Tony O., Author at Prague Morning

The Lunchmeat Festival continues its tradition of a week-long program every Autumn bringing top-notch cutting-edge digital artists and musicians/producers/DJs in contemporary electronic music. This includes a symposium, performances in venues around Prague, and sometimes an element of shock.

While Lunchmeat Festival places great emphasis on local and the most promising of rising acts in the genre, they assure a consistency of top artists from around the world and across multiple generations.

A pioneer of underground electronica from the UK and at Lunchmeat for the first-time ever is Squarepusher. Squarepusher is Tom Jenkinson, an electric bass guitarist, electronic musician, producer, and a DJ. He was at the forefront of progressive electronic jazz and drum & bass since the 1990s releasing tracks on Ninja Tune and Warp Records.

These days, he has become a multimedia-one-man-act with his furious attack on bass with a mobile arsenal of electronica for a full-bore performance.

Another veteran this year includes the return of Lee Gamble, an artist, producer, label owner and a DJ. You can expect from a DJ mix of Lee Gamble’s anything from conceptual sound art, jazz, drill, dream pop and rave classics, since he has been at the forefront of progressive electronica for decades.

Representing the younger generation of electronica progressives is Karenn, yet they are still veterans of the UK drum & bass and techno sound specializing in hard-driving and relentless 4/4 electro-beats.

However, more than only underground dance parties, Lunchmeat Festival features the freshest experimental projects in audio-visual installation with electronic musician/producers collaboration.

Highlights include Hüma Utku with “The Psychologist” (released 2022). Hüma is a Berlin-based electronic musician and sound artist working with field recordings, acoustic instruments and atmospheric ambience. She will be collaborating with Utku Onal also from Berlin for visual projections of images in cinematic body horror aesthetics, appropriate for this project which is described as a dark odyssey into the subconscious steeped in mysticism and folkore; Hüma composes her music to narrate stories recounting shared trauma.

Another Berlin-based digital artist and industrial designer is Lucas Gutierrez, from Argentina. Gutierrez has performed or exhibited his high-tech AV “trance” projections with sound at the most prestigious of electronic arts festivals and venues including Sonar in Barcelona, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Artists like this usually project visual soundwaves and sound-frequency patterns, for instance fractals.

Still more to underline the wide diversity of the programing is Lucy & Wanton Witch. Wanton Witch is a Bangkok-based producer who released her self-titled album last summer. It is a dark or menacing exploration of industrial beats; this project has been reinterpreted by Lucy, who is Luca Mortellaro and the head of the record label Stroboscopic Artefacts, which released Wanton Witch’s album. Both artists will be performing live in Prague, not as a remix, but for a “re-birth” of one into the other.

Locations for the Lunchmeat Festival include Archa Theatre, CAMP, and Ankali, while the late-night affairs are in the main venue, formerly known as the Theatre of Heroes; it is an underground space of the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace. And please note: ear plugs can sometimes be advisable.

This year’s 13^th annual Lunchmeat Festival begins on Monday, September 26^th and ends in a roar sometime in the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 2^nd.

For more information see the website: Lunchmeat Festival 2022

The 25th edition of the Respect Festival is a return to form. For a quarter of a century, the festival has invited to Prague, for an early summer weekend of outdoor performances, musical artists of multi-genres (though generally under the term World Music) from faraway lands for a gathering of the tribes embracing good vibes, cultural diversity, community and celebration.

Headlining on Saturday is Benin International Musical, a seven-piece group of musicians and vocalists from Benin, the French-speaking West African country, known for being the birthplace of voodoo.

This magical voodoo heritage of Benin is reflected in their music and dance, while their sound is updated to fit the African club grooves at home and in Europe, especially Paris.

Also on Saturday is Oumou Sangare, called the Queen of African pop from Mali; Foufolah, a multi-racial group from London merging Senegalese vocals and West African rhythms (of Gambia) with contemporary club injections from dub, afro-electro grooves, sci-fi synth and guitar; and Atine, a female quintet merging Iranian classical music and the spirt of 19th-century Persian poetry with musical influences from Arabic, Persian, flamenco, jazz and baroque music.

On Sunday, more African groups are on the program including Etenesh Wassie, an Ethiopian diva who gained attention in the early 1990s from the azmaribet cabarets of Addis Ababa for improvising and innovative reworking of Azmari folk traditions. With such Ethiopian roots, she still cannot avoid the influences of the groovy dance sounds of the 1960s-70s Ethio-jazz (led by Mulato Astake and others of this era), while she has yet a newer contemporary sound as a trio with two Europeans accompanying her: Mathieu Sourisseau and Sebastien Bacquias.

Then there is the Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe from Uganda, playing the embaire, a huge wooden construction (xylophone) with multiple players and vocalists (up to eight musicians).

They weave a stunning polyrhythmic and hypnotic trance music from the simplest of materials. Sunday’s headliner is Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino from Puglia, Italy. Pizzica tarantata ritual music or better known as taranta is an intense dance and trance music of southern Italy used in ancient healing rituals to repel the bite of the tarantula, the dangerous poisonous spider of the region.

With tambourines, percussion, bag-pipe, violin, accordion, guitars, and vocals, this six-piece ensemble keeps alive this ancient Mediterranean music and ritual, though it is revived for our times. They have added ballads and pop songs to their repertoire to balance out their musical program, while their motto most telling in the Covid-era has become simply “live is life.”

For more information visit the Respect Festival’s website here: Respect Festival 2022 – Rachot

The Colours of Ostrava International Music Festival is in its 19th edition for four days and four nights.

And after two years of cancelling the festival, Colours of Ostrava returns to form this summer. Since Colours places so much emphasis on inviting musical artists with an international flavor, and across genres, it was impossible to do it right with the ever-shifting travel restrictions and rules accordingly.

Some headliners for this year were promised for either the past one or two years, like The Killers, Twenty-One Pilots, Franz Ferdinand, LP and Martin Garrix.

There are also many newer additions this year for upgrading the appeal including Modest Mouse, Hiromi, Tindersticks and Princess Nokia. Most
impressively for this festival as always is the wide array of artists from mainstream to experimental from indie rock, electronica, jazz, punk, blues and eclectic world music choices from across the globe.

Hiromi is someone who best showcases the more eclectic side of Colours, as Hiromi Uehara is an irrepressible jazz pianist and composer from Japan, and while she is best known due to her collaborations with fusion jazz stars Stanley Clarke and Chick Corea, or for playing opening ceremony
of the Tokyo Olympics 2021, her performance at Colours will be a complete shift.

Hiromi’s newest group is a classical music string quartet, led by Tatsuo Nishie, a violinist and concertmaster of the New Japan Philharmonic orchestra. With this in mind, her upcoming concert at Colours of Ostrava is also a return of sorts, as she first played with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of fourteen.

Hiromi will be playing songs from her most recent album “Silver Lining Suite-Live from The Blue Note Tokyo,” with compositions for a full-length suite for piano, two violins, a viola and a cello with tracks entitled “Isolation,” “The Unknown,” “Drifters,” and “Fortitude” and all underlining her emotional state due to so much time spent under quarantine.

Songs are performed solo or as part of the quartet, and the idea to record it as a live-streaming in Autumn 2021, at the Blue Note Tokyo, was to
support the veritable club’s very existence, as so many live music clubs, especially for jazz, closed.

While Hiromi is a bit of an anomaly for this year’s festival, in past years, more headliners have been similarly as surprising and adventurous compared to this year’s biggest names, but it may also be due to the backlog of artists (as a few have been promised for the festival already for two years).

Hopefully, with no more cancellations, Colours will return to its most adventurous flair the next time around.

The Colours of Ostrava International Music Festival is among the most prestigious summer music festivals in the region, while it is also among the most family-friendly music festivals in Central Europe with large outdoor stages but also smaller indoor ones too.

Self-contained in an apocalyptic, industrial- era ruins of a vast coal-mining and iron works complex, Dolni Vitkovice, the environs at late night seems like a post-industrial Sci-Fi city with hurried pathways lined with countless food stands and for the more curious-minded, there are sections tucked in the back areas for film screenings, readings and discussions on social issues, as well as art exhibitions and many more possible surprises.

Bugge Wesseltoft is a visionary and influential jazz musician from Norway and active as a future jazz advocate for over a quarter-century, since the mid-1990s.

Even his earliest recordings do not sound dated; instead, it reveals how he has consistently merged so smoothly electronic music (techno) with first-rate jazz players from Norway in sophisticated compositions still sounding ahead of their time.

While he has collaborated with musicians on dozens of albums for his own Jazzland Recordings, based in Oslo, he has only two solo recordings with piano, electric piano and computer-sounds along with minimalistic drums and the voice of shamanista Mari Boine (on “IM” released in 2007); then a few years later, he released “Playing” in 2009, more of a solo piano effort, contemplative, minimalistic and solemn. This one also includes tracks with warped manipulations, risky and menacing at times.

In 2011 (also on Jazzland Recordings) Wesseltoft took this concept to a higher level with “Duo” recorded with Henrich Schwarz (on computer).

The difference between “Duo” and “Playing” is in the keener interplay, allowing Bugge to concentrate on his end (piano and keyboard) with the counterpoint of an edgier deep-house and contemporary classical (crossover) producer and DJ (from Germany), as Schwarz was part of the progressive nu jazz scene at its peak with Compost Records (Munich).

This is partly an acoustic jazz set-up but then it crosses over into house music, ambient or experimental electronics as a duet, and as a modest project recorded ten years ago, it can still be called futuristic jazz.

Bugge Wesseltoft is reviving his duo with Henrich Schwarz for a Prague-exclusive, live improvisation performance at Palac Akropolis, as part of the Festival Spectaculare, Wednesday, May 11th

It has been two years since the Metronome Festival has been able to bring top-notch musical artists to Prague for their annual summer outdoor fest.

They have been trying and they haven’t given up, yet. Headliners for Metronome 2022 (June 23-25) are Beck, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and Underworld.

When Beck first played in Prague in the mid-1990s, at the Belmondo Club at Vltavska, he was a fresh face with a swagger and hip-hop meets street-rock sound in tune for those times. This was the time of his first hit, “Loser,” from “Mellow Gold,” a hurtful insult turned into an anthem.

Since then, Beck has calmed down, or rather, evolved to be one of the most innovative and thoughtful composer-songwriters in pop music. Generations have passed since his Prague debut, and not too far from that initial spot; Beck will finally be back, and this appearance has been postponed since 2020, due to you know what.

Based for much of his musical career in the hilly and remote Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, Beck has been kind of an outsider on the music scene due to his consistency in crossing genres ala Neil Young, from alternative rock to folk, psychedelia, country and pop electronica.

The early success of his 1997 album Odelay, winning Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album, and Best Male Vocalist, came back around in more recent years, by earning Grammys for Album of the Year – for Morning Phase (2014) and then for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album for Colors (2017).

Beck, whether consciously or not, carries the banner of the best LA-based singer, song-crafters from Crosby, Stills & Nash, to Brian Wilson. As a multi-instrumentalist with an occasional Midas touch for composing catchy pop songs, Beck should be a superstar, but it seems that he’d rather not.

If there has been any essential shift in his sound, over time, it had been to a lush and majestic melancholia up until his two most recent albums Colors which shifted back to experimental upbeat pop, and a dreamy vaperwave on Hyperspace (2019) produced by Pharrell Williams, which was again nominated for two Grammys-Best Alternative Album, while it won Best Engineered Album-non Classical category.

beck metronome prague 2022

Another major headliner is the Australian singer/songwriter Nick Cave, who began his career as a raucous and post-punk singer-phenomenon with his band The Birthday Party. Since the 1980s, he has been mostly based in the UK, though there was a significant period of his life in Berlin from the mid-1980s and after the city’s reunification of the East and West after the fall of the Wall in 1989.

Nick Cave’s performance with his group the Bad Seeds in a rundown though formerly regal Berlin nightclub for Wim Wender’s film Wings of Desire (1987) best captures Cave’s enigmatic charisma on stage. Cave’s complex life is also brilliantly depicted in the documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), beyond music (as musician and composer) he is an author (poetry and fiction), screenwriter and actor.

Nick Cave has played in Prague several times including legendary shows at the Lucerna Grand Ballroom in 1992 and 1993, then most recently at the O2 Arena in 2017. His planned concert again for 02 Arena in May 2021, as part of the Metronome Festival was cancelled due to government restrictions.

nick cave metronome prague 2022

The final headliner, of this three-day festival, is Underworld, from the UK, an electronic group from the mid-1990s and renowned for its dark and hypnotic techno-dance tracks, a sound of urban tribal rituals. Underworld last played in the Czech Republic as headliners at the Colours of Ostrava Festival in 2016.

Beck, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, along with Underworld, in their own ways have the music most suitable for our times. These artists weave masterfully from melancholia to powerful bursts of joy; for Cave, especially, it can be sounds of a menacing darkness to glints of light on bluesy-punk horizons.

Overall, it is the time now for rejoining such weary first-rate artists kept from touring internationally for two years, and their fans alike kept from live shows; so a reunion of sorts is long overdue.

For more information, visit Metronome Festival Prague

underworld metronome prague 2022

faUSt, also better known as Faust, was ahead of its time as a West German rock group (in the early to mid-1970s.

They released only four albums, each experimental and distinct from the other, but their last release “Faust IV” is considered for alternative or indie rock musicians and fans their masterpiece.

The 80s-90s alt-rock, psych-rock and post-punk groups that are influenced by Faust, and were proud to say so include Sonic Youth, Pavement, and Nirvana to name a few.

Matching only early experimental Velvet Underground for dissonance and melody, juggled with verve, fragility, and accidental brilliance is one way to describe “Faust IV” released in 1973 on Virgin Records, meaning it was recorded only two years into the Faust experiment. Song lyrics are spoken not sung, and mostly in English with selective German or French songs adding intrigue and helpful for their overall international appeal.

In a wider context, the German music scene in the early 1970s was prophetic in ways beyond the most obvious example, Kraftwerk, which formed in 1969 and is now a more influential group in pop music than the Beatles.

Faust was part of a movement known as “Krautrock” with groups from West Germany, formed in the late 1960s, all flourished in the early to mid-1970s, then they all disappeared. “Faust V” was recorded in 1975, but it was rejected by their label. Unlike its predecessor, “Faust V” is mostly industrial trance or drones with a groove, and ahead of its time like their three other recordings.

A less pejorative and possibly a more accurate term for these groups could be German subversive rock for these bands, which were hardly known (then or now) and especially in Germany, but for those devoted to experimental rock, they forged new sounds and directions for rock music, often with makeshift electronic machines, but which still sounds fresh in the contemporary music scene.

Foremost, they wanted to make a rock & roll genuinely without the influence of British or America’s rock & roll roots (the Blues), and in Faust’s case using the earliest forms of electronic music systems for the oddest and extreme sound effects. The best of the Krautrock groups were Can, Tangerine Dream, Neu Neu!, Amon Duul II, Ash Ra Tempel, and Faust, formed in 1971 in Wumme, Bremen.

In the early 90s, Faust reformed with key original members Jean-Hervé Peron (vocals and guitar), Hans Joachim Irmler (organ, electronics and sound experimenter), and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier (drummer).

The current line-up for the performance of “Faust IV” in Prague features only the original member Peron, with long-time collaborator Amaury Cambuzat (from the French post-rock group Ulan Bator), Pierre Chevalier and Didier Demeestere; and there is a promise of other sonic-sound surprises.

faUSt is a dedicated cabal of veteran European sound explorers, led by Jean-Hervé Peron, their guide.

Tickets:
500 CZK (until 20/10/2020), resp. 600 CZK (until 19/11/2021) presale at Rachot and MeetFactory

The concert is organized by Rachot. In case of any questions, reach out to them directly at [email protected].

Over the summer, the Czech government announced that it was lifting the prohibition on dancing in clubs. It was reported that teens and adults (even some seniors) were dancing in the streets in jubilation around the country at the stroke of midnight, when the ban was lifted.

And so since the time is still ripe for dancing, the annual Lunchmeat Festival, has again invited first-rate international electronic music artists and DJs paired with new media artists for making unique synesthetic (physical and intensely visual) experiences.

While ever evolving, they are even keeping the motto for this year’s festival similarly to last year’s “We See You Dancin’” since who knows when dancing will again be prohibited.

This year’s line-up includes as usual some of the most impressive names on the electronic music scene, including Oscar Mulero, Lee Gamble, and Lorraine James. Mulero, from Madrid, has legendary status for electronic dance festivals and deservedly so for his thunderous and hypnotic yet experimental mixes, and he will do a live audio visual performance with artist Javier Bejarono, presenting “Monochrome.”

Lee Gamble is a London-based veteran on the electronic scene with roots in drum & bass, and with his crafty weaving of rave, dubstep, techno, and jungle, he creates a distinguishable, abstract and cerebral soundscape. Lorraine James also from the UK is a rising star with a tougher/rougher sound rooted in trap, but with a keen feminist edge in her sampling selections.

A standout DJ from Germany, who was cancelled at the last-minute last year, is Helena Hauff, a DJ and producer from Hamburg; Hauff has an hour set from December 30, 2020 on YouTube to give audiences a taste of her relentless delivery of danceable bleeps, bass and upbeat grooves.

Last year, Boiler Room dubbed her the Quarantine Queen to underline the importance of such DJs now.

Yet another DJ of irrepressible dance music appeal is the London-based Pearson Sound. The next time dancing is boldly banned by the state, such music practitioners could become enemies of the state.

A non-electro sound should be welcomed by Soft as Snow, a duo from Norway playing experimental pop and minimal wave, most importantly by avoiding laptops altogether in favor of playing live analog synthesizers, drum machines and samplers, mixed with the processed vocals of Oda Egjar Starheim and her musical partner, guitarist Oystein Monsen, who layers his sound in penetrating heavy effects.

Due to Covid-restrictions last year, a few acts which were cancelled are making another attempt to perform at Lunchmeat. So besides Helena Hauff, there is Lyra Pramuk, who works with layered recordings of her voice, which she manipulates or processes with software and effects so as to become a celestial diva.

Pramuk has a new release from 2020 “Fountain” which is at times like Meredith Monk, or Laurie Anderson in a deeper electro-classical haze, and hopefully, this American based in Berlin, will finally deliver her astounding vocals and encompassing soundscapes in a live performance.

Also from last year’s 2020 program, there is performance art as experimental dance and movement with sound by Italian Marco Donnarumma with bio-electrical and bioacoustics sensors attached to his body. His project “Corpus Nil” is described as a combined human performance and one for an artificially intelligent machine. It is also described as a ritual of birth for a modified body.

Finally, on the ambient or more meditative side, there is Lyra Valenza, a duo from Denmark of Jens Konrad and Hjalte performing with the visual artist Signe Dige. Such lush and calming sound producers are a necessary break on the program for mental and physical recharge.

Similarly, from Slovakia, there is Dalibor Kocian aka Stroon as a vibraphonist, guitarist, synth-player and an electronic music artist cutting across genres from metallic rock to contemporary classical and organ music with his project Temple “Timbre Embers,” a harmonic trance music with Slovak visual artist DevKid.

Just a few of the local artists worth noting include Gertie Adeleido b2b KISSTEMPERA (aka Jakub Hošek who is a visual artist and co-founder of the indie-alt music festival Creepy Teepee), as the duo-project SCRAWLERS, and Ursula Sereghy with a jazz influenced experimental electronica utilizing her background as a saxophonist in jazz and later in a hip-hop group. It’s kind of danceable too.

The Lunchmeat Festival is at various venues across town, including Archa Theatre, CAMP (for its opening night), and Ankali in Vršovice, but the weekend headliners are in the main venue, formerly known as the Theatre of Heroes; it is an underground space of the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace.

This year’s 11^th annual Lunchmeat Festival begins on Tuesday September 27^th and ends sometime in the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 3^rd. Of course, regulations due to Covid-19 must be applied strictly to ensure the festival’s existence this year and beyond. For more information see the website

The 24^th annual Respect Festival was moved to the end of August (28^th and 29^th) due to Spring Covid-regulations; traditionally, this two-day, open-air and family-friendly festival in Prague has kicked off the summer.

Inspired by Womad and Womex, Prague’s Respect Festival is devoted to first-rate World and eclectic folk music and a local community of tolerance and diversity.

Headlining on Saturday is Les Triaboliques; African groove, the Saharan blues, Latin American folk and the angular guitar sound of English post-punk or rock should not be a good mix, but this UK guitar trio does just that. Ben Mandelson played briefly with Magazine, then moved onto theatrical ethno-pop explorations inspired by the sounds of the Balkans and the Middle East.

Lu Edmonds played briefly with The Damned then joined forces with Mandelson. Justin Adams is the best known for playing with the former singer of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, and with Jah Wobble, the bassist of Public Image Ltd. Altogether this is a captivating World Blues by elder British gents: it is their take on the blues from another angle, generation, and vision.

Also on Saturday is Sushella Raman, a British-Indian vocalist influenced at her earliest age by South Indian Tamil culture, then Indian Carnatic music, but now she seems influenced by music of the world across genres: overall, Raman delivers a sophisticated contemporary ethno-pop.

On Sunday, Justin Adams returns as a duo with Mauro Durante, a violinist and percussionist (frame drums) from Salento in southern Italy, who is a master of Tarantella, a ritualistic trance music of that region. Headlining on Sunday is Besh O Drom, among the best known Gypsy-Balkan groups in Europe. This high-speed and upbeat group is originally from Budapest and they are influenced by traditional music across Europe and Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East.

This year’s Respect Festival also includes two noteworthy or even novelty opening acts, both led by the prominent Czech visual artist František Skála.

On Saturday, Skála & Provodovjané open the festival playing “dechovka” a Czech brass-band polka specialty or typical village and beer hall music, but with more striking lyrics; and on Sunday, Skála’s Třaskavá směs plays folk-punk with operatic flair, apparently influenced by Tom Waits and Elvis; this group includes the visual artist Petr Nikl, with Petr Tichý, a noted classical and jazz bassist and others.

Skála recently had among the best exhibits this season in Old Town Square at the House of the Stone Bell including his book illustrations, and his earliest till newest series of paintings and array of wood sculptures.

For more information visit the Respect Festival’s website here.

Lunchmeat Festival 2020 – the annual cutting-edge club arena for electronic music paired with state-of-the-art audio-visual technics – will take place from September 28 till October 3.

The festival combines performances for sit-down attention and contemplation with later evenings for revels on the dancefloor.

However, the motto for this year’s festival is “We See You Dancin’” which puts more emphasis on our need for such a release, especially in these weird times of both post-quarantine and another potentially upcoming quarantine.

SOPHIE is the biggest name on the festival’s marquee this year. As a Los-Angeles based, Scottish singer, performer and producer, SOPHIE has a colorful and singular PC sound from her own software produced adrenaline-charged synth-pop merged with elements of sound blasts, like the twists and turns of computer games or sound fragments on movie soundtracks–the new “natural” sounds of life around us. SOPHIE has emerged from her underground status recently as a top-ranked producer for pop stars including Charli XCX, Kendrick Lamar, and even Madonna (see the video “Bitch, I’m Madonna”).

Another experimental pop artist at the top of the bill is Lyra Pramuk, who works with recordings of her own voice, which she manipulates or processes through software and effects for a celestial sound massage. Pramuk is a young American based in Berlin, and her sound returns us to an ancient time or to our ancestral roots of ritual and spiritual chants, quite poignant for our Covid-fear computers’ era. Pramuk’s performance could be the only one combining listeners lying on the floor with eyes closed in deep meditation, while at the front or in the corners, dancers may be slowly weaving to her magic.

Another one at the top of the list is Helena Hauff, a German DJ and producer from Hamburg; Hauff herself is a great dancer as she can be seen dancing to her own set of minimal techno and electro for an uplifting Boiler Room performance “Streaming From Isolation” in March 2020. This one was streamed live from her apartment (under lockdown) in order to raise funds for Global FoodBanking Network. Boiler Room has even dubbed her the Quarantine Queen to underline the importance of such DJs now.

Robert Henke, yet another first-rate DJ and producer from Berlin is a veteran of more experimental electronic music with his slow-building, luscious and monumental sound mixed with assorted bleeps and burps best heard on albums like “Floating Point” from 1997 or “Indigo Transform” from 2009 which is an ambient drone on the darker side.

Henke is an audio-visual installation artist so in this way, he is a descendent of Brian Eno, yet he is in the pulse of the younger generation. His audio-visual piece for Boiler Room (composed in 2015) “Lumiere II” and performed in Mexico in 2016 (on YouTube) is a meditative inner space odyssey and a masterstroke in computer programming graphics light and sound.

For the fans of hyper-full-blown computer graphic-visions, possibly the one to best meet such urges is the Chicago and New York-based digital artist Sam Rolfes, a true 3D and VR pioneer. He manipulates his body into futuristic forms in fantastical worlds and for Lunchmeat he’ll do a 360 AV experience. The sound that goes along to such creations is a heavy-duty computer-industrial mash-up and it’s loud.

Another harder set will be promised by the duo Know V.A., well-known for their Hard dance mixes ala Strange Days in Amsterdam. It is a hard sound that can be hard to dance to (at least for the uninitiated).

Locals or other artists a bit closer to Prague on the program include Nina Pixel (from Slovakia) with Adrián Kriška performing Ancestral Archeology—a dark, noisy and industrial exploration; Ethno Service, a techno-dub ambient dance Prague collective will make an AV collaboration with Štěpán Marko. And NIVVA who is a computer creation/virtual musician/artwork based in Prague, as if a home base is even relevant for digital avatars. “Easy”, her February 2020 release as a single and video (on YouTube), is a short and exceptionally slower minimalist electro-synth-pop ballad sung in English.

There are a few other venues too, including Archa Theatre, for a bewitching and immersive installation titled Nonotak, experimenting with space in a mesmerizing duet or dance in kinetic light and sound between two artists, the illustrator Noemie Schipfer and architect/musician Takami Nakamoto.

This one was voted by The New York Times as one of the best performances at the Sonar Festival in 2017. Other sites include CAMP (Centre of Architectural and Metropolitan Planning), and the alternative club space Ankali (in Prague 10) to provide ample elbow room for so many artists and audiences in need of a release—as this festival is foremost for those who follow digital art experimentation and also like equally to dance to progressive electronic beats in the darkest and deepest caverns of the city.

Hopefully, the festival will commence on September 28^th as planned and run till October 3^rd at the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace as the main location for the program. The regulations due to Covid-19 also must be applied strictly to ensure the festival’s existence this year.

And so, the most up-to-date regulations for participation in the festival and any updates to the program can be found at the website.

Before rap become synonymous with gangstas, and mostly misogynistic rhymers there was the hey-day time or “the daisy age” of the perhaps naïve but more peace-loving hip-hop artists, and among the best of this period is De La Soul from the late ‘80s—formed in 1987 to be exact from Long Island, NYC.

Back in those days, hip-hop had a sense of humor, it had creative verve, and it grooved relentlessly. There was sexiness to the music and risqué lyrics but without masochistic put-downs and posturing.

Public Enemy was already a force (and not a peaceful one for sure), but they had a dignity and spirit that did not rival or counter this newer wave of hip-hop collectives, which also included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and the Beastie Boys as more positive hip-hop messengers to the mainstream.

Approaching the end of this year’s Strings of Autumn Festival 2019 is a celebration with the legendary hip-hop group De La Soul still together with the original trio, Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo to honor the 30^th anniversary of their best-known recording “3 Feet High and Rising” and, of course, more importantly for the Czechs to celebrate 30 years since their November 1989 Velvet Revolution.

“3 Feet High and Rising” released on Tommy Boy Records is considered a high-water mark in hip-hop recordings. With interludes of short comedic skits similar to Cheech & Chong between songs, including a sly (but sadly legally-challenged) sample of The Turtles “You Showed Me” but with spoken words in French “Translating Live From Mars,” followed by simply one dope-jam groove after another. There is not a bad track on the album and it was done still when the track order on albums had a purpose for full enjoyment (and with no commercial interruptions courtesy of You Know Who or That One Too).

De La Soul did want to improve society, but they looked at it from the perspective of one guy at a time. The light-hearted rhyme to their “A Little Bit of Soap” is all about making the community more livable.

“Please listen to this simple De La style I’m gonna sing
It’s strongly directed to all the misery you’re bringing
Now I’m not all about dissing someone else personnel
But there’s no quota on your odor
That’s right, you smell!
Now you might feel a little embarrassed, don’t take it too hard
And don’t make it worse by covering it up with some Right Guard
Before you even put on your silk shirt and fat gold rope
Please take your big ass to the bathroom
And please use
(A little bit of soap….)”

Now in its 23^rd edition, the Strings of Autumn Festival brings top-notch experimental, classical and jazz or cross-over musicians for a series of concerts in October-November, and this year’s De La Soul concert is a testament to their commitment of programing for a broad spectrum of music lovers.

De La Soul, with opening act Chris Dave & the Drumhedz

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A few years ago, Sweden suddenly had the most innovative music scene in Europe with groups like The Knife, Little Dragon, and Jose Gonzalez to name just a few acclaimed on the international scene. Movits! joined this tier, but with even better sales internationally, by combining hip-hop and old-time jazz in a new direction—or at least it was new when they got started about a decade ago.

After all, jazz and hip-hop have been joined at the hips since the beginning of hip-hop and in the UK with the Acid Jazz scene since the mid-90s, but hip-hoppers had never fully reached out to Swing, the golden age of jazz (the 1930s through 1950s), when swing dancing was the rage in America and Europe.

And so, it took Movits!, a trio from Lulea, in northern Sweden to finally bridge these worlds. Movits! debut album in 2008 “Appelkynckarjazz” which translates in English as “Stealing apples jazz-style” combined the high-energy acoustic swing jazz of Django Reinhardt with the power of swing orchestras (thanks to modern electronics). Actually, it was only after hearing the Benny Goodman classic “Sing Sing Sing” at a party, that the brothers Anders & Johan got the idea to merge swing and hip-hop.

Movits! is at its core a trio with brothers Johan Jivin’ Rensfeldt (vocals), Anders Rensfeldt (keyboards and DJ-producer), and tenor saxophonist Joakim ‘One-Take’ Nilsson, and for the upcoming concert at Lucerna Music Bar they’ll have a new sound too–it’s no more “hip-hop swing” for these boys.

From hip-hop, their influences are still Old School from Mos Def, Outcast, the Roots, and Gang Starr, but their new sound is a harder electronic beats meets Bollywood and Swedish rap. Their older playful and even poetic deliveries (and all still in Swedish, by the way) seems to be a sound of their past.

T-shirts and jeans have also replaced their original attire, which was a mix of swing-era suits and rappers street gear–matching suits (black or white), bow-ties, and tuxedo tails, like Swing-era jazz dancers, but with matching ankle-high sneakers. Another earlier influence of theirs, the Rat Pack, popular lounge-singers of the ’50s and ’60s, led by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. is also gone.

Back to a decade ago, Movits! unique and tongue-in-cheek rap did not go unnoticed across Europe, but also in the U.S., where their album was released on the label Comedy Central Records.

Their appearance on the satirical news-show the Colbert Report in 2009, where they conversed with the host in near-perfect English, also catapulted their sales, and in 2011, MTV tracked their cross-country tour of the US and Canada to humorous effect. Meanwhile, they have since grown up in a serious way.

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Alternative rock once ruled the music halls and radio-waves, but that was ages (certainly decades) ago.

Among the most influential groups in alt/indie rock, Sonic Youth ended as a band in 2011, and it was a tabloid affair for indie rockers’ media sphere, since they had been the foremost alt-rock band in the States for two decades, led by Thurston Moore and his wife Kim Gordon with Lee Renaldo since 1981.

However, Thurston Moore has had his own group since then carrying on the torch as a sonic rocker and experimenter continually expanding his horizons, but not at all with the attitude of “no looking back.”

His current tour is for their most recent album “Spirit Council” an artistic tour de force in his wide discography. It is a collection of three exceptionally-long instrumental compositions recorded between 2018-19 representing a period of his life reflecting on spiritual matters, collective musical friendships, and overall, a meditative sonic exploration—a deeply reflective effort both compelling and explosive.

Just as Bob Dylan dissected his failed relationship in one of his best albums “Blood on the Tracks,” Moore’s “Spirit Council” could be acknowledged as a similar gesture, but in epic instrumental tracks. After all, Sonic Youth broke up due to the separation of Moore and Gordon, both co-founders and soul mates after a long relationship that began with their rise from the New York scene in the early 80s.

They rose from the punk scene but then forged an alternative/indie rock sound like no other. When the punk zeitgeist in America suddenly ended with Nirvana’s leader Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, Sonic Youth rose to the occasion as the new leaders of a post-punk, alternative rock sound merging the 80s with the 90s, punk in spirit, but at the core a visionary guitar rock group without gimmicks.

Most distinctive for their high-velocity guitar assaults alternated with a punk-pop growl, their later recordings also became most influential to the best-known post-rock groups around including Mogwai, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Especially in their later live shows with songs like “Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg),” etc. they explored improv-jams midway in sets like the Grateful Dead. Yet Sonic Youth seems to be hardly known to younger rock music fans and too bad.

Thurston Moore’s group on this tour includes Debbie Googe, the bassist of the legendary My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth’s drummer Steve Shelley, and the English guitarist James Sedwards. This same line-up last played Prague’s Lucerna Music Bar touring their debut album “The Best Day” in 2014.

While Sonic Youth’s first concert ever in Prague was a sold-out event in the early 90s, in the Grand Lucerna Ballroom in 1993, headlining a tour with Pavement and Sebadoh. The last performance of Sonic Youth in Prague was another sold-out event, but this time at the smaller Divadlo Archa in 2007.

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