Bűkko Tapes: Eastern European electronic alternative for your tapedeck
Published June, 2014
by Easterndaze
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. Here, its owner and artist Leoš Hort, says more.
When and why was the label established?
Bűkko Tapes was founded this spring by me and with support of Bastl-Instruments. The idea is to create a platform for unsigned talented artists. It all comes from my experience of being an unknown bedroom producer. When you are producing music, and just uploading it to some music-sharing online destinations without any background, there are just friends listening to your stuff, and its really hard to pass your creations to wider audience.
There is a certain sound that’s already obvious from the three releases on the Bandcamp, beat-driven, a lot of is 4-4 oriented. Can you tell us about the sonic direction of the label?
With Bűkko Tapes I have an idea, which I’m trying to follow. So the keywords would be: analogue techno, house, generative music, experimental dance music.. But it doesn´t mean that doors are closed for everything else. I’m opened to all sorts of stuff. But it just has to fit in there somehow. I’m also looking for some drone/ambient releases for future.
“Eastern European electronic alternative for your tapedeck,” is how you describe the label. Does it mean you are geographically specific in your selection?
Yes, i want to focus just for Eastern Europe. Because i know that this region has lots of great musicians who have lot to offer and are being totally unknown at the same time. I think that Eastern Europe is currently the best place to “fish” for new original music. When it comes to the selection itself, the main thing are always the recordings, but I’m also interested in the processes behind it, like live performing, materials or equipment used, etc.
Can you tell us something about each of the releases?
The first release, called Hrtl – Hydroxid, is an acid/dub-techno recording that I made with my solo project. It´s all recorded live with hardware synthesisers and then just polished in studio, but still kept raw and straight forward, as much as the improvised live sessions I perform as Hrtl.
The second recording is ALUPHOBIA – REVIVAL. It’s the work of the great young producer and sound-engineer Barnabas Kiss based in Hungary. It’s hard to correctly describe the genre, but you can sense pieces of house, downtempo or chillwave there. It has its own specific sound, because Aluphobia uses plenty of noises and dynamic processing to build his very own atmosphere. Working with various software platforms, and his very advanced sound-processing skills he created my most favourite recording of this year. Im very happy we have him in Bűkko.
REVIVAL_EP by Λ L U P H O B I Λ
Last comes Finfriju – Seeds. It’s a bit more complicated with this one, because the author is kept secret. And when it comes to recording, it doesn’t get any simpler. Seeds is not really a recording, its a piece of software generating that music. And since every rendering is unique, it’s impossible to specify the original. So it made me create a limited edition of numbered cassettes, containing very unique renders on each side of cassette. In fact it means that there are no duplicated tapes and every cassette has its own original audio. Online you can listen to one render which you can´t get on any of released cassettes. The author used a textcode-based sound generating software called SuperCollider, which is used amongst sound experimenting artists for creating random noises, drones and different kinds of sound effects. But Finfriju took this platform to create something more “songish”.
Seeds /generative composition/ by Finfriju
Brno is blooming like a flower now. Really, over past three years I can see young guys full of enthusiasm getting into music. For all I have to point out guys like Tom Holič, Krysí Krys, Chef3000, Misisbe Sisbert. This is the main core of hardware-based “four to the floor” electronic here in Brno.
On the other hand, there´s pretty active scene around art exhibitions and faculty of fine arts in Brno, making space for more unconventional music styles like noise/drone/ambient/experimental. For all Michael Jackson Pollock, is going to blow your mind live with their heavy-metal poses during one button solo on DIY bleep synth. A must see!