So tomorrow is the “Founding Day”, a national holiday here in the Shire. To celebrate, the city fingerbangers are considering scrapping the Open Card system – an abortive little attempt to make the local public transport ticket system make sense. As it now stands, the system “works” on sort of an honor basis. You buy a ticket (if you can figure out what the proper fare is) then validate it at one of the barely noticeable yellow boxes hanging around the vestibule and on trams. Then, a ticket inspector may or may not approach you and ask to see a validated ticket. These inspectors have no power (aside from the uncanny ability to sense when foreigners don’t have a ticket), and aren’t even allowed to physically restrain you should you choose to run away. Like all brownshirts, however, they often get a bit overzealous in the performance of their duties.

Now most sane people would say: put a bloody turnstile at the entrances which don’t open unless you scan/validate/proffer/palpage a ticket. Problem solved and everyone pays. But no, that would not be the right way, for some reason we would probably have to go back to the 18th century “Rules and Regulations of the Bohemian Protektorat” to answer. About a year ago, they introduced some cockamamie scheme involving a rechargeable card suspiciously like London’s Oyster card. Of course, they made it impossible to charge the thing without having a personal assistant or being unemployed – a tried and true method of conducting commerce in the Shire. They further enhanced the experience by making sure that there was only one, tiny little validation stand at each metro entrance, which were immediately covered by stickers advertising some shit-ass techno party or other. Vee tay tay.

Anyway, we’ll be celebrating the holiday tomorrow at Letna park, so come out and play:

this was one of the greatest circuses ever. it was like a quirky, grungy version of Cirque du Soleil (or what I imagine Cirque du Soleil to be like, since I’ve never seen it). NYU let us choose one cultural event during our orientation week, where they covered the expenses, and this was by far the best one (also, it was the most expensive, and therefore the best use of tuition money). so I didn’t go to all of the events, but… I’m still pretty convinced this was the best one.

sneaking a picture inside the ring

The pivo tent

snuck a picture during the performance as well

a church in Letná Park that I can't find the name of.

drinking pivo at U Houdků

we did a ’survival walk,’ which was really just a tour like the one I had yesterday of the area around my dorm, except I wasn’t as jetlagged and it was around the area where the academic center is. after getting SIM cards and phones, we walked around for about five more minutes and all basically realised that we wanted a beer. so we walked down Bořivojova in Žižkov, because I remembered reading in my handy lonely planet book that it supposedly had so many pubs that ‘no-one’s ever conquered the street by having a drink in each’ because there are very close to thirty on the one street alone. because it was a Sunday evening, it was somewhat desolate and creepy. the only things open were herna bars (i.e. sketchy bars with slot machines… so pretty much like the restaurant in Poland where I won like 20 złotys in 2005), which the NYU administration already warned us to stay away from.

when we got to the end of the street, we found U Houdků, which was listed in my book as popular among students. the guy came and took our order, and he clearly knew we were American but he didn’t seem annoyed. he seemed really surprised and happy that we knew how to say ‘thank you’ and that we were making an effort. he said ‘prosím!’ with a huge smile on his face. the guy who brought out food over seemed totally unimpressed by our efforts to speak Czech (and rolled his eyes at us) but the first guy was lovely. we ate in the ‘beer garden’, so it was wonderful. I know I’m easily impressed because it was basically just tables on gravel outside, but I thought it was adorable. the beer was less than $2, so it was hard to go wrong. plus, I’ve been craving a proper potato pancake for the past year, and it was delicious.

classes don’t start for another week, and tomorrow we’re going to Letní Letná to see Cirque Trottola (a French circus kind of like Cirque du Soleil). exciting exciting!

tonight instead of going out, we watched a french fry speak German on the tv on a program called Sendeschluss and tried to speak Czech. it was all sorts of amusing.

What a Saturday. All week, the poor Czech nation, like most of Europe, has been suffering under the unbearable onslaught of bright sunshine. Now, unrequired aircon offices lie empty. Skins without melatonin slump under last years Marks and Spencer pullovers. The dour rain is here again, thank Gott, bringing forth a miserable harvest of mushrooms and sending the thankful unwashed back to their forest huts to bitch.

This is fine for me, even though my people are a Mediterranean people, because I can practice my skids up in Letna without slamming into fashion dogs and their douchy rollerblading mascots. Spent the morning looking at maps of hong kong and Tokyo. This will be a long winter, filled with douche.

De bon matí deixàvem la badia de Siracusa per enfocar cap el nord, en direcció a l’estret de Messina. L’hora de sortida estava calculada acuradament per tal d’arribar a l’entrada de l’estret a l’inici de la “montante” o corrent de marea en direcció nord; els entrebancs de l’estret de Messina, residència dels monstres de l’Odissea  Scylla i Charibdis, són molts: remolins, xucladors, xàfecs, vents de morro, com per sumar-hi una corrent contraria de varis nusos. Però el vent previst no va aparèixer i al cap d’unes hores vam decidir fer nit a Naxos, per dirigir-nos el dia següent a Messina, aprofitant la següent “montante” i, d’aquesta manera, fer l’estret de dia, que sempre és més agraït.

La travessa va ser monòtona i xafogosa i la única cosa a destacar va ser el fet de navegar per sota de l’Etna, el qual estava tapat per un immens cumulonimbe. Un cop fondejats a Naxos, els núvols es van anar dissipant i vam poder endevinant la silueta del gran volcà; però no seria fins la matinada d’avui que el veuríem en tota la seva grandesa, plomall de fum inclòs.

Nottingham-based Tom Hill shifts course from his beat-driven electronica releases on Wichita Records to sculpt an eccentric album of classical guitar and organic environmental samples for the Expanding Records label. Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks opens with impending doom, as cinematic strings and spidery guitars emerge from a tunnel of noise, fading into estranged solo acoustic guitar refrains.

The following Noshi is just beautiful, as Hill plays out a delicate guitar track, with the microscopic creaking of chairs and strings deliberately heightened in the mix – it has a wonderfully natural, melancholy feel and the chords are gorgeously arranged. The album fluctuates between these states, classical guitar merged with spotlessly organic creaks and clicks, all intermittently manipulated, although it’s hard to always pinpoint where the line is drawn. There are some very bizarre tracks here too, like Dissect Ephemeral, where the components mentioned above are bewildering diced and spliced, then joined by strangely filtered computerised vocal mutterings. Bizarre but definitely good. Meanwhile, perhaps a career in soundtrack beckons for Hill, The Last of Its Leaves succeeds in building a climax of foreboding strings and plucked/picked guitars, and elsewhere the track Remnants demonstrates Hill’s qualities as a sound designer – a much slower combination of wooden instruments and electronics, where every key tone, guitar string and studio technique is available for intricate inspection. If there is a negative, it’s that too many tracks are similar in their characteristic; much of Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks wanders gracefully but retains a heavily fractured uniformity that can leave the listener a little detached – it’s also a little too slow in places. Still, there’s just about enough diversity here, the eerie Unknown In The Walls is a true ghost story of an effort, its spindly guitars wriggling like evil worms over a threatening, slow building cascade of sound – if they remake The Shining this should be first in the soundtrack queue. One thing’s for sure, if you fancy something a bit different then the Expanding label has come up trumps yet again.
www.origamibiro.com

Very much a talent on the ascendence, Dag Rosenqvist returns with a swift follow-up to last year’s Closet Ghosts EP, and the full-length on Miasmah, Black Sleep. While those two releases marked out career highpoints for Rosenqviist, Singing Stones finds him continuing on his upward trajectory, serving up a truly beautiful – not to mention accessible – collection of cinematic electronic compositions. You won’t hear many artists who are this adept when it comes to wringing emotion from their laptops, and introductory track ‘Stillness’ provides an instantly breathtaking blend of lyrical digital timbres and immersive field recordings; you’ll hear footsteps trudging across muddy ground and far off bells pealing out in the distance – it’s lovely stuff. Next comes the exquisitely subtle ‘This Barren Land’, an electroacoustic drone piece that doesn’t initially seem to be doing anything that’s especially out of the ordinary, but the subtlety and depth of the piece ensures it worms its way into your heart. Now the tone is set, Rosenqvist opens up with some melodic developments, bringing delicate tuned percussion and filtered guitar progressions to ‘They’ve Flown Away And Left Us Here’, while ‘Last Boat In’ brings together fluttering vibraphone melodies and crashing waves on a beach. The set-adrift feel persists throughout, as cued by titles like ‘A Box Of Wood In The Storm’, ‘Into The Sea’ and ‘Sleeping Rivers’, the latter of which cultivates an Oren Ambarchi-like low-end drone, while flickers of hiss bombard slow-swelling chords. Singing Stones is an exceptional album, artfully constructed and sequenced in a way that preserves its enigmatic feel, continually shifting between coy tunefulness and glorious abstraction. Superb.
www.myspace.com/jaspertx

Offthesky is Jason Corder from Kentucky, USA. You have probably already heard of him as he is one of the most talented and prolific composers on the entire netaudio scene.
He has been releasing music via some of the most interesting labels and netlabels around, always refining his own personal voice in the world of diverse electronic music.
As he personally reports on his website, the creative process behind his work is very particular:
“Each album concept surrounds the use of chaos theory and weather patterns to drive the movement, texture, timbres, tone, and dynamic of each recorded instrument (actually, temperature records and collated barometric pressure pattern data as well as fractal mathematics have been mined and interpolated to drive reaktor(vst) or max/msp dsp lfo/parameters).
The methods for creating an album are usually as evolved and random as the sky patterns they are inspired from.
Yet an axiom of offthesky is to keep each album conceptually based upon a theme.”
His brand new EP on Zymogen, Dwelling Spells, doesn’t break these rules; composed around a specific concept, it evolves from the idea of an old lonely abandoned house that is full of growing things and subtle new organic life, as depicted on the cover which was taken by italian photographer Fulvio Romiti.
The music is evocative yet nostalgic of something past (a place, a room, an atmosphere…) which doesn’t exist anymore, yet has become more poetic and fascinating than the untouched state.
www.offthesky.com

Returning for a sixth album after a decade of recording, Mark Nelson resumes duties as Pan American, once again employing a very human brand of minimalism to his craft, establishing an evocative and exquisitely sombre electroacoustic sound, fabricated from strands of guitar, electronics and all manner of subtle nuances that pepper the background with that distinctive… Pan American-ness that made the likes of Quiet City so utterly bewitching. The irregular tremolo and whispered vocal of opening piece ‘There Can Be No Thought Of Finishing’ provides an early highlight and a sense of sonic bliss that’s all too quickly shattered, giving way to layers of noisy tones and clattering drums, only to give way to the weightless gestures of ‘For Aiming To The Stars’, a fine drift-scape buoyed onwards by intermittent root notes played by bass while the pitter-pat of cymbals keeps time. Although less organised, ‘Is A Problem To Occupy Generations’ manages to weave something beautiful from what seems to be a few wafts of amplifier hiss, giving way to the contrapuntally pristine blues of ‘So That No Matter’. Offering an entirely different prospect,’How Much Progress One Makes’ sounds like a surreal exchange between Massive Attack, Burial and Philip Jeck, producing one of the album’s most compellingly rhythmic and most arrestingly atmospheric moments. Pan American albums seem to be painfully few and far between, but when one does eventually make it out of the studio the result is something very special indeed.
www.kranky.net

‘A majestic debut album. Achingly beautiful!’
- Rock Sound
‘Iceland’s best new export comes in the shape of Eulogy For Evolution!’ – Clash
‘With this impressive first album, Ólafur Arnalds is sure to gain a well deserved place amongst the new generation of classical composers that have been emerging in recent years. Eulogy For Evolution is a truly accomplished work which shows not only a good understanding of contemporary music forms, but also a great musical maturity.’ (4.6/5) Top 17 Album Of The Year – The Milk Factory
‘An auspicious debut from a promising young talent.’ – Drowned In Sound
‘A series of orchestral movements that pull the heartstrings like a marionette.’ (8/10) Top 12 Album Of The Year – The Silent Ballet
‘I had this for diner!’ – Guardian
‘Slow moving melodies that ache with meaning, forcing themselves in and out of focus. Sublime!’ – Chiller Cabinet / Chill Radio
‘Arnald’s work is brave, unique and defiantly outré. True to its name, Eulogy for Evolution is enough to send creationists running to Darwin.’ (9/10) – CD Times
‘One of the most intelligent, well-crafted and utterly beautiful records of the year.’
- In It For The Money Zine
‘If you thought Sigur Rós had the patent on hauntingly beautiful and meticulously compelling music coming out of Iceland, then Ólafur Arnalds is here to educate you otherwise.’
- UK Music Search
‘Gentle, epic, beautiful, visceral, masterful and utterly essential. Juxtapositions fully intended.’ (5/5) – Is This Music?
‘Ólafur Arnalds is definitely going places on the strength of this album.’ – Oban FM (Scotland)
‘Arnalds’ highly cinematic approach has that same instantly digestible quality that Johannsson, and for that matter Max Richter, are able to tap into. Gorgeous!’ – Boomkat Records
‘His debut full-length isn’t just a eulogy for one man, it’s the eulogy for all mankind.’ Record of the Week – Radio K, Minneapolis (US)
‘One of my favourites this year!’
– Radio 100 (NL)
Top 9 Album Of The Year
– Caleidoscoop (NL)
Album of the week – Urban Desire (GER)
www.myspace.com/olafurarnalds

Tisza meets Dunav is the new album by Sasa Vojvodic, also known as Letna, a producer based in Paris and born in Serbia, ex Yugoslavia. With Alexandre Navarro he coordinates Sem label and the brand new Iod netlabel, the union between Eko and Standardklik. Letna already collaborated with Zymogen in the Sky Diary Edits project and we’re very happy to start 2008 with his brand new album.
Tisza meets Dunav is a concept work inspired by Sasa’s native country, Serbia. Every song is dedicated to a specific place in the area of the Tisza, which falls into Dunav, the Danube, one of the biggest rivers in Eastern Europe.
Nature elements inspired most of the album: Deliblatska Pescara is the largest sandy terrain in Europe once part of a vast prehistoric desert, Fruska Gora is a beautiful mountain, while Ledinci and Jezera are two lakes located in Serbia. The musical narrative of this album develops slowly through different sound layers: pure and delicate melodies, distant voices, guitar notes, drones, microtonal sound-waves and field recordings.
The evocative power of Letna’s music reaches high levels exemplified by the intense momentum of ‘White City’, a song dedicated to Belgrade. The emotive atmosphere of songs like ‘Deliblatska Pescara’ and ‘Crossing the Bridge (Novisad)’ is present throughout the album. Field recordings feature in every song which guide the listener into a continuum of perfectly designed soundscapes. Tisza meets Dunav is a progession of Letna’s musical research which helps us understand his poetry and the deep meanings hidden behind his abstract creations.
www.myspace.com/letna

The material collected for Snowflakes and Carwrecks was recorded during the same sessions that produced last year’s Ferndorf album, Volker Bertelmann’s impressive second LP for Fat Cat’s 130701 offshoot. Although billed as an EP, the CD’s seven tracks clock up a forty-minute playtime (NB: the vinyl edition is restricted to five) and the track sequence makes for a rather wonderful album in its own right. As was the case with Ferndorf, the music here extends far beyond the solo prepared piano excursions of Hauschka’s older material, embracing broader arrangements augmented by light electronics and a string duo. These additional musicians play a big part in establishing the understated wintry romance of ‘Eisblume’ and bringing to life a piece like ‘Tanz’, which is driven by choppy, Philip Glass-like interlocking cello and violin, making panicked exchanges with Bertelmann’s very physical and staccato piano performance. The longest composition on Snowflakes and Carwrecks, ‘Hauberg’, finds the Hauschka sound taking on yet grander proportions, beginning with fluid minor key broodings and slowly accumulating an air of tension as it traverses an involving nine-minute span. Another step up on Hauschka’s evolutionary ladder, this release is a must for anyone who got to know and love Ferndorf, and it’s sure to find favour with followers of Max Richter, Johann Johannsson and the like. Highly recommended.
www.hauschka-net.de

The two boys made it again. After a few travels Sweden-France and vice-versa, Solar Fields and AES Dana cooked up 10 immersive tunes infused with oniric trip-hop, ambient geometries and morning trance. The album is planned for an early March release.
[ Ephemeris ] is a deep sonic ground swell, an album of contrasts, 10 tracks structured upon subterranean bass lines, transversal and luminous pads, crisp, crunchy beats. A mesmerizing ensemble of fresh atmospheres and intense, forward driving melodies.
The inspiration for the album title comes from the artists Vincent Villuis and Magnus Birgersson’s collaboration process, determined by the patterns of encounter in time and space, the alignment of creative moods and coordination of life’s innate forces.
www.ultimae.com

“At the end of the 2003 was a turning point of David Crovetto’s life a.k.a Playb: he decided to transmit his message through the versatility of music produced by electronic means. Despite his hazy knowledge about synthesizers and samplers he had some previous knowledge about composition and popular music instruments.
David began playing guitar about 10 years old (he defines himself as an self-taught guy when it comes to playing instruments), later about 13 year old, he played in bands which made possible the learning of bass guitar, keyboards and drums performing covers mostly but as well creating original songs. After finishing high school though he moved away from playing in bands after getting into University to study Engineering in sound.
As time went he has been developing a very peculiar sound, exploring its organic aspects, developing ways of composition and arrangements considering himself an experimental producer.
Playb’s music is known for its cinematic atmosphere along with emotional yet chill melodies, he experiments mostly with “downtempo-based” styles trying to keep a delicate balance between melodic dominant and groove based music.
His latest release is titled “Alongside Pictures In Motion” -self release and first full length album-, Alongside Pictures In Motion is available from all iTunes stores and Amazonmp3.”
www.playb.co.uk

“One of the most highly anticipated albums of the year…Where Edges Meet is a truly pioneering composition that raises the standards of electroacoustic production and sees James Murray leading the way in futuristic sounds”. 10/10
-Fluid Radio
James Murray is a composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who layers organic and electronic elements to achieve uniquely emotive productions. His passion is for subtlety, ambiguity and that blurry interface between the ‘natural’ and the ’synthesised’.
Debut album “Where Edges Meet” subtly evokes the rumble and clatter of London’s industrial wastelands, leading us to its secret gardens and wide parks with crystalline, haunting melodies.
As a gifted multi-instrumentalist James has intelligently merged the organic and synthetic realms into delicate and daring soundscapes – all vividly evocative of sense and space.
Where Edges Meet is an intimate and ambiguous album, a wistful playground for broken breakbeats, jazz inflections, sideways dub and avant-garde electronica.
9 colourful tracks to delight your ears and challenge your mind.
www.jamesmurray.info

Dnes jsem se zúčastnil veřejné části pohřebu slavného architekta Jana Kaplického, a proto o tom přináším následující svědectví. Tento akt se konal v budově bývalého kostela sv. Anny nedaleko Staroměstského náměstí.

Už před vchodem se tísnily skupinky lidí, a ani vevnitř to nebylo o mnoho lepší. Bylo vidět, jak hlubokou stopu pan Kaplický na Česku zanechal, neboť v kostele nebylo mnoho volného místa. Zezadu nebylo příliš vidět, co se vepředu děje, pokud zrovna někdo nemluvil na pódiu.

Tam se postupně vystřídaly různé osobnosti tak, či onak spojené s životem Jana Kaplického. Největší ohlas a pozdvižení však přinesla Dagmar Havlová poté, co přečetla dopis svého manžela Kaplického dceři Johance, která se narodila v den architektovy smrti. V něm se k ní obrací k jejím 12-tým narozeninám a mluví o jejím otci, ale také o tom, jakou roli sehrál v tom, že na Letné stojí budova národní knihovny. Předjímá tedy budoucnost a doufejme, že má pravdu.

Velmi zajímavé byly také ukázky z různých dokumentů s Kaplickým, kde se zmiňoval o svém boji proti české malosti a hlavně pražskému primátorovi. Ten má prý dokonce podle korespondence bývalého ředitele NK Ježka doslova naděláno v kalhotách.

Jan Kaplický tedy zemřel. Odešla legenda svého oboru. Pořád ale ještě není pozdě překonat politickou tragédii a dokázat, že jsme demokratický stát – demokracie totiž narozdíl od diktátu staví.