Zdeněk Liška – Osada Havranů (Tarnovski mix)

Published March, 2014
by Easterndaze

Zdeněk Liška is one of the most significant Czech film composers, his electronic and electro-acoustic compositions finding its visual accompaniments – for his film scores are not secondary to its filmic coupling – in the Czech New Wave or for films of Jan Švankmajer. Eerie and surreal, his sound work create an extra layer, an autonomous sonic universe, that is almost a synaesthetic radio play, dispensing with the need for images, and at the same time reinforcing them in the imagination of the listener. 

Tarnovski, an avid recontextualiser of the audiovisual history of Czech and Slovak Republics, has created a new mixtape – following in the wake of his excellent “Proč jsme se nepotkali zaživa?” – composed of reworkings of three Liška scores – Osada havranů (Settlement of Crows), Na veliké řece (At The Great River, 1977) and Volání rodu (Call of the Tribe) all of them made in 1977. “Zdeněk felt the need to banish the whole sonic realistic construction, dispensing with most of the real atmospheres and sounds, instead trying to create them from loops. This resulted in strange howling, flicking, and this he mixed together….To all of this he then composed music,” recollects the director Jan Schmidt.

Tarnovski took this to the next level – recreating these “recreations” into a mixtape, that sounds profoundly current, with its rhythmic structures, disembodied traces of voices, sounds of birds and waves (faithful to its cinematic origins), repetitions, a modern musique concrete, if you wish. 

You can download the mixtape here.