| |
Reviews: Theater MUT - an evening of Slovak/Czech Theater and Music!
[01-12-2001]
Palac Akropolis, Prague on Dec 5, 2001, www.muthome.cz
For anyone wondering where to find truly amazing, whip-smart, and extremely unique-sounding alternative music in Eastern Europe, I would advise that you look no further than Bratislava, Slovakia. Locals in Slovakia's capital will bemoan their city and their scene, disclaiming their relatively tine size in comparison to other worldly cultural centers and decrying Bratislava as an ugly, frustratingly bureaucratic, politically insane, and prospect-less place. Can't listen to the locals in this case, for I defy you to find a more critical, a more creative, albeit modest, top-notch batch of talent than that which I witnessed at the MUT "Slovakia comes to Prague" festival last Wednesday at Akropolis.
The night's program is hard to describe, following something of a through-composed course. The first group to perform was Bratislava's FROGSKI POP, a post-trip-hop ensemble creating delicate electronic/acoustic beats. The backdrop to the whole evening was provided by Bratislava's notorious Satori video masters, whose amazingly detailed work uniquely tinkers with old former-communist imagery from machines and textures, blending black and white with color projections..basically, the video projections were so excellent and so fitting with the music as to provide almost a film-like state of events. Frogski Pop's main singer, a bold woman a bit resembling Joni Mitchell but in a young, laid-back, hip-hop way, is named SINA, whose deep and sultry voice was spot on pitch and super captivating each time she sang. Adding to the staged dimensions of the performance, on side-screens, black on white words flashed rhythmically in tandem: boat...people...hands...connect, other words whose presence created a whole new attenuated plane of meaning parallel to the music and the video.
Now comes the through-composed part of the evening: throughout every song or two of Frogski Pop's set, Theater MUT members popped in from different quadrants of the theatre, delivering multimedia performances in readings which dabbled with the absurd and the thought-provoking. One quadralogue witness critics from the upper audience balcony stage left, discussing why the woman on the video screen (pictured cutting and pasting together paper and crap as if in elementary school) wished to commit suicide. Another trialogue witnessed a silent actress at center and two commentators describing "today's modern woman." Painfully accurate and amusing addressing of modern issues of "having control" versus "looking in-control," The skit ended with the silent model becoming a stewardess with the typical pre-flight recitative, telling the audience how to apply oxygen masks and seat belts and then in the end to enjoy their flight. Another mid-set interlude featured male and female modern dancers poignantly addressing descriptively male-female relations. Most laughs went to a self-indulgent yet extremely funny last theater piece, which broadcast two friends having a goofy conversation about life and girls while smoking pot. During this, the full-stage video screen flashed green LEDs in robotic synchronization with the voices: ending the MUT program which was subtitled "Mensch und Technic" this display set man in the proper historical context: though wešve gotten much smarter, we sure remain goofy humans.
The eveningšs music kicked off with Frogski Pop. Frogski Pop's music combines well-known Bratislava talent. Daniel Salontay, blues and lead guitarist, singer/composer Sina (whose recent solo works and songs with pianist Martin Burlas are clearly worth a study), Jaroslav Riedl on computers and beats, and Marian Jaslovsky on saxophone and flute, are a team of musicians not only known for their top-notch playing. Daniel and Sina together run excellent small label Slnko Records, whose unique releases of interesting independent music, excellently recorded and artistically packaged. Marian and Jaroslav are well-known as music and culture writers for Slovakia's excellent e-zine "InZine.Sk" and other Bratislava magazines.
Next up to play was Trencin/Bratislava trio Nylon Union. Grooving beats meeting with psyche-retro guitar swell, and grounded by an absolutely rocking bass and drums, on the axis of MBV, Blur, Sterolab (rather, Snow Pony). Roe-Deer played next, a Prague-based group with a recent release out on BMG/Globus, kicking out a very professional set, with their melodic, trippy-guitar and beats tunes, with hits familiar from airplay on Prague's Radio 1.
After 10 , the scene moved next door to the Small Theater (Mala Scena) where Bratislavan electro-musician ABUSE took over. With a ripping set, drawing on bizarre arrays of samples and found sounds, Abuse's set is much more about the irony of the confines, "globalness," and the cosmic potential of electronica than it is about making danceable music. His is really art-music that is somehow danceable, much like that of the superb Ninja Tune or the Petersburg/Helsinki posses. Whipping between hyper break beats and maligning the drawn-out operatics of normal music, and then doubling or tripling up layers of sounds, Abuse's set must be watched carefully, and not simply danced along to, and his musical humor clicks. Art-be-damned, the room grooved to his wild beat arrangements.
Altogether the tone of the evening was adventurous, somehow indulging a euphoric 70's outtake in its ironic retro. The simplicity and resplendent colors, the complexity and the candor, the heavy-handed and the humor, elements combined smoothly in the rolling together of academic art and entertaining pop culture. This is a tour that should happen around Europe, Stateside even better.
|
|
|
