Five Video Clips from Czech Republic

Playlist

This list about some current Czech sounds was compiled by Lucia Udvardyová. She runs the blog Easterndaze, a platform for up-and-coming independent Eastern European arts and music scenes. And thats exactly what we can explore in this list: electronic shaped tracks accompanied by colorful and digital video art – inspired by tumbler aestetics. For the first and the last video we're going to visit particular places in Prague as the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants and the communist council estate. See five video clips from other countries in our ongoing videclip series here.

Artist: Deaths
Track: Karaoke Blues

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Deaths are a young and up-and-coming Czech synth-pop act. In their video, created by Igor Bruso, they plunge themselves into a thriller-like fantasy set in Prague's ubiquitous Chinese restaurants. Equally dramatic and romantic, simply, the Karaoke Blues.

Artist: Space Love
Track: ASH TAR SHE RAN

Andrea Pekárková is known as one of the most inspiring Czech VJs. Under the moniker Space Love she teamed up with her love, the fledgling producer Voodoo, to create an audiovisual project inspired by trap and global bass music, sci-fi, tumblr aesthetics and pop-cultural sampling.

Artist: Střed Světa
Track: Travinou Obklíčeni

The mysterious Střed Světa emerged last year with his debut on the Baba Vanga label (we admit affiliation). «Travinou Obklíčeni» was visualised by the Polish, Bristol-based musician and video maker Wojciech Rusin, augmenting the abstraction of electronic music, but adding various visual ephemera, largely sourced and deconstructed from commercial stock images.

Artist: Lightning Glove
Track: To All Traitors

The aforementioned Andrea Pekárková is also the resident visualist of the increasingly successful «post-rave» project from Prague called Lightning Glove. They have just released a vinyl on the British Ono Tesla label, and their no-frills attitude and forlorn lyrics are a perfect soundtrack to (not only) Eastern urban dystopia.

Artist: Máma Bubo
Track: Skončíš jako já

The Czech band, established in 1983, was one of the pioneers of the local new wave/post punk scene (if you can call it that). Incorporating electronics as well as elements of ska/reggae, Máma Bubo still sound fresh with their characteristically lo-fi aesthetic utilising primitive «home» studios and spreading their oeuvre on cassettes – at that time more out of necessity than fashion. The video for their track «Skončíš jako já» (You Will End Up Like Me) is wonderfully desolate, shot in the then newly built communist council estate in Prague.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Published on July 13, 2015

Last updated on October 20, 2020

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Strcprstskrzkrk

Mixtape

by Lucia Udvardyová

For our exhibition Seismographic Sounds – Visions of a New World Lucia Udvardyová from the music blog Easterndaze.net compiled a Mixtape. It is a personal assemblage of fleeting encounters, uncompromising sonics, recordings from house parties and demonstrations. A 20-minute transition through perpetual transition, a looped past-future-past, an ode to the «former» Eastern Europe: from Budapest to Bucharest, Prague to Belgrade, Vienna to Bulgaria, conjuring an imaginary landscape open to contingency and adventure.

Tracklist

Powitanie: «Animacje Hotelowe, Słoneczny Brzeg»

Laura Luna: «Auroras»

Ivan Hrušovský: «Idée Fixe»

William: «Budapest» (11/2014)

Falochron: «Nessebar, Stare Miasto»

Kassett: «444 (Imre Kiss remix)»

Somnoroase Păsărele: «SEPT TREI»

Springboard: «Yanni Rhytms»

Demisia: «Bucharest» (12/204)

Mirat: «Mane4»

Magma Trakt: «Syrup»

Highway 69: «Suleiman The Magnificent»

Valea Cascadelor: «Bucharest» (12/2014)

Wsie: «Wieś z błotem»

Id M Theft Able: «Jowls Without A Face»

Alone In Heaven: «Sacral»

Radu: «Bucharest» (12/2014)

The mixtape was presented at the exhibition Seismographic Sounds.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Published on December 16, 2016

Last updated on August 11, 2020

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Daniel Kordík’s [Sy][ria]

Composition

by Lucia Udvardyová

An aural assemblage of field recordings from various locations across Syria, made in April and May 2011, when the army started to fight against the demonstrations in the course of arab spring. The composition is a great example of suspense and orchestration of ready-made sounds.

Field recordings have been used and abused in music and sonic art forever, but it’s the method of processing and juxtaposition, which causes the effect. Syria is by default a rewarding sonic source for any zealous field recorder, buzzing with sounds and boasting with an enviable musical history. Syrian dabke, has reached global underground stardom thanks to Omar Souleyman. Daniel Kordík, one half of the Slovak hardware electronics noodle duo Jamka, has delivered an aural assemblage of his recordings made in 2011.

[Sy][ria] consists of 5 compositions based mainly on sound from field recordings made between April and May 2011 on various locations across Syria. These include Damascus, Maaloula, «Road 90» to Palmyra, Deir ez-Zur, Aleppo and Hama and their surrounding areas. Due to security reasons when the government forces were trying to suppress the start of the uprising, I used only my Sony portable minidisc recorder with its internal microphone.

The album is a haunting memento to what eventually happened in Syria. A country ravaged by unrest and political upheaval. This sense of tension and disembodied anticipation and sounds, is translated onto Kordík’s record, some parts of the first track sounding as if they could be Pharmakon’s intro.

[Sy][ria] by Daniel Kordík

Based on the ongoing events in Syria that would eventually break the country down into pieces, I cut my initial field recordings into small fragments and re-arranged them into new compositions. At the end I decided to add two more tracks made on Vostok.

Francisco López, the doyen of field recording, championed «transcendental listening», and this record is, in-itself, a great example of suspense and orchestration of ready-made sounds, with or without knowing the context and origin of the sounds. Money collected from the downloads will be used to help people who had to flee Syria due to the ongoing civil war. There are currently over 1 million children who are refugees of Syria with no schools to go to. I hope that this recording can generate some money for these children, so they do not become «a lost generation».

All received money will be donated to AVAAZ.

This article was first published at Easterndaze.net.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on Instagram, and on her Website.

Published on January 31, 2014

Last updated on May 01, 2024

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