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“The myth that you can make a living from playing underground music is still very much alive” – An interview with Sándor Kispál, programme organiser at Gólya

Most people have heard of Sándor Kispál aka “Saskó,” through his electronic music programming at Gólya, the PÉNZ collective, or his DJ alter ego, csinovnyik. Last year marked the 5th anniversary of Orczy Street’s Gólya, and PÉNZ turns 10 this year, Saskó has gathered quite a lot of experience about, let’s say, the music industry – so that’s what we asked him about.

Published July, 2025

Between transformation and apathy – the dynamics of the independent scene in Sofia

We’ve sat on this article for too long because it’s hard to be objective and unbiased about something we’ve spent many years of our lives trying to be an active part of, and improve. It’s even harder to admit we’re not certain what the actual state of our scene is anymore, because we feel disconnected and irrelevant. What we think we observe does not seem homogeneous enough, or it is not headed towards a state that we can understand, explain, or predict.

Published July, 2025

And yet it moves: an in-depth overview of North Macedonia’s new music scene through the work of the Gola Planina Collective

This article focuses on the work of ‘Gola Planina’, a band collective whose work and general activity has been a key actor in shaping the post-pandemic music landscape in Macedonia, as well as on their most recent endeavor: a festival caravan titled „Сепак се Врти“, the Macedonian translation of Galileo Galilei’s words that signify a resilience of knowledge and action: ‘And yet it moves’.

Published July, 2025

Shopsh: Circassian Vocal Tradition of Zhiu

As the sun rises on 21 May, marking the Day of Remembrance for the Circassian Genocide, we invite you to listen beyond the silence that often surrounds the wounds of colonialism. In the following article, Bulat Khalilov, co-founder of Ored Recordings – a label dedicated to traditional and post-traditional music from the North Caucasus – reflects on a paradox within Circassian music today: how a culture with rich vocal traditions has, in a sense, sidelined its most distinctive feature, the polyphonic vocal technique of zhiu?In conjunction with today's commemorations, Ored Recordings is releasing a compilation, Shopsh: Circassian Vocal Tradition of Zhiu, which highlights the vocal tradition of zhiu as both a form of remembrance and a possibility.

Published June, 2025

Erfana Barbad: “Change can only happen if everyone unites.”

I saw Erfana speak with vigour and deep dedication to her pursuit of community and underground culture during a panel discussion on queer safe spaces held at the Budapest club Turbina — the same club where Erfana throws her popular Kink Budapest parties. This took place just a few days after Hungary's prime minister declared that the organisers of Pride Budapest shouldn’t even bother planning the annual event this year, as it would be shut down.

Published April, 2025

The pain of not sharing a language

When Adela Mede, Marta Forsberg and Nindya Nareswari met up for this interview in late January, there was relief, happiness and exhaustion in the air: it was the day after their first collaboration, a site-specific music and light piece for CTM festival at the Kuppelhalle. Their performance was built on songs by Slovak vocalist and composer Adela Mede, who combines in her lyrics the three languages she grew up with – Slovak, Hungarian (her parents’ mother tongue) and English.

Published April, 2025

The voices that wait

This essay explores my encounter with the archive of Chile al día, a broadcast transmitted from Radio Berlin International in the GDR between 1973 and 1990, during the same period as Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. I visited the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Babelsberg, where this archive resides, six times between 28 August and 18 October 2024. Those visits involved me with it on different levels, whereas my listening practice was affected as I opened myself up to an aesthetic of resonance.

Published February, 2025

Ored Recordings: Punk ethnography and the sounds of the North Caucasus

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

“Taking matters into our own hands and offering an alternative”. An interview with Polish trans-femme and non-binary collective DEKONSTRUKT

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

Easterndaze x Berlin in videos

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

Easterndaze x Berlin 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

Easterndaze x Berlin 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

Infoporn + Dym Festival – two compilations showcasing the best of new Polish underground

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

Budapest’s New Underground

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

Farbwechsel – VA03: Diverse Künstler Drei

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

Střed Světa – Rozmístění opakováním (Baba Vanga, 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

Arszyn/Duda & Paper Cuts – There is No Conclusion (Review)

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

Primitive. Messy. Low Quality: An Interview with Latvian Artist Figūras

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

Easterndaze x Norient Musikfilm Festival 2017!

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

Výklenkové Rezonancie: The modern sound of Petržalka

“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

Easterndazed: DIY Music Topographies @ OFF Biennale Budapest

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

Future Nuggets – “Sounds of the Unheard from Romania” vol. 2

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

o /\/\ /\/\ – Omm (self-released, 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

State of Emergency: Dizzcock’s AL

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

Selectone’s Dead Grooves

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

Bűkko Tapes: Eastern European electronic alternative for your tapedeck

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

Paweł Kulczyński / Czarny Latawiec – Split

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

Check Czech – a new compilation of up-and-coming electronics from Prague and beyond

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

Lutto Lento – Prima Porta

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

Gábor Lazár’s additive synthesis

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

Alley Catss & S Olbricht (Opal Tapes, 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

Kucharczyk’s Best Fail Remixes

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

Zdeněk Liška – Osada Havranů (Tarnovski mix)

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

Eastern Daze & Baba Vanga on Berlin Community Radio

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: Terrorismo

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

Interview with Esem

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

Sekta Obetí – the very attractive mysery of the Eastern smalltown

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

Podcast – Red For Colour Blind

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

Anti-music: the Czech and Slovak Bandzone scene

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

Nava Spatiala’s – noisenautics Vol​.​4

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

Imre Kiss – Midnight Wave /Farbwechsel, 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 – ABECD – pataphysics technoulipo

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

S Olbricht – Deutsch Amerikanische Tragödie /Opal Tapes, 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

From the vaults of the Czechoslovak underground – Quarantaine’s Lichtempfindlich

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

The chimerical techno of RSS Boys remixed by Pawel Pesel and Mangrove Mangrave

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

Slovak sampledelic – Samčo, brat dážďoviek – Európske hlavné épéčko kultúry

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

Reclaiming rave: Lightning Glove – Fantasmagorie interiéru

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

Piotr Kurek & Moduli TV new video

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

Raketa Mixtape 001 / Č! WYSZUKANA KOMPILACJA

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

Electric Post-Yugoslavia /Zmikeo, Insane Eyes, Ilegalne Emocije/

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: Nocturnal oscillations for one

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 synths of SILF

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

Sangoplasmo’s Autumn Tapes /Lutto Lento, Suaves Figures, The Phantom/

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

PAWEŁ PESEL – EKSCENTRYZM /Mik Musik!/ – Exclusive stream

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

Casi Cada Minuto – In White Rooms /Exitab, 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

Zomblaze – Machinstruments Vol​.​1. (2012, Chi Recordings)

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

b0g podcast: mix and mash, steal and clash

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

31 Endings / 31 Beginnings – Prague through the eyes of RAFANI

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

Innercity Ensemble – (Milieu L’Acéphale présente) take us for a psychedelic sun-drenched ride

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

April + May Shizz podcast

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

Feb+March Shizz (best new tracks podcast)

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

Sangoplasmo’s spring offering: Ensemble Economique, Bartek Kujawski or Decimus

                          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

Vložte Kočku – TáTa (Landmine Alert, 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

Exterritory Vol 2

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

dAdA ACTa – Czechoslovakia unites against ACTA

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

Serbia – an audio travelogue (Resonance FM)

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

Ela Orleans delves into the Polish past

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

Rentip – Burnside Odyssey (single, 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

Nocow – Ruins Tape (G5TAPE01)

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

Call for residency for experimental music and sound artists from Visegrád countries

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

Jacques Kustod – First Year EP (Chernobyl Musick, 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

Slovak National Remix

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

Improvised Soundscapes by Romania’s Miron Ghiu

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

Models Can’t Fuck

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

Last but not least: Žilina

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

Easterndaze Night @ A4 in Bratislava soon!

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

East meets West in Vice Verse: Caribou remixes Belgrade Yard, Serbians at Mutek, Americans at Dispatch

  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

The beats, tones and rhythms of Warszawa

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

The Cluj Factory

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

100 to watch

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