inherent allusions to the likes of Excepter or Suicide, with a dash of Coil or Throbbing Gristle for a good measure, a psychedelic lo-fi guttural onslaught that you can listen to and groove to, as well, aiming for the treshold between psychedelics and post-dance, with yearning vocals, delayed samples, tweaking the hidden ghost out of their drum machine, to create an aural shamanistic excercise.
Published March, 2013
Gloryhole is a Hungarian indie garage/pop band, whose songs are perfectly accessible and radio friendly in The Smiths kind of way, even your mum would like them. Enter “Heavenly Remixes”, a collection of beat-driven remixes, mostly by local producers, which have ended up completely recontextualising the original, turning it into at times harrowing, menacing offering.
Published March, 2013
It may seem ironic. Finding a Bulgarian producer can be an easier task if you choose to look outside, rather than within the borders of our country.
Published March, 2013
Recorded at our Easterndaze event in Brno in 2011, and in summer 2013 at Bratislava’s FUGA, a psychedelic, post-punky noise-driven journey into disquieting sonic realms, is now being released as a free download by the Czech netlabel Signals from Arkaim. The audio instantly brings recollections of the dinghy environs of the Boro club, where Antoin unleashed his psychedelic voyage, on a bleak autumn night.
Published March, 2013
The Slovak sonic sorcerer VooDooMan, based in Bratislava, one of the firm personas of the local noise/audio scene, revels in hypnotic aural fissures, disorienting journeys through mangled synapses, created in his own custom-built software. His prolific output counts numerous tracks, from 3 second to 80 minutes long, an endless stream of aural conscioussness.
Published March, 2013
We featured the Hungarian beatsmith Zomblaze on our first compilation back in 2011. His sample and bass-heavy abstract hiphop was released by Chi Recordings last year.
Published February, 2013
Mik Musik has revamped itself last year with a slew of releases, mysteriously titled, and following in a gritty, psychedelic danceable vein. Mostly part of its super secret anonymous edition, acts like RSS Boys, Mangrove Mangrave or PAWEL PESEL, have pursued a wonky, exploratory techno direction, without utilising many of the usual genre tropes.
Published February, 2013
When we visited Macedonia’s capital Skopje, the punkish Kanal 103 radio, located in the socialist remnant of a building surrounded by a police station and a hooker strip, it seemed like the place where anyone making anything worthwile sonically, congregated. Running their own shows, playing concerts, etc.
Published February, 2013
After the brilliant EAT DESSERT FIRST compilation that highlighted the end of last summer, the WTF is SWAGbrigade are back on track to hit us with a fresh dose of bass-heavy vibes. Foggy Mountain EP is a split project between two talented young producers – Bulgarian Lenard and Hungarian oneone, including 4 original tracks and 5 remixes.
Published February, 2013
When I moved here from Brno in May 2012, I was shocked when I saw my new hood. In contrast with nice, though little abandoned, but still cozy and almost 150-year-old flat I lived in before, here I was facing the grim reality of my post-communist borough, packed with cars, Nazis and other disliked aspects of my life.
Published February, 2013
A psychedelic journey into the musical mind of Střed Světa, whose cassette appeared on our affiliated Baba Vanga rec at the end of January. A lysergic techno for psychedelic minds is how we dubbed it /in a particularly uninventive spark of logorhea/.
Published February, 2013
Listening to the Slovak producer Stratasoul is like a hot air balloon ride – floating and sinking into a magic aural stratosphere, bumping into a chunk of beats here, catching on a string of clinks and clanks there…so easy and carefree. “I remember feeling fascinated when I first heared a sampled amen loop on an Atari ST computer,a gift from granddad.
Published January, 2013
The moniker Alley Catss does not hide bike messengers from New York, nor a power pop band from Russia or Japan, but a 14 year old electronic music producer from Hungary, Máté Janky. He released his sophomore record (II) on Sewage Tapes.
Published January, 2013
Ondřej Hlaváč, a music journalist and a blogger, has put together a compilation, a mix that documents the current state of idiosyncratic Czech underground music, merging varius subcultures and communities, which is downloadable from his blog Freakshow. From cosmic compositions, through Suicide-sounding desolate atmospherics, doom pop and beyond.
Published January, 2013
After having travelled half of /the eastern/ part of Europe over the last two or three years, and meeting and discovering amazing music, we have decided we want to make it heard, loud and physical. Thus, we are delving into the label game, with a simple aim - expose music that somehow stands out through idiosyncratic existence.
Published January, 2013
Two new videos have arrived via the reliably ace Mik Musik contingent, for their brilliant Secret Editions series. One of my last year’s favourites, Mangrove Mangrave, and RSS Boys - who are releasing an album at the end of February, steeped in some woozy technoid outerspace, menacing, claustrophobic, but utterly grooving.
Published January, 2013
1. What’s the highlight for you in the Macedonian music scene in 2012? More than 50 albums and many singles/EPs were released within the alternative/rock/punk/dance scene last year in Macedonia.
Published January, 2013
Budapest-based producer Balázs Semsei aka Norwell makes his debut with his psychedelic electronica project on Shabu Recordings. The Farbwechsel co-founder is the third man connected to the fledgling label we featured earlier.
Published January, 2013
Piotr Kurek, not least since his acclaimed release on the Foxy Digitalis imprint, has been steadily releasing quality work, either solo /under his own name or the Pietnastka moniker/ or as a collaboration /Suaves Figures with Sylvia Monnier/, primarily for the brilliant Polish tape label Sangoplasmo. Check out his latest video for his new solo release Edena by the Canadian collective Moduli TV /who work for the likes of Indian Jewelry, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, etc/, Kurek’s visual collaborateurs since the memorable Heat vid they did for his eponymous release.
Published January, 2013
1. What’s the highlight for you in the Serbian music scene of 2012?insane eyes’ anthology “tautau - colourful mp69s, mostly violet’, released on my label nauk.
Published January, 2013
water of chaos water of the art water of the styx spring water water of blood water of talc water of life leafy water heavy water
Published January, 2013
1. What’s the highlight for you in Hungary’s music scene? Budapest had an eventful year in 2012.
Published January, 2013
1. What’s the highlight for you in your countries music scene? People seem to start waking up.
Published January, 2013
Do artists who live in one geographical area have more in common than those across borders but with stylistic affinities, especially at times when anything confined to the national level seems obsolete? This is the question we also have asked numerous times during our travels. Two compilations are trying to prove that there is still place to highlight local productions, especially if there are certain parallels in their sonic output and a shared physical interaction and context.
Published December, 2012
Nikola Vitkovic is one of Serbia’s prime underground music evangelists, an advocate of the beautiful outsiders whose work often remains in obscurity. “There are dozens of undiscovered experimental gems from that era, but I was specifically interested in escapist projects outside of any scene, people who nurtured their private ‘one man scenes’ in isolation,” he told us in an interview about the compilation Crni Pek that he released last year.
Published December, 2012
Jonáš Gruska is the man behind the fledgling LOM imprint, a platform for all kinds of outthere sounds, digital noise and unhindered experimentation. Following their split release /read our review here/, a “high-frequency” trading music, Jonáš delivers his “Nočné oscilácie pre jedného” /“Nocturnal oscillations for one”/, a mellow analogue journey conducted in the studios of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where Gruska studies.
Published December, 2012
The Budapest-based duo of Silf is a new project by experimental electronic producer Martin Mikolai aka Stephan Olbricht and his Farbwechsel co-founder and label boss Bálint Zalkai aka Alpár, exploring leftfield territories of acid, Chicago and Detroit house, with a blend of Eastern melancholia, tropic daze and vintage nostalgia. Their self-titled first EP premiers here today /insert smug smile/, stream the record in its entirety before it will be released on 1st of January 2013 via Farbwechsel.
Published December, 2012
Night-time Bratislava - Kamenné Námestie We’ve already given praise to Bratislava’s electronic scene in the past and the truth is, the good things are still going on. Be sure to check this triple combo of excellent releases from Slovakia’s capital Bratislava.
Published December, 2012
Bulgaria is closer to Space than you might think. Apart from the space food production trivia and the fact that a Bulgarian folklore song is travelling the Universe as a message to other intelligent lifeforms, our country has spawned another intergalactic curiosity – 1000names.
Published December, 2012
In this installment of our podcast series, Bratislava-based producer Jacques Kustod (a review of his debut EP is here) delivers a disquieting mix composed of his own production with a dash of acid /Phuture Tracks/, krautrock /Neu!/, even The Beatles. An uncanny walk through a sonic chamber of disembodied voices, echoing spheres and scant melodies coated in an icy December haze.
Published December, 2012
November is a good month to make paranoid, haunting music. The liminal, doom-mongering are prone to merge with the greying skies, winter melancholy and mild seasonal depression.
Published November, 2012
You just cannot complain about the amount of good quality techno releases these days. And Panel Trax/B4CK6ROUNDNO1SE are doing their share too.
Published November, 2012
Short Introduction on Synthesizers Today After experiencing such records as Lunar Miasma’s Impermanent Nature, Negative Fascination by Silent Servant, Ghostrider’s Voices or batch of Panabrite’s releases it’s getting clear that 2012 is a year of synthesizers. They’ve become an excellent substitution for guitars – they aren’t kitschy anymore, they transformed from nerdy toys into tools of romanticism, poetry or even mysticism.
Published November, 2012
The newly established Budapest-based label Farbwechsel champions the more plaintive house territories, verging on Chicago, Detroit and acid. Their first release, by label boss and multi-facetted musician operating under the moniker S Olbricht in this case, is out now.
Published November, 2012
The revamped label Mik Musik! have been going from strength to strength with several noteworthy releases as of late /check out our review of their previous ace release by the mysterious RSS Boys here/, navigating in the experimental dance territory, techno for the twisted minds and adventurous souls, we could call it. Its latest record is by PAWEŁ PESEL, a pseudonym whose real identity shall remain hidden, since this is part of Mik Musik!’s secret editions series.
Published November, 2012
What is music? For most people, it is something more confined within boundaries than we ever realize. We’re so used to the common conception that in order for it to be considered music, any sequence of sounds should have, for example, a beginning and an end, some clear pattern or structure, discernible rhythm, melody, etc.
Published October, 2012
It’s hard to imagine a better initial encounter with a band than a half secret gig taking place on a beach late early summer’s night. At that time (21th May 2012, around midnight) Ch-ch-ching’s music created the sonic backdrop to an event focused on constructing Chinese lanterns and sending them to the sky.
Published October, 2012
A sample from ”Cânta un matelot la prora”, an old hit by the Romanian songstress Doina Badea, emits from the speakers. A noise sequence travels through the air to catch up with a flourishing of melancholic synths.
Published October, 2012
Slavo Herman has been part of the Bratislava scene for a while, most of the time involved in activities of the collective Noize Konspiracy, an ever changing group of individuals in love with extreme and alternative forms of music. But Slavo’s stuff has always been different, unravelling the more deep, abstract and softer side of the musical region which contrasted with the brutal and lo-fi noise experiments of projects like Gule Tvojho Fotra or Žebrota, and also keeping himself more distanced from the social activities of the core group.
Published October, 2012
Wojtek Rusin aka Katapulto has had an intriguing music development, to say the least. From experimental pieces injected with a dose of cabaretism, to conceptual pieces and theatre work - and that great cassette for Sangoplasmo called Animalia.
Published October, 2012
Today we would like to introduce a few Polish underground artists who are underrated or even unknown in their own country, but definitely worth the attention. They play experimental music and stay out of mainstream.
Published September, 2012
New label alert. Plunderphonics is a new digital imprint established this year by the 18-year old Krystian Stebnicki.
Published September, 2012
If there is any place in the world where the overuse of “swag” has lead to something productive it must be Bulgaria. Marked by its history of 500 years under the Ottoman rule, followed by a fair share of Communism, the country is now an absurd amalgam of past, present and future.
Published September, 2012
Mik Musik - Dark Late Summer Mix by Easterndaze on Mixcloud What is the genealogy of Mik Musik?The usual - nobody wanted to release our music, so we did it ourselves. It was the early nineties.
Published September, 2012
For fans of the deeper spectrum of abstract hip-hop and zombieish bass music, we present three splendid cuts courtesy of Chi Recordings that showcase the production of our Budapest-based friend Zomblaze (his track 21 was included on our first compilation). Balkan Kannibalizm by Zomblaze Coming from the realm of hip-hop, his production uses sampling, scratching, heavy bass and hip-hop’s pulse, but moves further into industrial and experimental sonic territories, never without a catchy sample or vibe.
Published August, 2012
If you need a summer soundtrack, here is one. Bangeliz, the new Vangeliz, has a brand new mixtape out on Mik Musik.
Published August, 2012
“One day in more than less unspecified circumstances we decided to play on mc players and it lasts until now.” In a succint, yet appropriate description in the Biography section on their Facebook profile, the Polish duo explains their raison d'etre.
Published August, 2012
BNNT is a project of Konrad Smolenski, one of the masterminds behind the Pink Punk collective, a loose association of like-minded musicians and artists active across Poland. An affable and enthusiastic musician and artist, whom we met on a scorching summer day in Warsaw, maintains the collective´s free-floating connections and ethos.
Published July, 2012
Fat Kid Beny and Hyphy in Belgrade, 2k11 FAT KID BENY, the founding member of Belgrade’s “domestic rap” posse RAP CAT$ has gone solo. With the release of his latest batch of synth&dirty tracks and raw beats that Beny and his friends call “rap music” we asked him for an interview.
Published July, 2012
The bandcamp profile of this release (if you understand Polish that is) reveals lot of praise and statements about originality of the two personas hidden behind the stylish band name. That elicits even more curiosity as the visual side of W DONT BLV N HYP (including song names and quite hairy cover) suggests some post-witch house territory.
Published July, 2012
B0g - this great force by Easterndaze on Mixcloud Our Bucharest based bass buddie delivers another in our series of exclusive artist podcasts, by artists whom we like and who return our affinity (delusions of grandeur?) with sound pieces composed of their own recordings or as in the last podcast, by Piotr Kurek, an audio documentation of a journey to a concert. This time, it’s b0g, who was also featured on our second compilation with his massive Now I Want To Sniff Some Glue.
Published July, 2012
“Makunouchi Bento” might be the Japanese phrase for a typical lunchbox, however this dish is served straight from Romania this time. Waka X and Qewza, are no strangers to our ears, their imaginary soundtracks featured at one of our gigs and radio shows.
Published July, 2012
I suppose only a few of the readers of Easterndaze have heard of the Silesian label Mama Mrdá Maso and only a miniscule amount of them would have made it through any of their records released before April 2012. That’s the point in time, when the MMM label released its breakthrough record, the debut LP Peklo, Peklo, Ráj by the band Planety.
Published July, 2012
Bratislava-based visual artist Boris Vitázek aka Stix is a well known VJ working mostly with the post-dubstep producer Stroon. Stix is also the main force behind the techno nights Trashold in the now legendary venue Subclub.
Published July, 2012
One year after releasing his debut as the now discontinued witchhousey project TEMPELHOF, the Czech musician Tomáš Kopáček returns to his song-writing roots. His new project Black Tar Jesus seemingly continues in the vein of Kopáček’s former production - the dreamy and nostalgic lo-fi pop released under the name of Mon Insomnie.
Published June, 2012
Piotr Kurek is one of the most fascinating emitters of ear-pleasing compositions that we have come across. The Warsaw-based musician recontextualizes his aural inspirations ranging from tropicalia, US psychedelia or Polish jazz into singular results.
Published June, 2012
Jakub Adamec is an artist and member of the bacchanalian Silesian band I Love 69 Popgeju and his solo album bears the stamp of his main musical occupation. An opulent, cacophonic sonic puzzle made of manipulated soundtracks originally created for his videos.
Published June, 2012
Yvein Monq, the Budapest-based ethereal beat-o-naut, has a new vid for his track “Brainfreeze” taken from his EP Post Apocalyptic Codex X (of which you can find out more in an interview).
Published June, 2012
The last work of the czech art collective RAFANI known for its politically and socially oriented actions is a 82-minutes long documentary 31 Endings / 31 Beginnings. Composed as a “city symphony” it features representants of Prague’s artistic or intellectual scenes as well as still lifes of the city’s landscape in 31 short parts, that deal with a “tangle of various relations on the axis between “the centre and the periphery””.
Published June, 2012
A slow, mellow start commences a journey into a magical place, a sonic equivalent of a blissed out day, where things are familliar, and mellifluous but still mind-altering and trippy. Innercity Ensemble is a project of several Polish musicians - including our friend Radek Dziubek from the Grobbing Thristle project - and their latest EP released by Milieu L'Acéphale as a free download, is a result of a three-day improvisational session at the Mozg club in Bydgoszcz in August 2011 and serves as a taster of an LP that should be released in autumn 2012.
Published June, 2012
When travelling through Poland in the autumn of 2010, we came across the musicians Michal Hoppe known under his post-rock moniker No One Wished to Settle Hereafter and Filip Szalaszek known as Fight!Suzan (whose track Youth Jugend was included on our first compilation) in the polish Tricity. Thanks to them we also discovered Enchanted Hunters and listened to a couple of tracks released on their Myspace.
Published June, 2012
New podcast featuring our favourite woozy ghostly songs hand-picked from the hyperweb from April and May. Featuring tracks from the recently-established Hungarian tape label Golf Team Records that champions the local bedroom lofi scene with some cool new finds, Skopje-based poetic project Undone, Lasariage and Headshotboyz on a dreamy chill note, with the end heading off in a more relentless vein courtesy of Jacques Kustod, Andu Simion or Synus0006.
Published June, 2012
Following their lofi electronics spring installment, featuring the likes of Ensemble Economique or Decimus, this time the Polish label returns with a summer selection that features artists from their home turf, as well as the cultish K Salvatore aka Jason Meagher and Pat Murano. Sound-wise it follows in a more experimental, avantgardish vein.
Published June, 2012
Having three sides as painter, rapper and songwriter-poet Gazsi Rap Show aka Gáspár Szőke is one of those multi-facetted artists. Gathering attention of the DIY-art scene with his memorable live shows and visual aesthetics of trash art he is finishing now his first album Az Atom Utolsó Erkölcsös Vak Királya (in English: The Last Virtous Blind King Of The Atom).
Published June, 2012
Lasariage emerged from the sprawling Polish witch house scene, championed under the umbrella of the Witch House Poland group and Cowshed Records. With the transformations of the witch house scene, the producers were forced to readjust their sonic formula and spread it in other musical territories, or - as has been often the case - face a creative cul-de-sac.
Published June, 2012
Volkova Sisters are not only the characters from William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Pattern Recognition, but also a Hungarian DIY band making dark waves with their second record Hope EP released a few days ago. The Hope EP’s five tracks are accompanied by a remix package from electronic producers some of whom you might be familiar with from this very blog.
Published May, 2012
The Polish producer Lukasz Szalankiewicz is active on the experimental music scene almost a decade, mostly under his nickname Zenial. His music career started when the young Szalankiewicz joined the demoscene, a community of programmers and artists that created small audiovisual softwares called demos.
Published May, 2012
JAMKA - [x] years podcast by Easterndaze on Mixcloud The London-based project Jamka has been exploring the outer reaches of analogue electronics for a decade now, as part of the Urbsounds Collective. Their hardware medley especially comes to life during their unforgettable live experiences.
Published May, 2012
Following his mesmerizing debut last year, the now Bratislava-based Jacques Kustod returns with a synth-driven triple journey into various sonic cosmic territories. We asked Jacques to shed some light on the inspiration and process of creation of his latest EP Trois Visages, which you can download for free.
Published May, 2012
One and a half years after VA - Easterndaze Vol 1, we are back with another selection of our favourite sounds from this region. It doesn’t aim to be an all-encompassing, comprehensive survey of the current state of sonic production in these parts of the world, but an offering of the stuff we think deserves recognition and stands out for various, individual reasons.
Published May, 2012
Slovak and Czech bass electronica producers have teamed up to give a sonic tribute to the prolific Slovak singer and musician Vašo Patejdl, know for his dominance of 80’s synthpop music and collaboration in a plethora of different projects on the Slovak scene. Patejdl was in a way a key figure, however his former fame has slowly turned into a ambivalent fascination with his past.
Published May, 2012
Gazsi Rap Show and ∑BOL∆ ∆P∑, two protagonists of our impending release party in Budapest, have teamed up to deliver an AV invite. Reblog this video on tumblr until Friday noon, and win a pair of combo tix (valid for 2 ppl) for our compilation release party in Budapest AND the Blackbird Blackbird gig on Sunday, 13 May also in Budapest.
Published May, 2012
The dreamy Polish collective/label Please Feed My Records has geared up their sonic powers and prepared a special podcast for us featuring its roster, including rosinski, Monosylabikk, ODDAGE or CH-CH-CHING. Aside from original tracks, there are also edits and various refashionings.
Published May, 2012
Bedroom pop and lo-fi in Hungary has evolved to the next stage since early 2011. The first record label to cover this scene, Golf Team Records, was born a few days ago.
Published April, 2012
Published April, 2012
Route 8 has dropped his first EP Never Ending Stories just two months ago - we also featured his 4-track debut a while ago - and for now he’s working hard on his live set debut at the release party for the imminent second compilation of Easterndaze on 11th of May in Budapest’s Roham Bar. We’re eagerly looking forward to seeing his ‘synthpop-house’ tunes live.
Published April, 2012
After last year’s techno boom, with several more than decent comebacks of mavericks like Surgeon or Regis, straightforward pounding beats started to invade the minds of the music producers around the globe once again. Hungary is no exception and that’s the place from where SYNUS0006 puts out his latest release on the B4CK6ROUNDNO1SE sub-label of the Hungarian Panel Trax imprint.
Published April, 2012
Whimsical, fairy-tale soundtracking, delving into nonexistent past. Piotr Kurek’s Heat is out on Foxy Digitalis.
Published April, 2012
The beginning of a song can preclude whether it will be carved into my sonic memory or whether my musical consciousness will bin the said tones forever. 5 seconds is a minuscule amount of time for a composition to unleash, a nano teaser of what is to come, or not.
Published April, 2012
From languid electronic to hazy atmospheres (and lazy mixing, haha), here is our new podcast featuring tracks by Skopje’s electro don Alavux (who releases on DJ Godfather‘s Twilight 76 label), new (dark) find Syphil from Belgrade, easterndaze staples like Makunouchi Bento, Route 8 or Hipdiebattery (both of whom will play live at our impending release party in Budapest - more info here), as well as beautiful dreamy number by Gustav Tutre & Euchrid Escrow off the DADA ACTA compilation. Delve in.
Published April, 2012
Krzystof Zimmermann’s latest release Waiting for an Answer is packed with field recordings mainly from his current residence, Gothenborg, Sweden, but you can also hear some sounds from Taiwan. Released on the Few Quiet People imprint, it follows in the tradition of this label which is focused on sonic experiments and more abstract sound collages.
Published April, 2012
mangulicaFM is no stranger to easterndaze’s ears. The Belgrade producer, who currently lives in cold cold Hamburg, played at our party in September in Pancevo (Belgrade;).
Published April, 2012
The Black Elbows is a debut by the young Kiev-based musician Igor going under the name Falcon Ruby. Playing in various local bands since he was 15 he started to record his debut in autumn 2011.
Published April, 2012
Exploring the local alternative scene can bring up really interesting results, from lo-fi hip hop, garage rock to more electronica driven experiments, you just name it. Hungary has it all and we are glad to hear the demos and releases sent over to us or unearthed on the www (feel free to send us your musics too:).
Published April, 2012
Illl & .irma.
Published April, 2012
The Poznan-based etno-savagist label with a penchant for esoteric, bona fide strange sounds and projects follows up their winter installment of tapes featuring Burial Hex or Felicia Atkinson with four spring plastic beauties. Aside from up-and-coming Polish and Eastern European artists, Sangoplasmo has also increasingly focused on presenting the works of established musicians such as genuinely strange Aranos (whose release symptomatically inaugurated the label).
Published April, 2012
The Timisoara duo Makunouchi Bento are avid purveyors of complex sonic structures, opulent compositions brimming that in their epicism and cinematic nature, are soundtracks to non-existing films. Their latest movie, entitled Rinbo,they pursue mystical oriental territories, a sonic fairy tale in a magical country.
Published March, 2012
Wojtek Rusin aka Katapulto lives in Bristol and creates synth-based songs (engendered from his previous exotic, excentric sonic guise). We loved his Animalia tape (on Sangoplasmo) and there’s more to come courtesy of Katapulto vs Easterndaze but more on that later:) Wojtek also makes the visual accompaniment to his music.
Published March, 2012
Synus0006 aka Laslow Bényei returned to renowned Hungarian label Chi Recordings with his latest output symbolically titled Five Years Later, after Da Micro Cop EP back in 2006. Synus0006 spent the last five years tirelessly producing a lot of tunes to release them on various labels.
Published March, 2012
Hipdiebattery’s self-made video for her track Bones which appeared on the Robot Elephant vs. Tundra Dubs compilation.
Published March, 2012
Minus and his glofi hymn, ideal for dancing on Sunday afternoon with your folks and stuff.
Published March, 2012
Since a long time we have been following the music generated by the Romanian mash-up artist Bogdan Marcu going under the name of b0g. His sonic “plunderphonic mutants” are not only an exercise in mixing seemingly disparate sources into one bass-heavy and dirty piece of lo-fi booty electronica, but most often also conceptual pieces reflecting and reinterpreting Romanian culture, history and politrix.
Published March, 2012
The burgeoning Prague-based label Landmine Alert has just released the debut LP of its most idiosyncratic band to date - Vložte Kočku. The LP titled Táta is composed of 7 songs that incorporate elements of postrock, hard-core, electronica, hiphop and spoken word into a very perplexing and multifacetted sound (using electronic violin instead of a guitar), that is at the same time utterly unique in the Czech scene and also very typical in some respect (considering the vocal delivery style common for a plethora of Czech bands).
Published March, 2012
A new compilation by Strefa Szarej, a label and a cultural organisation run out of Cieszyn in Poland near the Czech border tries to reflect the music production of the country’s neighbouring countries - Czech Republic and Slovakia (and even Hungary). Genre-wise, the focus is of course on the fringes of the music production of the respective countries (otherwise we wouldn’t be writing about it:), but it varies from weirdo electronic (notably miss Dolly Rambo, Hungary’s foremost art bruteish pop star) through post-dance through psychedelic and mellow at the end with Fuka Lata, Sangoplasmo’s Lutto Lento and their epic 17-minute track, Grobbing Thristle and their haunting ode, I Love 69 Popgeju, Moduretik, Stroon, Piča z Hoven, IP (Identity Problem) or Dead Janitor.
Published March, 2012
Please Feed My Records is a collective of musicians, bedroom producers and DJs based in a sleepy town of Zielena Gora in Poland. In spite - or perhaps also because of - the soporific, bucolic surroundings, PFMR has gravitated towards the hazy sonic spectrum encompassing hypnagogia, synth-driven territories, glofi, shoegaze, cut up yearning R'n'B vocals, post/dance beats et al.
Published March, 2012
HOV is an audiovisual project from Wroclaw. An audiovisual collaboration between sonician Piotr Matkowski and visualist Jaga Slowinska, HOV take a “bricoleur” approach in their AV creations digging out samples from various ephemera and visual debris scattered all around the web coated in hazy, glofi music and to hypnagogic effect.
Published March, 2012
The dualistic entity Jacques Kustod vs Zelený Antoin is a sonic schizophrenic project by Brno-based Andrej Kabal who has been busy lately with the anti-ACTA compilation DADA ACTA (together with An Chaosdroid). The story goes that the siblings were separated at birth and hate each other.
Published March, 2012
“Magma Trakt is an annual crawling plant, the harbinger of the Otherworldly and the immanent presence of the Interdimensional. Ranging in colour from purple to neonatally rosy this plant of entoxicating scent and grandiose ambush decore can be found climbing the walls of reality tunnels.
Published March, 2012
The graphic designer graduate and producer Yvein Monq releases his second record Post Apocalyptic Codex X EP on newly launched Budapest label 8ounce. In contrast to his first album Hookers in My Strings back in 2010,the new release, has an interesting concept visualized in the 27-years old Yvein Monq’s mind and transformed to a sonic mood.
Published March, 2012
The latest export from Hungary /where our new collaborateur and author of this article Andras G. Varga comes from/ comes via Route 8, a very young producer making atmospheric electronic vibes.
Published February, 2012
Coinciding with the release of Stone Throw’s highly anticipated second volume of their Minimal Wave series, the new compilation by the Viennese collective/label Future Echo charters the minimal/wave/postpunk/industrial electronics sonic territories. In contrast to Veronica Vasicka’s compilation, however, The Future Echo Tapes mostly features contemporary projects that try to reinterpret the characteristic 80s sound.
Published February, 2012
Last week an interesting beat-making newcomer appeared on our radar. Coming (or supposedly coming) from the biggest Black Sea port of Constanţa, Anadolchioi is secretive about his true identity.
Published February, 2012
Hazy Memories is a project by a 19-year producer from Husi in Romania. His debut EP Out Of Place is an exquisite entrée onto the Romanian beat scene, where a young generation of producers like Montgomery Clunk, Minus, Polochord or ViLLΛGE further explores the sonic territories of glitch/hip hop, wonky, bass and club-oriented electronica.
Published February, 2012
Remember Czechoslovakia ? The small country once part of the Communist Ost Block? The country that, after its Velvet Revolution and playwright-cum-president Václav Havel, broke apart into Czech Republic and Slovakia ? Well, now it’s united again. The events of January 18th and #OpMegaupload have spawned not only the first generation of the Czechoslovak Anonymous hivemind, that has DDOSed government agencies under the banner of #czsk ever since.
Published February, 2012
The high priestess of sonic melancholia Lee DVD and Mito Day have delivered their “romantic space songs” on a new record fittingly entitled Saturn Melancholia. Last year, the duo appeared on the Krakow-based label Audiotong with an EP Other Sides.
Published February, 2012
The great Polish label Sangoplasmo is one the most interesting imprints to emerge from this region over the past few years, having released the likes of Aranos but also several oddly beautiful albums by the likes of Lutto Lento or Katapulto. It’s 2012 release schedule starts off with a bang - with no less than 4 tapes.
Published February, 2012
Another installment of our monthly podcasts, this time chartering the first month of the year (usually a pretty dead period in terms of releases), but there’s still good stuff released. From Dark Side of Pop compilation by Poland’s Cowshed Records, to the 90s sonic tribute Crni Pek to Romanian hommage to a Czech composer.
Published February, 2012
Poland has been no novice to witch-influenced tunes (courtesy of Cowshed Records), but lately there have been projects appearing on the scene that even though utilising some of the aesthetics of the once popular microgenre, create their own sonic language. Lasariage is a project of Jakub Wojciechowski who was also featured on Cowshed’s compilation Side Effects last year.
Published February, 2012
Zmikeo! came into our attention whilst frantically searching for Serbia’s up-and-coming musical hidden gems before heading there at the tail end of last summer. We came across the mysterious Zmikeo! (aka Milos Petrovic) - whom we digged so much we put up his first live gig in Pancevo near Belgrade, in September.
Published February, 2012
Compilations have increasingly become a medium of choice for many labels these days, a quick and easy way how to put up loads of tracks by loads of producers without a need to release separate EPs (we’ve been part of the game too we admit with a new comp coming out in next couple of weeks:). But eventually the more good music gets exposed, the better.
Published February, 2012
Remember about the call to submit re-edits of Dvorak´s ouevre that we posted a little while ago? The resulting audio versions, which oscillates between ambient, beats and “a random trippy deconstruction of Dvorak” courtesy of Romanian but also Czech producers /Sky to Speak/ can be checked out here.
Published January, 2012
The mysterious Sopot based producer caught our attention a few month ago (read the article here), and since then he has kept in touch with the wide world via a steady stream of videos and tracks. His latest endeavour is a remix of Husband’s Lovesong accompanied by an old anime video.
Published January, 2012
A new compilation put together by Nikola Vitkovic (as his independent endeavour) strives to highlight the buoyoant music scene of the troublesome period of Serbia’s history - the 1990s. It seems that the old maxim about art thriving in the age of general gloom is at play in this case as well.
Published January, 2012
Jakub Nox Ambroziak is a prolific producer with several releases under his belt. His latest offering, released on the label Seventeen Bricks, is called Dark Side of the Sun and consists of dark samples, synths and tells a story about the dark side of the most brightest planets, the hole in the sun and strange noises.
Published January, 2012
Two noteworthy albums of twisted, fucked-up, spaced out beats have come out in Poland this week. Each approaching beats in their own way - the first more twisted and stretched, the second more straightforward but still somehow eerie way.
Published January, 2012
A bass-heavy offering from the Meanbucket contingent, the ambassadors of modern urban dance styles from juke to bass via dub-inflected accelerated bpm. The Prague based label has been getting increasingly prolific, one of their most recent offerings is by Chicago legend Traxman from Dance Mania records.
Published January, 2012
Toni Dimitrov is a mainstay in the Macedonian independent scene. He’s been a part of the brilliant Kanal 103 radio station (which we gatecrashed in autumn, more on that soon) for astonishing 14 years.
Published January, 2012
Reverend Dick from Prague love their vintage analogue synths and a certain almost innocuously and ironically dark atmosphere which they translate into their sound and visual aesthetics (since they are also visual artists, members of the activist art collective Guma Guar). Find out more in our interview and our audio interview for easterndaze’s Radio Wave show.
Published January, 2012
Another of our yearly recaps this time with not one but two perspectives on the Slovak music scene. First Filip Drábek from the Exitab label, one of the most active imprints in Slovakia in terms of independent music at the moment and second one is a collective answer from the BWO collective, purveyors of urban dance music in the country.
Published January, 2012
The December selection of tracks is a special look back at the last year in music of Eastern Europe. Originally produced as a Xmass Special for the Czech national radio channel 4 - Radio Wave, we offer you the show without words, to enjoy one more look back at 2k11.
Published January, 2012
Tom Wilson is a British Bucharest based journalist, BBC radio correspondent and DJ and one of our connections in the city while we were there on our exploration journey in 2010. What’s the highlight for you in Romania’s music scene?The highlight of my year had to be either the Rokolectiv festival or Romania’s continuing global take-over of the charts with Europop artists like Inna, Radio Killer and Alexandra Stan.
Published January, 2012
Vuksa Velickovic is a writer, UCL alumni, editor of the Bturn magazine focused on promoting the music, culture and style of the Balkans and a general man about town. Here he divulges what rocked his world in ‘11 and what has 2012 got in store for him.
Published January, 2012
Another of our 2011 recaps this time with acclaimed Czech journalist and writer Karel Veselý, author and editor of books including Hudba ohně (Fire Music: Radical Black Music From Jazz to Hip Hop and Beyond) and Kmeny. What’s the highlight for you in Czech Republic’s music scene?It’s nice to see people doing their own thing without the support from the big labels and also defying expectations from their fans.
Published January, 2012
The end of the year is nigh, and thus we have decided to - surprise, surprise - compile a list of Best of from the countries we have been exploring over the last two years. And since our knowledge is limited, we have asked those living, working and creating in those particular countries to tell us about the music happenings in their country.
Published December, 2011
A view of Belgrade from the top floor hallway of one of the East Gate towers Our affinity for the Balkans started more than a year ago when we first set out to explore the music scene of this for us totally unfamiliar country - at least until then (in spite of the fact that half of Lucia’s family lives there). Serbia is perhaps the most economically and politically disadvantaged, dealing with the legacy of its past and relative isolation in European terms.
Published December, 2011
What is the relevance of local scenes in a globalised culture? I would argue that it´s increasingly important. A similar conviction is probably held by the guys behind Local Records, a Bucharest based record label which also functions as a promoter of Romanian independent artists.
Published December, 2011
A sonic tapestry of everyday life, confessions of drug addicts, mentally disturbed and alcoholics, of cafes and factories, streets or religion of and related to Serbia. Svet je davno zakovrno is a project by the Pančevo-based Mileta Mijatovic and his several contributors, including our friend Vladimir Lenhart, who supply him with sonic ephemera, excavated from tapes, vinyls or recorded on dictaphones.
Published December, 2011
Refashioning classical music by contemporary, often electronic producers, seems to be quite popular these days, with varying results. Austria has done a similar project with recontextualisations of Haydn or Schwanensee and this time, it’s a mutual collaboration between Romania and the Czech Republic.
Published December, 2011
“It’s a mystery where the music comes from and why it sounds the way it does. We look for the answer in the garden of the invisible architect – and try just to be…“ To make electronic music today is quite simple.
Published December, 2011
Another in our supposedly regular monthly podcasts presenting the best music we could come across in the given period (geographically attuned to our focus of course:). This installment turned out slightly deranged with lot of spoken word, psychedelia and twisted electronics.
Published December, 2011
∆K†I◯N †4 - MIX†∆PE from Mateusz Ezra Altman on Vimeo. The Polish witchhouse scene is obviously on the rise.
Published December, 2011
When Benedek Szabó, the mastermind behind the Hungarian project Zombie Girlfriend asked us to be the international platform through which the project’s second LP will be announced, we couldn’t say no. First of all we love Benedek’s musical humour, as manifested in the laid-back surfpop killer Jesus Stole My Zombie Girlfriend released as a part of the seminal Hungarian Lo-fi vol.
Published December, 2011
It has been an age-old assumption that when the times are shit - politically and/or economically, the art thrives (punk or the NY-based no wave and new wave scenes as a case in point). Hungary currently is not in the best state both politically and economically.
Published December, 2011
If we were not from this region, we would also probably throw in together Ela Orleans, a Polish lofi chanteuse informed by post-punk and Maria Minerva, the Eurotrash and dance music inspired Estonian producer with a penchant for retro as in “Eastern European lofi girls making it in West” (as has been recently inadvertently done by one NFOP writer). Ela has been inspired by the rich Polish musical heritage (she’s lucky she comes form a country whose music scene actually and arguably thrived during communism) even though, as she says in an interview with NFOP: “I could rarely express any enthusiasm for Polish bands then (and even more so now).
Published December, 2011
Our new collaborateur, the mysterious Andrej K., has penned his first article for us, a review of Concrete Cut’s latest offering.
Published November, 2011
It interesting how this geographical sonic mapping works. Now it seems to be focused on Poland somehow - at least in the last three articles that is:) The case in point today is the ‘new’ record by Poznan based psychedelic wyrd freaks Grobbing Thristle whom we also had on our compilation which you can still download for free here.
Published November, 2011
Somehow I’m becoming prejudiced against projects with too many “ungooglable” symbols in their names, but let’s forgive the fledgling producer in this instance. Hailing from Gdansk in northern Poland, ∑B❍L▲ ▲P∑ creates music on stolen laptop.
Published November, 2011
The title of b.aTL’s new record is slightly misleading, although for those in love with fucked up broken structures, twisted beats, squelches and squeaks, there’s no denying of this sonic quality.
Published November, 2011
High exposure to the Omm sound might lead to elevated states of consciousness - the fuzz drone trance. A new solo release by the Košice-based graphic designer and member of the audiovisual project BIOS, sees him delve into noise-ridden soundscapes, already explored with his aforementioned project, with his guitar as his mantra.
Published November, 2011
The ever brilliant Polish label Sangoplasmo focuses on the outthere spectrum of electronic music, mostly drone and ambient and wyrd electronica, but its recent releases demonstrate a direction into more rhythm-based genres such as “techno” and percussion. Although in their guise, its more the weird, grainy, cosmic kind.
Published November, 2011
[gallery] Better late than never, some pictures from our Easterndaze curated night at the Moonride Festival in Košice. Photos by Zdenek Spotz.
Published November, 2011
Czech project Sky to Speak consists of Matej Kotoucek, in charge of the music, and Ondrej Synacek, who takes care of the visuals. They create their almost sentimental sound from sampling old and obscure videotapes and artists’ records and visuals.
Published November, 2011
Published November, 2011
Another of our monthly new music series of mixes/podcasts this time also inspired by our September journey to the Balkans. Featuring techno, bass, dub step, garage, ambient or noise, this is a sonic travel through diverse rhythmic territories.
Published November, 2011
Czech Rep.’s favourite art pranksters and northern Moravia heroes I Love 69 Popgeju have a new remix album out.
Published October, 2011
Another live set recorded at Easterndaze vs. Uši & Vitr night at Boro club in Brno that we did on 6 October, 2011.
Published October, 2011
Few months after his previous release Komplex (read our feature here), the Prague-based Moduretik is back with an album called Fantas. On his latest release, he further delves into minimal-wave territory with his bleak atmospherics and cold-blooded electronic music.
Published October, 2011
One of our radio outputs apart from ocasional shows for Habitat.fm and even more sporadic production-in-the-making for Resonance FM is the weekly feature Vychodiska at the czech Radio Wave.
Published October, 2011
We are returning east to Slovakia’s most eastern metropole - Košice after almost a year. This time we are curating the Thursday evening (20 October 2011) at the Moonride festival there.
Published October, 2011
A live rendition of Waterfal a track by our friends Fuka Lata from Warsaw, as recorded at our Easterndaze meets Uši a Vítr gig at the Boro Club in Brno, Czech Republic on 6 October 2011.
Published October, 2011
The new LP of Robert Bittner, better known as Rentip - the more energetic half of the Slovak experimental duo Poo, has been long in the making. We were able to get a taste of Rentip’s beats via the rare occasions when he performed them live and we must say their abstract cinematic atmospheres kick ass in the same way as they encompass a rare mixture of psychedelic experimentalia influenced by the early Vancouver industrial scene.
Published October, 2011
Spontaneity in live music is what makes it all exciting. Thursday 6 October 2011, Brno, Czech Republic.
Published October, 2011
The Slovak-born London-based girl-boy duo Jamka, members of Bratislava premier underground outpost for offbeat experimental electronics (primarily created on hardware equipment) has just released a new album on Sub Rosa’s New Series Framework. The record was produced over a period spanning between summer 2010 and spring 2011 on hardware equipment.
Published October, 2011
The duo Nava Spatiala makes zgomotonautica, the spacecraft practice of noise / drone /ambient. Seemingly chaotic improvisation and journeys through the outer musical fringes, exorcising invisible demons, a medium through which forlorn ghosts communicate.
Published October, 2011
[gallery]
Published October, 2011
Pounding live-electronics, deranged vocals, free jazz improv - Shibuya Motors is a project composed of well-known figures of Slovak experimental music scene. Miro Toth is a composer and founder of the improv collective Fruti di Mare, Slavo Krekovic is the man behind Atrakt Art label, Next Festival and plenty of other experimental-friendly activities in the Slovak capital.
Published October, 2011
It’s been a perennial discussion of ours, at least since starting this project - what does and doesn’t belong to Eastern Europe. Is the post-Cold War world still divided into east and west? The more we’ve travelled across the region - and living here all our lives - the more we think that the distinctions are pretty much still in place.
Published September, 2011
The Polish label Concrete Cut gears up and brings us Deam’s Square Love EP. The producer Michał Lewicki lives just outside of Warsaw and after “years of making music at home” releases his dancy 6-track debut EP.
Published September, 2011
Massive blocks of sound, eroded by entropy into weird fractal pictures of mankind’s downfall / empty cities ovegrown by nature / random flashes of violence slowly enter the sonic ecosystem inhabited by frequencies that flow down on tilted walls of noise. Ibogain kappagrams.
Published September, 2011
The Slovenian Irena Tomažin expresses herself through the most natural human instrument - the voice. She tests its limits and abilities though, and at the same time employs its age-old use - lullabies and folk-inflected lush melodies.
Published September, 2011
The Russian blog-turned-label Gimme5 has risen to prominence over the course of the last year gathering the cream of the crop of young Russian beatmakers. Lead by Stas, the producer-cum-label honcho from the acclaimed duo Demokracy – among whose most recent endeavours is a remix for Mater Suspiria Vision - Gimme5 has released producers such as Moa Pillar, Damscray or Nocow all of whom have carved their niche in modern post/dance music.
Published September, 2011
We are teaming up with the Novo Doba festival to deliver an evening with three of the most interesting Belgrade-based electronica producers, all of whom have a penchant for beats, bass and urban culture. Thursday 15 September 2011 in Pancevo, Serbia.
Published September, 2011
The Polish label Audiotong with all its various activities has been intent on fostering the local scene and exposing it to the world. Through compilations of Polish musicians (prepared for the Wire magazine) or individual releases, Audiotong has proven that contemporary Polish seen is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Published September, 2011
Easterndaze hooked up with the Macedonia’s RadioTelevision Kanal103 gang to present a section of the current Skopje experimental electronica scene on Sunday 11 September 2011 from 19 to 20.30 CET.
Published September, 2011
Slightly late, but here is the August selection of the best tracks we could find east of Czech Republic. From ethereal sounds of Wind in Willows and Yuhalov both from Russia, to Maria Minerva’s new album Cabaret Cixous on Not Not Fun, to Hungarian electronic wizards OrRect to Nocow, Zmikeo!, Aulux and Kepikei and their urban dance paranoia to another Estonian songstress Spice Mouse and her new project Killorgiveup.
Published September, 2011
Introducing Zmikeo! - the repetitive, synth and bass-heavy production of the 24 years old Milos Petrovic from Serbia, our latest obsession. Zmikeo-Empty recycle bin by ZMIKEO! Zmikeo!’s tracks have the lo-fi angry and unpolished quality that could be ascribed to grime, it’s only that Milos comes from Belgrade and not a suburb in London.
Published September, 2011
Mangulica FM is a project of Belgrade-based musician Luka Papić. Luka is also the head of the startup label Over9000, dedicated to supporting the Serbian music and art scene.
Published August, 2011
At least two acts hailing from the former Ost Block have released on respected US imprints recently. Interestingly, both of the acts are from post-Soviet countries (don’t worry, we are not going to start a political tirade here:).
Published August, 2011
Periszkóp Rádió and Moiré Association for Culture calls experimental music/sound artists from Czech, Slovak Republic or Poland for residency in Pécs, Hungary for 2012, through the Visegrád Artist Residency program. They’re looking for somebody who could spend 3 months in Hungary to realize his/her own artistic projects, and besides this is able to connect his/her local scene to the Hungarian in order to collect material for a recording release of a mp3/vinyl compilation which would present both countries’ sound artists.
Published August, 2011
The Hungarian project Gazsi Rap Show sing about loneliness?? (Egyedül vagyok mint az ujjam) on the backdrop of industrial beats and lofi rapping.
Published August, 2011
Killorgiveup EP album - sideproject of Laura (Spice Mouse) - for free download Estonian songstress Spice Mouse from the recently launched Prague label alice mange son coeur has a new side project and a free EP out.
Published August, 2011
Brno’s electronic underground has plunged into a sort of hiatus after “years of glory” when the artists/promoter’s collective/netlabel Chernobyl Musick organised the legendary Heavy Mental parties, and the Fleda Club was one of the leading venues for cutting edge music in the Czech Republic. The recent personal changes in Fleda, as well as several key players entering “real life” or moving away from Brno made it look like the ‘scene’ has been terminated.
Published August, 2011
Two off-kilter illustrated videos by two of the most idiosyncratic Czech bands at the moment. I Love 69 Popgeju are art graduates from Moravia’s “Sheffield” - the industrial Ostrava which has a sprawling music and arts scene.
Published August, 2011
July shizz by Easterndaze on Mixcloud We have a new social gizmo on Mixcloud (you can find us here), this time to upload podcasts, mixes and more concise sets. To kickstart our feature, we put together a selection of the finest tunes we found in July (partly played in our Habitat show).
Published July, 2011
Slovak dj/turnablist duo Biomat (member of the Bratislava’s BWO collective) and 3ck (godfather of the first .sk turntablism compilation Audio Graffiti) have just released their “100% scratch” Biotrick EP.
Published July, 2011
Jakub Nox Ambroziak’s new single from the upcoming release (due out soon).(Source: https://player.
Published July, 2011
The mid-July Sunday (17 July 2011) edition of the Habitat broadcast will contemplate audio-visual connections from cognitive and artistic perspectives and feed your ears with mixplorations of gloomier electronic genres. Tune in at 20.
Published July, 2011
Molotov Heart Cocktail / Lowitzer EP is a militant sonic manifesto by Bratislava’s upcoming synth-fi gang, whose main protagonists are Stratasoul (Dalibor Hriadeľ) and Stroon (Dalibor Kocian). Stratasoul, a long-time DJ and producer (check out his collab with Slovakia’s raper Bene) is also one of the promoters behind the Bratislava’s acclaimed MOOV club nights.
Published July, 2011
There’s nothing like a dose of existential witch house, made in the darkest corners of Eastern Bloc, to get through a sweltering summer’s day. Tempelhof’s self-titled debut is out now on Prague’s AM Discs.
Published July, 2011
[gallery] Following her debut EP Parttalan, the Budapestian lofi-queen Piresian Beach releases her debut LP Fuck Your Mind. You can get it from the download link below, or on her Bandcamp.
Published July, 2011
We have been in touch with Dana Dramowicz from the burgeoning Polish dubstep/bass label Concrete Cut almost from the label’s inception. Purveyors of electronic sounds oscillating around the 130-140bpm mark, Concrete Cut has released almost ten records in less than a year.
Published July, 2011
Bratislava’s underground electronic scene prepares a special gig for Monday: listeninglectures: visual by marin Avoided: Hangover Pop by uchylord ₩│╬₵├┤₴╟╢│╒╥Ɇʁ - You Came To My Party Depressed As A Shadow by uchylord Nihil Buldozer: Igor mortis by uchylord More on this Monday dementia (in Slovak) @ Radost music club, Bratislava, 11th of July » Read More
Published July, 2011
Slovak producer Tomáš Ferko (Teapot) likes to keep himself busy with his various projects, collaborations, remixes… His EP Unrest was just released last week Unrest II will be released 18.7.
Published July, 2011
We met our friend Vladimir Lenhart in a cozy Novi Sad café on a hazy September afternoon. We talked in our mother tongue (Slovak) about the scene in Serbia and Novi Sad, and about other bits and bobs.
Published July, 2011
Synaptik aka Josef Šobra from Prague is fond of field recordings (cat purring, deranged female moans, urban sonics) and various samples such as speeches by Communist nomenclature. His almost esoteric aural creations often accompany live visuals.
Published July, 2011
A new EP by Slovak producer Teapot is due out in July on the Czech label Eclectica with remixes by Slovakia’s prime wonky/post-dubstep producers Stratasoul and Stroon and the Czech producer Blue. Here is a small preview of what to expect: Unrest II [teaser] by _teapot_ ps.
Published June, 2011
When we first heard Piresian Beach in the autumn of 2010, we were amazed by her fuzzed-out lo-fi sound incorporating elements of surf-rock, punk and rock'n'roll into her trademark seductive compositions. What began as a surprising discovery has also stricken a chord with the sensitivities of Hungarian youngsters using the microblogging platform tumblr.
Published June, 2011
mesmerizing little ambiance from poland’s synnc
Published June, 2011
Da Nube - Jukeboxxxing by Da Nube
Published June, 2011
The brand new imprint alice mange son coeur is a truly modern label. It operates from Prague and is run by the young Sara Cross who A&R’d the label roster from her bedroom via Last.
Published June, 2011
Moravia with Brno as its hub had a thriving musical underground scene in the eighties, a unique sonic microcosm of various projects, bands and personalities. Some of the most important bands of the Brno scene were foremostly Dunaj, but also other less renowned projects such as E, Happyend, Odvážní bobříci, Ošklid, Ještě jsme se nedohodli, Podchodem vchod, Z kopce.
Published June, 2011
The Polish project Fuka Lata, which we’ve written about a number of times on our blog, explores psychedelic sonic regions and drone-ridden territories. Fuka Lata is LeeDVD on vocals, electronics and bass and Mito Eszter on guitar.
Published June, 2011
Czech producer Moimir Papalescu is one of the most active on the scene with his numerous aliases such as non-existing electroclash band Moimir Papalescu and the Nihilists, legendary EBM project Vanessa, Magnetik or Die Alten Machinen a collaboration with Devo’s Gerald Casal. His latest project is Dioda Boy.
Published June, 2011
At least since the 1940s the cacophonic sound of the urban metropolis has attracted the creative ears of composers. John Cage has been an avid field recorder (check out his Williams Mix with at least 600 hundred various sounds including those of the city) or Pierre Schaeffer’s Etude aux chemins de fer, the first musique concréte recording, which utilized the sounds of trains.
Published May, 2011
We’ve stumbled across the mysterious project from Romania on Soundcloud. Victims of Truth, as the project is called, incorporates the “word” communism in its geographical description.
Published May, 2011
Bratislava’s indie-rockers Billy Barman have teamed up with the local enfant-terrible Hafner in their new track. Freaky video.
Published May, 2011
VERTINSKY PROJECT from Jakub Lech on Vimeo. Identity Problem (IP) is a collective of Polish artists based in Wroclaw who work with theatre, music and video.
Published May, 2011
The Macedonia musician Nina Georgieva aka Autemu makes music that cannot be heard that often these days anymore. Intricate electronic beats (in a Tobias Schmidt/Autechre/Plaid kind of way), dark atmospheres, claustrophobic moods, glitch and IDM but also melodies - all that can be found on Nina’s latest ep This out on the German netlabel Crazy Language as a free download.
Published May, 2011
The Prague-based duo Reverend Dick has a penchant for second hand analogue synthetizers which they find in thrift stores and waste dumps. The two members of the project – Richard Bakeš and Daniel Vlček – are also visual artists and members of the activist art collective Groupe Guma Guar.
Published May, 2011
[gallery] find ur fav graphic designer ..
Published May, 2011
The Slovak artist Martina Slovaková, a student at the Bratislava-based Academy of Fine Arts and Design, has dealt with the national conscioussness and identity in her work for some time (and not only because of her surname - Slovak:) Her latest project, her BA graduation work, entitled Slovak National Remix touches upon the controversial patriotism bill courtesy of the Slovak National Party, which required all schools to play the national athem. Slováková´s project creates an alternative sound bank with various versions of the Slovak anthem, which were created by several Slovak producers (Teapot, Foolk, The Uniques, Isobutane, stroon, Kasioboy).
Published May, 2011
The Prague-based artist Ondřej Holý, working under his nom de plume dné, features on our sampler. He also has an EP Talking With Crayons and a casette out on AM Discs Eating a Wrapper Instead of a Candy.
Published May, 2011
Some time ago, we have written about a documentary about Belgrade’s creative scene (check the article here). There is another movie about similar subject out there.
Published May, 2011
Our Sperm Festival showcase is over and what a blast it was. We spent two nice days with our Romanian, Polish and Slovak guests finishing the party at dawn at a Prague house/boat (literally).
Published May, 2011
The busy duo from the Slovak sonic marshes has a new self-titled release out, both digital and vinyl out on Slovak label Exitab. And what to expect? Electronics, piano, cello and voice.
Published April, 2011
[gallery] Todays playlist was: 1. Identity Problem - 5:04 Dictaphone 2.
Published April, 2011
The Prague-based Sperm Festival is an annual showcase of electronic music. Since 2006 it has brought the likes of Dan Deacon or Mouse on Mars to the Czech Republic.
Published April, 2011
(Napszyklat’s studio in GalleriaON) When we visited Poznan, the guys from the electronic hip-hop project Napszyklat were just in the midst of recording a new LP. It’s already mastered and very soon to be out on Ampersand Records.
Published April, 2011
Polish visual collective Pussykrew, who are currently based in the UK and already playing shows for the likes of Darkstar, etc, delivers a somehow creepy - reminescing of David Lynch’s Inland Empire perhaps or is it just the rabbit? :) - slowmo video for Thomasz Bednarczyk’s from the Few Quiet People label. (Source: https://player.
Published April, 2011
Producer Piotr Dabrowski is one of the most talented producers from the burgeoning Polish bass/dubstep/future garage scene. His music is decidedly deep and warm with killer bass enveloping his tunes.
Published April, 2011
The Slovak duo BIOS - visual artist Boris Sirka and graphic designer Jozef Tušan - are based in east of Slovakia in Košice. We met them on our audio travelogue almost a year ago.
Published March, 2011
Fledgling musician Jakub Nox Ambroziak from Slupsk in Poland and his music video done by Kamil Macejko. The video is for Ambroziak´s track Proton Decay taken from his new EP Atom.
Published March, 2011
[gallery] Listen to the special Habitat collaborative radio from Bratislava’s Progressbar hackerspace. The lineup is composed of Bratislava’s dj’s, beatmakers and visual artists.
Published March, 2011
The idea for the new label LOM dedicated to “unknown or forgotten experimental artists ..
Published March, 2011
listeninglectures: P.C.
Published March, 2011
Check this new release from Slovak Surreal Madrid netlabel, especially interesting is the remix by the sonic iconoclast Batcha de Mental. karaoketundra: http://surrealmadrid.
Published March, 2011
Planet Svetlana - proudly based in Belgrade - is back with a storming free release, a reworking of her third release Diablo Riddim by Piece of Shh… The remixing duties have been handed to Slovenian, UK-based producer Nightwave (aka 8bitch), Hungarian honchos Headshotboyz and Bunny on Acid. Get the bass-heavy release here.
Published March, 2011
Even though the Baltics were originally not on our sonic map, nevertheless, what wasn’t, can be, no?:) Estonian musician Maria Minerva (or Maria Juur) resides in London, but as the title of her new tape - Tallinn At Dawn which is out on Not Not Fun label -suggests she still has a thing for her home country. Expect ethereal echo-laden vocals, dreamy soundscapes, catchy synthlines.
Published March, 2011
Silviu Badea aka Montgomery Clunk is a Romanian beatmaker who arose from the Bucharest scene. With releases on Error Broadcast and the Russian hub Gimme5, the future looks bright for the 22-year old producer.
Published March, 2011
Just as we delved into editing our Serbian audio material for the luverly Resonance FM, recollecting (at least aurally) our visit there in September 2010, the news about the demise of its digital arts festival Dispatch has hit the Facebook. In September, after having talked to the festival organizer Relja, there was no traces about the impending news.
Published March, 2011
Moduretik is a 24 year old musician from Prague. He started producing in 2001 with stints in experimental/IDM duo Moon Projekt and screamo/hc band Kill! Kill! Kids! Subsequently he went on a solo path, releasing several albumsthat saw him experiment with IDM/ambient and buoyant 8 BIT sounds and samples from Czechoslovak comedies.
Published March, 2011
OVER9000 is a new label in Serbia, founded by MangulicaFM, a musician and a final year student of audio and video technologies and his sister Sofija, a final year theatre, radio and culture production student. The label wants to foster Serbian music and art scene.
Published March, 2011
The second LP of Niwea - a project of two enigmatic figures of Polish music & art scenes, Wojciech Bakowski (recently won “The best multimedia artist of 2010” by the influential Politika magazine) and Dawid Szczesny, is to be released on Qulturap on 18th of April. We look forward for hearing their harsh but poetic take on something they themselves call coldwave hip-hop.
Published March, 2011
The eye of Sauron Easterndaze is still pointed to the lands of Romania. This time its the new track by the mashup artist / track rapist b0g that caught our attention.
Published March, 2011
We’ re continuing our Romanian sonic adventures with the Romanian Miron Ghiu, a self-proclaimed Music, New Media and Cyber Culture Freak Gonzo Geek Enthusiast Manic Journalist Nomad“. His hypnotic audio journey leads us through the offbeat paths of Romanian experimental music scene composed of samples of legends like Iancu Dumitrescu and his wife Ana-Maria Avram or Mastino Surfers (kindly attributed from our compilation:) or the sixties Romanian rock band Phoenix.
Published March, 2011
Apart from the sampler and the events, we also recorded plenty of audio material on our journeys across the east. After spending some afternoons and evenings with our editing software, we have the first result - Romania.
Published March, 2011
Few Quiet People is a label from Poland. Despite it’s unassuming name, it has a grande plan: “To drive the repetitive sounds into the direction of pop.
Published February, 2011
Romanian project Makunouchi Bento creates music for non-existing movies. They played a great set at one of our gigs and here they are again, delivering an epic remix of another Romanian sound afficionado Sillyconductor.
Published February, 2011
[gallery] Hungary is going through a bit of a bedlam what with the controversial new media law and government that behaves as it suffered from amnesia. Recently, there have been clampdowns on clubs and music events as the “promoters of evil drug culture”.
Published February, 2011
Wojciech Morawski is a culture scientist and musician interested in subtle drone/ glitch/ minimal music. Polyrythms unroll matter-of-factly, crackling enveloping the minimalistic yet somehow intricate sonic sculptures.
Published February, 2011
We interviewed Vladimir Lenhart in Novi Sad, he interviewed us back and we stole the show at our first Easterndaze Night in Bratislava. His project Pamba has a new release out on Clinical Archives netlabel where you can download it for free.
Published January, 2011
Hungary seems to be in thrall of all things dreamy, lo-fi and fuzz (just check out Piresian Beach and her work, she’s also on our compilation). Another case in point is the Hungarian dreamy lo-fi fuzz project Models Can’t Fuck is inspired “by the "impotence” of the Hungarian music scene (hence the name), both mainstream and underground, and the general public’s out of date thinking about contemporary music and their indifference towards new exciting acts and young bands,“ says its heart and brain Árpi Szarvas.
Published January, 2011
Easterndaze - VA (Audiotong, 2011) by easterndaze This is a selection of tracks by musicians encountered during explorations of the Eastern European sonic underground from May until October 2010. From Bucharest to Gdansk, from Košice to Prague, this is a reflection of region’s current sounds.
Published January, 2011
We met Gosia during our August trip to Warsaw. We have written about her musical endeavours a few times on this very blog, too - be it about her LeeDVD project, the more recent Fuka Lata psychedelic experimentations and her new label D2.
Published January, 2011
A backlog of new tracks and releases from the Eastern front… this time focusing on fresh labels and electronic producers from the former Czecho-Slovakia. If you happen to be cooking up some good stuff, drop it at our Soundcloud.
Published January, 2011
[gallery] hipdiebattery: First Hipdiebattery Ep, Astronomico, Porsupuesto DOWNLOAD The Romanian artist and musician who goes under the name Hipdiebattery has just released her debut record.
Published January, 2011
Another live set recorded at our Easterndaze nights. This time by Bucharest-based sound afficionado Rochite whom we met during our Romanian expedition in July.
Published January, 2011
An excerpt from one of the rising stars of the Polish “PL funky” scene The Phantom’s DJ set recorded at the dance edition of our series of Easterndaze events at Stanica in Zilina, Slovakia on 10 December 2010 including Claude van Stroke’s Who’s Afraid of Detroit or Scott Garcia’s&MC Style’s classic It’s a London Thing.
Published December, 2010
Polish experimentalist and sample-fiend Dawid Szczesny, also part of Niwea project, live at Easterndaze Night in Tabacka Kulturfabrik in Kosice, Slovakia. Recorded on 27 November 2010.
Published December, 2010
Another live set from our series of concerts in Slovakia. This time, we bring you the mentalist sounds of Slovak mash-up and refashioning fiend Batcha de Mental recorded during Easterndaze Night in Žilina, Slovakia.
Published December, 2010
D2 is a new label from Poland launched by Gosia Neumann, whom we met in Warsaw in summer and whose music projects are Lee DVD and recently, the psychedelic Fuka Lata.
Published December, 2010
Makunouchi Bento, who were recently feature in the Guardian, live at Easterndaze Night at Tabačka Kulturfabrik Košice on 27 November 2010. The Romanian project makes soundtracks to non-existing films.
Published December, 2010
One man music project (Transylvania Noise Lamp aka Acidbusman) from Hungary. Using only very short loops and effects via a virtual sampler this music is made on a Dj Crazy Boris software and a laptop.
Published December, 2010
foto: Ivana Vereski Another live recording made during the Easterndaze Night in Bratislava on 18 November 2010.
Published December, 2010
Our last (at least this year:) concert endeavour will take place in the Northern Slovakian hub Žilina in the one of the best cultural spaces in the country - Stanica. After the lofi, experimental installments, our third gig will make your legs shake, so get your dancing shoes ready! Fresh Polish urban scene, Romanian sampledelic super weird dancedelica, Slovakian sonic mentalism and fine DJ sets will guarantee a fun-filled pre-Xmas party (including punch!).
Published December, 2010
Batcha de Mental is a deranged musical alter ego of Slovak designer and musician Alex Gutrai. He will play live at the impending Easterndaze gig at Stanica in Žilina in Northern Slovakia on 10 December.
Published December, 2010
Our project will culminate with the compilation which is gonna be out vv soon on the Polish label Audiotong featuring some of our favourite tracks by musicians we met on our East European journey. In the meantime, get lost in Slovak artist Jarmila Mitrikova’s psychedelic cover.
Published December, 2010
foto: Ivana Vereski Another of our recordings from the Easterndaze nights.
Published December, 2010
foto: Ivana Vereski A live recording from dné’s gig at our first night on 18 November 2010. Check back for more live sets, which we’ve been diligently recording at our three shows.
Published November, 2010
Bratislava’s “advanced music” festival NEXT is starting in a couple of days. The 11th edition of NEXT is going to present artists such as FM Einheit, The Thing, Tarek Atoui, Mira Calix and others.
Published November, 2010
The Slovak ad hoc collective of seasoned musicians Polyjoy, about whom we wrote in our extensive article on Bratislava’s underground music scene, is (finally) outing their tracks.
Published November, 2010
There’s two ways how to deal with pre-Xmas late November depression. We don’t mean to boost the pharmaceutical industry, so no tips for cute little pills here, just some musical medicaments.
Published November, 2010
[gallery] The party’s over, the gigs are finished but only till 27 November when we head to the east. Bratislava was fun, Casi Cada Minuto’s ethereal soundscapes, Glad to Get Away’s DNA-like guitar contortions, Dné’s gentle melodies and Vladimir Lenhart’s Alles Gute tapes that made us dance dance dance.
Published November, 2010
Published November, 2010
Few weeks ago we featured the psychedelic excursion into sonic netherworld by the new Polish outfit Fuka Lata. Its visual accompaniment has seen the light and is as haunting and uncanny as the sonics itself with its slow-mo plastic fantastic Blair Witch-like atmosphere.
Published November, 2010
Anca Stirbacu is a young Romanian visual artist whose music project was born out of the need to complement her visual works with audio. Though experimenting with currently fashionable genres like witch house, she is planning to further expand her music project, so we are curious to see her future artistic development.
Published November, 2010
The Slovak underground-noise freaksistance Psychoindustrial have released another one of their compilation series Noize Konspiracy..
Published November, 2010
Bratislava’s sonic underground is a fertile place giving birth to exciting upcoming electronics projects. stroon is a multi-faceted musician, with many ties to projects ranging from collective improvisators (Frutti di Mare, Musica Falsa et Ficta) up to the beat-based future-funk collaboration Polyjoy/Femoxema.
Published October, 2010
First of the three nights presenting the most interesting musicians we came across during our travels will unleash soon in Bratislava! On Thursday, 18 November 2010, our handpicked guests will play you some nice songs, or massacre them:) The Slovak electronic scene will be represented by the drone-ambient project CASI CADA MINUTO, opening the show up with his cinematic melange of drony tape manipulation. Czech songwriter DNÉ follows in a similar sonic territory as Teen Daze’s Two Bicycles, performing a dreamy and intimate drone-folk set spiced-up with his definition of “chillwave”.
Published October, 2010
We have finally returned from our action-packed East Europen audio journey and are already missing the wonderful people we met, the places we’ve seen. Our exploration of the sonic topography of this region doesn’t stop there, however.
Published October, 2010
A hypnotic sonic detonation unleashes. Romania’s SOMNOROASE PĂSĂRELE is a project of Virgilius Mocanu and Elena Album, currently based in the seaside town Constanta in south-east Romania.
Published October, 2010
The Polish filmmaker duo of Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski have created several visually stunning works for several mainly Polish music projects. Their approach to the peculiar stylistic form of the music video is conceptual.
Published October, 2010
Bruce Sterling (yes, THE Bruce Sterling) kindly retweeted our post about Belgrade. Thanks Bruce! And a rambling on Vice about Eastern Daze here and on The Wire magazine’s website here.
Published October, 2010
First impressions of Belgrade from Avala train. September’s melancholic mood with last few glimpses of sunshine offered a perfect backdrop to our first Balkan-bound journey in our project.
Published October, 2010
You might remember our haphazard recollections of our audio exploration of upcoming talent from our northern neighbours (ie Poland). One of the few girls we’ve talked to was Brenda “LeeDVD”, a former theatre actress turned musician.
Published October, 2010
We met filmmaker Nikola Zecevic at the Belgrade Noise gig at Belgrade’s premier alternative arts venue Kulturni Centar Grad or KC Grad on a balmy Tuesday night. He was running around with his camera, eager to capture the spirit of the night and Belgrade’s sprawling creative scene.
Published September, 2010
The internationalists wet dream, Vice Verse is a mutal collaboration between Serbia’s leading electronics festival Dis-patch and the US Communikey. In April 2010, 15 artists, embarked on an extensive tour of 30+ Northern American cities with stops at Quebec’s renowned Mutek festival unleashing a heady dose of live music, audio visual shows, DJ sets, new media workshops and other projects such as a the exhibition of prints developed by the art director of Dis-patch Nebojsa Cvetkovic.
Published September, 2010
Napszyklat in the building where their current studio is located. The Poznaň music scene was probably the most interconnected and interesting from any Polish towns we had visited during our trip.
Published September, 2010
get more: Easterndaze @ Poland
Published September, 2010
Teielte - Darkvoices [official video] from U Know Me Records on Vimeo. Dana from Warszaw’s Concrete Cut label has brought to our attention a new Polish label “open for new beats and fresh sound” U Know Me Records.
Published September, 2010
In the last few days, we have been bringing you the updates from the fertile sonic fields of our Polish neighbours. Nevertheless, let’s briefly return to our preceding trip to Romania.
Published September, 2010
The Warsaw’s bass oriented Concrete Cut label has a pretty impressive roster and a HUGE production planned for the end of the 2010. Listen to the amazing “Widow” from Krakow based duo SENTEL.
Published September, 2010
Our last day in Gdansk was quite eventful due to a meeting two local musicians - who are as similar as they are different. Michal Hoppe is a 24-year-old musician and biotechnology student.
Published September, 2010
Gdansk is a city imbued with a strange vibe for an Eastern European city. It doesn’t possess any of the typical “Ostblok” architecture in the centre, rather it’s a typical “Hansa stadt” in the vein of German or Dutch city ports.
Published August, 2010
Right now we are in Gdansk and we are going to attend the last days of the 736KM project which is a multi-media roadtrip of nomadic art that takes place between Prague and Gdansk. For more info check the website.
Published August, 2010
The symbol of the Warsaw Uprising, which we come across in form of a graffiti tag all over Warsaw Warsaw: its spacious streets and the central agglomeration of skyscrapers dominated by the famous Palace of Culture and Science from the first moments evoked a strong urban feeling contrasting with the the touristy “history museum” of Krakow. During WWII, 85% of the city was destroyed, the Jewish Ghetto with its 1943 Jewish uprising was laid to the ground in an act similar to the crude retaliation of the Hitler’s Army after the Warsaw uprising.
Published August, 2010
Krakow counts as one of the most picturesque cities in the country and also - consequently - a sort of a tourist trap, a living Central European “museum” full of stunning architecture. As is often the case in aesthetically pleasing exteriors, we were struggling to find good musicians here, who maybe thrive in their uglier counterparts.
Published August, 2010
RBNX performing live on Listening Lectures in Radost. Bratislava is an epitome of the historical ruptures that shook the Central and Eastern European region over the course of the last century.
Published August, 2010
Check the wonderful cover-art for Makunouchi Bento’s upcoming record Swimé. Its out 8.
Published August, 2010
The last stop in Romania was Timisoara in the Banat region of the country located in the vicinity of Serbo-Hungarian border. Arriving by a train from Arad we were accompanied by Dyslex, with whom we planed to record an interview on the train.
Published August, 2010
Photos from Romania developed & scanned. Check them at our Ipernity.
Published August, 2010
After a brief stop in the Transylvanian hub Cluj, we headed to the Hungarian-Romanian border, the picturesque town Arad. After checking into the wonderfully tacky B&B, we headed to KF, the city’s only spatiu alternativ.
Published August, 2010
A multidisciplinary project, the Arhiva 7 platform brought together a graphic studio, a black-and-white zine Almanahul, a netlabel and a netradio. The now defunct project aimed to showcase young Romanian artists from various fields - music, graphic design or DIY publishing.
Published July, 2010
After spending some quality time - no pun intended - in Bucharest and meeting all the incredibly driven local culture operators, festival organizers, experimental music afficionados, label heads, producers, angry old men and plethora of stray dogs, we reluctantly had to bid farewell to this wonderfully deranged city and head to northwest to Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s major creative hub. Most of the contemporary Romanian visual artists are either based or spent a formative period of their lives in this Transylvanian hotspot, the fourth largest city in the country.
Published July, 2010
Leaving Bucharest by train to Cluj we had almost 10 hours to read through the project 100 TO WATCH that we briefly mentioned in a former post, and which included in its jury/creative team the journalist and dj Tom Wilson and designer Milos Jovanovic. Being the “directory of 100 most talented artists in Romania today” it was published in October 2009 and should be taken as a insider guide for everyone interested in young and contemporary Romanian arts scene.
Published July, 2010
Leizaboy is a DJ and producer from Timisoara. His first EP was out in July 2009 on High Definition and contains the track Alarm Serenade.
Published July, 2010
Whilst speaking to Victor Popescu aka Brazda lui Novac and Daniel Stanciu known as Minus, they both dropped the name Selfmademusic of Arad. Listen to this collaboration with Makounochi Bento, two guys whom we will hopefully meet in a few days in Timisoara: makunouchi bento - nukekubi (feat.
Published July, 2010
Check out this video by Vali Chincisan: Urban Tree from vcn on Vimeo. Vali also collaborated on other projects with Makunouchi Bento, Brazda lui Novac and others.
Published July, 2010
Even though Bucharest is among the larger East European cities with a population of around 2 million, the underground culture scene seems fairly small and interconnected. We witnessed one such moment of intersection when we met Anamaria Pravicencu, a prolific cultural evangelist who organizes the experimental listening sessions Sambata Sonora.
Published July, 2010
Minus Feat. Clinic & Klem Do You Like The Germans by Local Records Heading to meet Minus.
Published July, 2010
The interesting thing is the, at once smooth, and at the same time problematic context, that all these “post-communist” countries we are interested in, share. The volume of differences is equal to the volume of things that are shared.
Published July, 2010
Published July, 2010
In the morning gnd’s beloved baby, his laptop died because of rain that got inside the other day. Deciding to wait till next morning to let it dry out, the rest of the day continued in a much better way - at the recently opened local organic “Kreuzkoelln” style café Omnivore’s Dilemma, we met Tom Wilson, a British Oxford-educated journalist and DJ who has been living here for eight years.
Published July, 2010
After spending half a day searching for a free place in local hostels we met with Mihaela Vasile who’s one of the promoters behind the seminal Romanian advanced electronica festival Rokolectiv. We talked about the local music scene, Romania, politics and corruption, about Bucharest being a really hostile city, about taxidrivers listening to minimal music or about legaly sold fake MDMA and the rise of the local drug scene.
Published July, 2010
En route back to the capital, we stopped in Banská Bystrica a picturesque city in central Slovakia. As we crossed the lush landscape, and stopped at a Salaš (sheepfold) for bryndzové halušky we’ve noticed the abundance of the xenophobic Slovak national party (SNS) billboards – guess they have most of their voters here, the tiny strip of „real“ Slovakia – unlike the South and Southeast that are predominantly Hungarian.
Published July, 2010
Boris, Jozef and Lukáš Berberich from Tabačka (more on this later) kindly gave us a ride to the nearby Košice, Slovakia‘s second biggest city afer Bratislava. The city is currently in the midst of a cultural rennaisance concerning the 2013 European Culture Capital.
Published July, 2010
Following our stop in Žilina, we had a brief stop in Prešov, the eastern Slovak city, where the first local installment of the festival of network culture Multiplace was taking place. After witnessing the presentations of local projects – some promising, others less so – the audiovisual BIOS project - a DJ project of Boris Sirka, a fledgling artist from Košice and Jozef Tušan on the visual side - played.
Published July, 2010
The north Slovak town used to be a bastion of Slovak nationalism but currently experiences somewhat of a boom and one of the epitomes of the current development is the independent cultural venue Stanica. Located on the outskirts of the city nestled between a highway and a bridge with a view of Communist concrete block estates, is a cultural gem called after its continuous function of a railway station (stanica in Slovak).
Published July, 2010
On Saturday, after talking to the affable DJ and producer Baltazar from the local house and techno label Leporelo, we headed to the Gay Pride (dubbed Dúhový Pride or the Rainbow Pride in Slovakia). Our hopes were high after the buzz we felt the previous night during the interview with Romana Schlesinger.
Published July, 2010
We arrived to Bratislava on the eve of the first Slovak Gay Pride and headed to the Slovak Drama Institute, where the organizers of the pride were screening a documentary about the Stonewall Riots. There we talked to the worn-out Romana Schlesinger, who’s one of the event’s organizers and a leading queer activist in town.
Published July, 2010
Our half-a-year mission commenced - fittingly - in our homeland (which is not to imply we were biased in any way to this tiny piece of land in Eastern, or as the locals would want you to say, Central Europe). Slovakia, the smaller and - some say poorer - brother of Czech Republic, has experienced a continuous exodus of “brains” brains since the 19th century.
Published July, 2010