Interestingly, the more recent music development in the Czech Republic is to a large extent dictated by art students and artists who similarly to their many forebearers in the history of music – eg. the whole art punk movement of the mid Seventies – conceptualize music and enrich it with elements from their artistic expressions. There have been several examples of this cross-pollination in the last decade here: the whole Prague-based AM180 Collective, whose activities encompass concerts, the festival Creepy Teepee or the AMDISCS label, is spearheaded by the brother-sister duo painters Jakub and Anežka Hošek. Another buoyant art/music scene has been brewing in the east of the country, in the gloomy industrial town Ostrava. Czech Republic‘s Sheffield has been conducive to the arts, spawning a fledgling generation of idiosyncratic artists. Bands such as the now dormant Like She or I Love 69 Popgeju are composed of graduates of the local art academy. The latter is renowned for its bold visual aesthetics and deranged appearances. Their warmly received album Let’s Gold Corridor Is out now.
Chris Bohn: Thoughts on Elysium
Chris Bohn, editor-in-chief of The Wire, contributed an in-depth essay on Pet Shop Boys’ new album ‘Elysium’ exclusively for Electronic Beats. Featured in the programme of last night’s exclusive PSB show, you can now read it in full here. – more
Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek’s Wintercamper
In the era of Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pininterest and whatever the hell else there is out there, it seems that everybody taking snapshots would think themselves a photographer just by virtue of being able to point and shoot. But if you take a step back and look at the whole picture (!), you will see – more
From The Vaults: interview with Jigoku
The affinity for the weird, obscure and bizarre has gained momentum in the last few years reinforced by the likes of tumblr as catalysts of visual ‘debris’. The hunt for the abstruse and low-brow is no passing pop culture fad for audiovisual bricoleurs Jigoku though. Driven by the need to unearth and manipulate random VHS – more
Elfriede Jelinek transformed
You could call Elfriede Jelinek the voice of the liberal Austria. In her works, which cover a great variety of different art forms, she often criticizes the political establishment and the author is well known for her feminist stance. And as you probably know, she won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004 and didn’t – more
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