Tag: city-reports

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

Scena Krakowska

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

In search of Belgrade’s sonic underbelly

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

Poznaň hyperactive

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

poland photos

get more: Easterndaze @ Poland

Published September, 2010

Gdansk’s young blood

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

Nasiono: Planting a seed in Gdansk

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

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

Poland> Krakow

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

inside bratislava’s sonics

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

Timisoara / exit

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

city reports

Photos from Romania developed & scanned. Check them at our Ipernity.

Published August, 2010

Arad

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

Arhiva 7

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

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

The small big Bucharest

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

post-communist my ass

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

SCANDAL: gnd’s laptop dead !!!!

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

Bucharest now

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

And last but not least: Banská Bystrica

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

Košice

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

Prešov

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

Žilina

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

Slovakia´s first ever Gay Pride hampered by neonazis

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

Bratislava/Pozsony/Prešpork/Pressburg

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