2013 in Czech music by Anek
Published January, 2014
by Easterndaze
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.
1. MUSICAL HIGHLIGHT OF THE YEAR?
Fantasmagorie interiéru and Raving Peacock’s Tail – two tapes from Lightning Glove mixing echoes of dance music, post-punkish filth and current urban gothic atmosphere, which filled out the void in our scene.
Star/Red – a tape from Sister Body – full of hazy, dreamy music oscillating somewhere between dance music and ambient. Star/Red manages to be sexy and unsettling at the same time, all wrapped in an atmosphere vaguely reminding me of The Shining. For a proper hypnotic effect you need to see them live though.
Atomová včela – third record from WWW, one of the oldest Czech hip-hop bands, and one of the weirdest out of left field hip-hop bands. With this record they managed to shift their sound to new territories. They’ve become a bit more suited to dance to, bit simpler in the structure of the tracks and bit less Dadaist in texts, while still retaining their cold industrial influenced sound and deconstructed, physical, bleak, yet playful lyrics. The album as a whole is bit too long and might suffer from being a collection of tracks made for all kinds of purposes, to some extent at least, but there is a whole lot of awesome tracks to choose from. The album also came out with a beautiful book with all the lyrics to all their three records.
Neone – a pop-up club run by the Lunchmeat collective. A no frills club in an old administrative building with great sound and six projectors resulting in being surrounded with visuals, near the city centre and yet not disturbing anyone during the night. For a while Prague could have a proper club focused on up-to-date electronic music and an affordable place to make concerts at.
Freddy Ruppert also started to play live again, this time exploring industrial sounds with early Swans-like rhythms evolving into something almost danceable. More of that please. (You might wonder why an LA-born guy is part of Czech scene highlights, but as he has lived in Prague for some time already, I guess it would be shame not to consider him as part of our scene.)
2. DISCOVERY OF THE YEAR?
Mýtina/Ascarid label and distribution – it focuses mostly on tapes from the realm of noise, drone, ambient and underground black metal. They have great stuff I’ve never heard of, and apparently in some cases neither the internet did. An air of the real obscure underground surrounds Mýtina which I’ve been missing for some time.
Baba Vanga label – apart from the great tapes they released, the outdoor gig with Střed Světa, S Olbricht, Shibuya Motors and SILF under the Karlín viaduct was especially awesome.
First demo tape by ██████ (also called “nic”, Czech expression for “nothing”) – proper skramz heavily influenced by black metal in the veins of Wolves in the Throne Room. Loads of energy in beautifully melancholic, murky sound.
3. LOWPOINT IN TERMS OF MUSIC/SCENE OF THE YEAR?
That Neone in Prague was only a pop-up club. Although it seems it will open for some events in 2014 as well, there should be a club like that being open all the time. Several of the underground clubs have raised their rents, which makes doing gigs for not yet known bands even more painful and less reasonable.
4. PERSONAL WISHES AND TIPS FOR 2014?
Apart from following all the above-mentioned names, you should also follow Letmo Productions and KYEO, as there are great concerts they are working on for the spring. My wishes are that all of these work out reasonably and I’ll be able to participate at least on some of these.