Új Bála – 1023

Published December, 2014
by Easterndaze

Új Bála is side project of the singer of Der Tanz, a Hungarian noise-rock band. Whilst in his band, he transforms into a Ian Curtis-like crooner delivering his baritone with intensity and fervour, Új Bála is more introspective or introverted. A quirky sonic exploration, almost generative, is abstract and almost autonomous, as if the structures and sounds flowed by themselves, like little fish in the sea, relentlessly moving forward and back. Most of his electronics is created on the monophonic synth Mopho, a little yellow box whose options include “programme genetics” and the sound sources are called “parents”. A sonic humanoid of sorts, very physical in terms of all the knob twisting and turning, squeezing the electronics out of its sturdy packaging.

1023 is somehow serious and cute/playful at the same time, it exists without a need to prove something. “My previous records were much more structured, here I tried to eschew any classical structures. I just played with time and created loops. A sort of one sonic page of a diary,” says Gábor Kovács. The sound per se. And the making of it, the liberating process of music, the free-floating bleeps, rhythms, and sequences, which arrive from inside the recesses of the artist’s consciousness and unconsciousness via a “prosthetic hand” – the synthesizer and let loose to live their own lives in the heads of their listeners.