With the ATOPIA collaborative residency, Rokolectiv Festival brought together Ukrainian musician Maryana Klochko and Bucharest producers Ion D and Inana to work on new music outputs. On this occasion, we caught up with Future Nuggets’ Ion D and Inana to talk about the Romanian music scene, pop, TikTok, and speculative philosophy.
Published July, 2023
PARADAIZ TAPE MAȘINA is a DJ duo based in Bucharest that exclusively plays original hand-picked muzică de petrecere and early Manele cassettes. Manele is a musical genre from the Balkans, also described as contemporary Romani wedding music.
Published October, 2019
Somnoroase Pasarele. The birds that left the cage.
Published February, 2016
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
Future Nuggets is a collective based in Bucharest, Romania. The sprawling capital, the last bastion of self-contained anarchy spiced up with oriental flavours and post-communist malaise.
Published October, 2014
“In Romania we have the advantage of oriental culture, it was close and everybody talks about it as if it was something bad. But it’s good, we have an advantage.
Published September, 2014
“This is the story of apocalyptic times for Bog in ancestral lands of his country. Bog lives in Romania, Bucharest, a young girl half-naked and wild.
Published May, 2014
Every week on Wednesday Czech Radio’s Wave station, we try to present a project, label, in a short interview format. Our show Východiska (you can check the archive of the show here) aims to map the latest happenings on the independent music scene in Central and Eastern Europe.
Published December, 2013
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
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
Lutto Lento Another Polish project belongs to the boss of the idiosyncratic Sangoplasmo label, the tape imprint that has carved its niche over the few years of its existence with quirky, outthere sounds by local as well as international artists, including Ensemble Economique or Decimus. Lubomir, Sangoplasmo’s heart and soul, also produces music, under the guise Lutto Lento.
Published August, 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 Timisoara-based duo Makunouchi Bento make soundtracks for their imaginary movies. At times opulent, adventurous sonic textures are woven into a tapestry of imagination, transporting the listener into non-descript moments in time, a gentle, fragile odyssey that is peculiarly haunting, playful and dreamlike.
Published April, 2013
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
“Makunouchi Bento” might be the Japanese phrase for a typical lunchbox, however this dish is served straight from Romania this time. Waka X and Qewza, are no strangers to our ears, their imaginary soundtracks featured at one of our gigs and radio shows.
Published July, 2012
Volkova Sisters are not only the characters from William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Pattern Recognition, but also a Hungarian DIY band making dark waves with their second record Hope EP released a few days ago. The Hope EP’s five tracks are accompanied by a remix package from electronic producers some of whom you might be familiar with from this very blog.
Published May, 2012
The Timisoara duo Makunouchi Bento are avid purveyors of complex sonic structures, opulent compositions brimming that in their epicism and cinematic nature, are soundtracks to non-existing films. Their latest movie, entitled Rinbo,they pursue mystical oriental territories, a sonic fairy tale in a magical country.
Published March, 2012
Hipdiebattery’s self-made video for her track Bones which appeared on the Robot Elephant vs. Tundra Dubs compilation.
Published March, 2012
Minus and his glofi hymn, ideal for dancing on Sunday afternoon with your folks and stuff.
Published March, 2012
Since a long time we have been following the music generated by the Romanian mash-up artist Bogdan Marcu going under the name of b0g. His sonic “plunderphonic mutants” are not only an exercise in mixing seemingly disparate sources into one bass-heavy and dirty piece of lo-fi booty electronica, but most often also conceptual pieces reflecting and reinterpreting Romanian culture, history and politrix.
Published March, 2012
Last week an interesting beat-making newcomer appeared on our radar. Coming (or supposedly coming) from the biggest Black Sea port of Constanţa, Anadolchioi is secretive about his true identity.
Published February, 2012
Hazy Memories is a project by a 19-year producer from Husi in Romania. His debut EP Out Of Place is an exquisite entrée onto the Romanian beat scene, where a young generation of producers like Montgomery Clunk, Minus, Polochord or ViLLΛGE further explores the sonic territories of glitch/hip hop, wonky, bass and club-oriented electronica.
Published February, 2012
Remember about the call to submit re-edits of Dvorak´s ouevre that we posted a little while ago? The resulting audio versions, which oscillates between ambient, beats and “a random trippy deconstruction of Dvorak” courtesy of Romanian but also Czech producers /Sky to Speak/ can be checked out here.
Published January, 2012
Tom Wilson is a British Bucharest based journalist, BBC radio correspondent and DJ and one of our connections in the city while we were there on our exploration journey in 2010. What’s the highlight for you in Romania’s music scene?The highlight of my year had to be either the Rokolectiv festival or Romania’s continuing global take-over of the charts with Europop artists like Inna, Radio Killer and Alexandra Stan.
Published January, 2012
What is the relevance of local scenes in a globalised culture? I would argue that it´s increasingly important. A similar conviction is probably held by the guys behind Local Records, a Bucharest based record label which also functions as a promoter of Romanian independent artists.
Published December, 2011
Refashioning classical music by contemporary, often electronic producers, seems to be quite popular these days, with varying results. Austria has done a similar project with recontextualisations of Haydn or Schwanensee and this time, it’s a mutual collaboration between Romania and the Czech Republic.
Published December, 2011
The duo Nava Spatiala makes zgomotonautica, the spacecraft practice of noise / drone /ambient. Seemingly chaotic improvisation and journeys through the outer musical fringes, exorcising invisible demons, a medium through which forlorn ghosts communicate.
Published October, 2011
Da Nube - Jukeboxxxing by Da Nube
Published June, 2011
We’ve stumbled across the mysterious project from Romania on Soundcloud. Victims of Truth, as the project is called, incorporates the “word” communism in its geographical description.
Published May, 2011
Our Sperm Festival showcase is over and what a blast it was. We spent two nice days with our Romanian, Polish and Slovak guests finishing the party at dawn at a Prague house/boat (literally).
Published May, 2011
Silviu Badea aka Montgomery Clunk is a Romanian beatmaker who arose from the Bucharest scene. With releases on Error Broadcast and the Russian hub Gimme5, the future looks bright for the 22-year old producer.
Published March, 2011
The eye of Sauron Easterndaze is still pointed to the lands of Romania. This time its the new track by the mashup artist / track rapist b0g that caught our attention.
Published March, 2011
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
Apart from the sampler and the events, we also recorded plenty of audio material on our journeys across the east. After spending some afternoons and evenings with our editing software, we have the first result - Romania.
Published March, 2011
Romanian project Makunouchi Bento creates music for non-existing movies. They played a great set at one of our gigs and here they are again, delivering an epic remix of another Romanian sound afficionado Sillyconductor.
Published February, 2011
[gallery] hipdiebattery: First Hipdiebattery Ep, Astronomico, Porsupuesto DOWNLOAD The Romanian artist and musician who goes under the name Hipdiebattery has just released her debut record.
Published January, 2011
Another live set recorded at our Easterndaze nights. This time by Bucharest-based sound afficionado Rochite whom we met during our Romanian expedition in July.
Published January, 2011
Our project will culminate with the compilation which is gonna be out vv soon on the Polish label Audiotong featuring some of our favourite tracks by musicians we met on our East European journey. In the meantime, get lost in Slovak artist Jarmila Mitrikova’s psychedelic cover.
Published December, 2010
Anca Stirbacu is a young Romanian visual artist whose music project was born out of the need to complement her visual works with audio. Though experimenting with currently fashionable genres like witch house, she is planning to further expand her music project, so we are curious to see her future artistic development.
Published November, 2010
We have finally returned from our action-packed East Europen audio journey and are already missing the wonderful people we met, the places we’ve seen. Our exploration of the sonic topography of this region doesn’t stop there, however.
Published October, 2010
A hypnotic sonic detonation unleashes. Romania’s SOMNOROASE PĂSĂRELE is a project of Virgilius Mocanu and Elena Album, currently based in the seaside town Constanta in south-east Romania.
Published October, 2010
In the last few days, we have been bringing you the updates from the fertile sonic fields of our Polish neighbours. Nevertheless, let’s briefly return to our preceding trip to Romania.
Published September, 2010
Check the wonderful cover-art for Makunouchi Bento’s upcoming record Swimé. Its out 8.
Published August, 2010
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
Photos from Romania developed & scanned. Check them at our Ipernity.
Published August, 2010
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
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
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
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
Leizaboy is a DJ and producer from Timisoara. His first EP was out in July 2009 on High Definition and contains the track Alarm Serenade.
Published July, 2010
Whilst speaking to Victor Popescu aka Brazda lui Novac and Daniel Stanciu known as Minus, they both dropped the name Selfmademusic of Arad. Listen to this collaboration with Makounochi Bento, two guys whom we will hopefully meet in a few days in Timisoara: makunouchi bento - nukekubi (feat.
Published July, 2010
Check out this video by Vali Chincisan: Urban Tree from vcn on Vimeo. Vali also collaborated on other projects with Makunouchi Bento, Brazda lui Novac and others.
Published July, 2010
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