“Subversion is my compositional process.” Slovak experimental musician Bolka talks about his releases.
Published July, 2024
by Easterndaze
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. He works with electroacoustic compositions, computer music and music for theatre performances.
I’ve had you pigeonholed for a long time as an academic musician, making music for installations, spaces, openings. How did you get into music as different as Smutné stropy?
In 2015, I released Karabínka. It was supposed to be a birthday present for my then-girlfriend, with whom I had a long-distance relationship and who I missed. Everyone thinks it’s a breakup song, but it’s actually about a long-distance relationship. I found it interesting to use pop music techniques and spoil them a little bit, and vice versa: to sculpt noise and bring in pop music techniques.
When I was studying, I was into artistic subversion, and Smutné stropy was made in parallel to that. I started working on it in 2015, and in 2019 I sent it to [Slovak experimental musician and sound engineer] Danky for mastering. I only sent him demos, and due to the fact that I hadn’t done traditional music until then, it was very imperfect. Danky produced the whole thing for me, even the voice alignment. It was hard work, but he trusted me and had patience with me.
I’m not a skilled musician, I don’t have a classical music background, so I had to find a new way of operating. I wanted it to be good, but not necessarily perfect, that didn’t matter to me. Working with imperfection is the intention.
In my youth I liked poetry, I wrote it too. It was very banal, the lyrics celebrated banality. So I went back to it. And I began to see singing as one of the instruments. I don’t like music in which the lyrics are not good, too serious… If the art is too serious, I can’t take it seriously.
Because of the fact that the lyrics are in Slovak, the music is experimental in places and something like that is missing here in Slovakia, I decided to go with the [Bratislava- based] LOM label.
It took me a while to understand what it was supposed to be. For a long time I didn’t know what to think about Smutné stropy…
I stuck to the rules of noise, I wanted to subvert it from the inside: to overexpose it, even ridicule it, by the same means. Actually, here I am applying the theories and tactics of postmodern writing to musical practice.
It doesn’t have to be just bringing noise stuff into pop and vice versa, but it can be done with anything. In that way, you’re playing with expectations. And surprising someone is a nice thing to do.
Smutné stropy is mostly made up of midi instruments, but friends from school helped me record both accordion and trombone. I enjoy the sound of live instruments, but I also enjoy working with them by bending them. I like to use autotune. On the new album I put autotune on the guitar.
It’s very much computer music, it’s synthetic, but it’s trying to feel organic. When we play it live, it makes me happy that something from the computer has made it to live. They’re simple, 4-chord songs at most. That’s why it’s called Stropy, because you can feel the ceiling of my musicianship and compositional skills.
The title Smutné stropy is a bit of self-irony. Ceilings have many meanings and a ceiling is sad in itself, don’t you think?
What about your new record that just came out?
The Žiadzasamy EP is an album about love and heartbreak. There are 4 songs: Nech sa ti páčim, Smutekutek, More mám ťa rád and one remix done by Košice-based Viktor Jenčuš who does hyperpop. He remixed all the songs together into one thing.
The whole record is 12 minutes long. It’s even more banal, more naive and more genre-defined. The first track is shoegaze, the second noise cumbia, the third schlager, and the fourth hyperpop. It’s a bolder sequel to Smutné stropy, it’s a nod to it. It maps my 4 years of life in Brno. That was probably my most emo period – with 2 breakups, but those songs are good.
It comes out as a 10 inch, the record looks like a frisbee. There’s a picture of Maruša from ski training on the centerfold. She’s wearing a garish dyed jacket that’s red and green, with black lyrics… It’s reminiscent of that Palestinian watermelon. And from Maruša’s photo you can feel a bit of climatic sadness, that there’s not much snow, and on top of that there is Weltschmerzen, the name of the publishing house that published it.
Again, it will have different layers.
Do you have plans for the near future?
After the summer I want to start working on a new thing that will completely negate all of this. I want to go back to noise. I want to make a dark album. There will be vocals and spoken word, but I want to have guest appearances from people who make dark music. I want to work with power violence, chansons, I want to make a joyful album out of darkness, I want to subvert darkness. The working title is Smrť smrti (Death To Death).
The third album will be the antithesis of what I’ve done so far. I’m going to deny it all.
And I still want to make a humorous, academic and quiet album for the Mappa label. Humour, levity and lightheartedness are my favourite starting points.
Originally written by Peter Dolník for 3/4.
Translated to English by Lucia Udvardyova.
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