Reviews: Alternativa 2001, Prague, [01-12-2001] Nov 29 - Dec 8 2001 - at Club Delta, Divadlo Archa, and Club Vagon, www.alternativa-festival.cz Considering the relative size of Prague, at around 1 million, compared to other major cultural cities in the world, the tight and dedicated independent music community comes out in full force together to support rare celebrations of alternative, exotic, new, avant, and cutting edge music. Alternativa is notorious as a virtual marathon of new sounds, drawing not only from nearby Czech talent but also from internationally reknowned musical circles in jazz, electronic, rock, and crossover music. Performance to performance, the quality of the performances and performers varies only slightly with a few rare exceptions. Overall, Alternativa 2001 offered a consistent palette of sounds as is has been offering for nearly a decade. Despite its high quality, Alternativa is an exhausting 10-day experience, it's probably a good thing that Alternativa takes place only once a year! Exciting laptopper-tapper-meets-acoustic ensembles seemed to dominate the fest curriculum. Austria's Radian, whose shrill minimal tonery and bare beats from bass and drums made a serious, very enticing squall. A surprisingly good new Czech ensemble CS_Zvuk (CS Sound) carved their ruckus from beaty, danceable samples accompanied by live horns, reeds, and percussion. Konk Pack, a German/English trio including Tim Hodgkinson, made an extreme ruckus in the minimalist tradition carried on by such as Chris Cutler. A bit dissappointing, Konk Pack grew pissy at a couple of drunken kids near the stage and stopped their encore just after starting it (guys, it would be fine to lighten up just a bit!) And Eavesdropper from Belgium missed his original performance time, but came in the next day for an afterparty following Boris Kovac' lively show. Eavesdropper's energetic dancey beats incorporated samples and found sounds, a welcome ending of a super evening. Highlights overall including an energetic Monday12/3 performance by Myra Melford, who teamed up with a crew including Chris Speed (clarinets/sax), Cuong Vu (trumpet), and Michael Sarin (drums) and others from Belgium and Japan. Dipping deeply into jazz and then pulling far out into cosmic electronic minimalism, Melford made a big splash on anxious Prague fans. Following Melford's set came the duo of Peter Cusack on guitar and bazouki and singer Viv Corringham. Cusack's bazouki. a digitally-rigged drone machine built from a beautifully inlaid bazouki, laid beautiful matrices of sound against which Corringham's vocal renditions of Macedonian, Greek, and Bretagne folk music made a respendent blend. This Monday night concert was ended with the boistrous Belgian gang Think of One, whose strutty mini-big-band tunes brought up the levity and even got folks on their feet to dance. Another exciting evening happened around the Belgrade music stage on Wed 12/5, when Neocekavane Sila, Blank Disc, and then Boris Kovac led the show. A somewhat uninspiring, droney improv by Neocekavane Sila started the set, perhaps more injoyable when heard under that ole cannibus influence. Blank Disc livened up the space with their cut-up-noise DJ set; smart music, tearing through tracks created by masters from Eric Dolphy to Miles Davis to Ornette Coleman to contemporary Yugoslav composers, Blank Disc tweak and squeak on their computers, like a wonderfully bright fusion of Pansonic and something even more esoteric...how The Wire has overlooked Blank Disc in their contemporary understanding of the directions of electronic music is beyond me. Ending the evening on an equally cerebral yet slightly more crowd-pleasing way, Belgrade's outstanding contemporary composer Boris Kovac led a band in quasi Gypsy-band, quasi jazz-band, quazi- avant-garde group fantasy. A brilliant showman, Kovac dipped towards and away from the audience, blaring on clarinets and horns and dancing long-legged to crazy rhythms and beats. But perhaps the most exciting prize-winner of the festival was the band Budoar Stare Damy, a wild and very timely mostly-girl band blending Czech "girl band" sounds (Zuby Nehty, Dybbuk) with some kind of Hole or The Donnas rock thrash. Actually, Budoar won the "Little Alternativa" local band competition, and for good reason: a young new Czech band to look out for!
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