I wanted to write down some impressions from our trip to Ljubljana where we played and attended the MENT showcase festival. After the Christmas gig in Prague we entered a two month break to have some time for ourselves and recharge our batteries, as they say. We really needed it!

We got together last week for two rehearsals that were fun, we refamiliarized ourselves with our own songs, reworked the chorus of one of our new songs and even had a couple of great jams. On Thursday morning we left Prague pretty early because the drive to Slovenia takes almost eight hours. As we arrived to Ljubljana there were these posts on the driveway to the venue and we had to call someone at the reception who presses a button and these posts go down and let you in. So Slajmer called the reception and started explaining who we are and what we need in a really chaotic manner and Kuba couldn’t stand it anymore so he took his phone and in the most confident voice possible told the guy on the phone „We are at the sloups!“

Anyway, we loaded our stuff to the backstage in Klub Gromka, which is part of Metelkova, a squat-turned-cultural-center where there’s a lot of clubs concentrated in one place. We met our guide Ivan, this very funny Slovenian guy who showed us around, and then headed to a dinner. Our concert at Klub Gromka was alright. I have to admit that these showcase festival shows aren’t my favorite. Usually, you have a tight soundcheck schedule that you have to fit in, then you play a short set and then you have to immediately pack everything up while the other bands are loading on the same stage that you are leaving and there’s a million people running everywhere. We aren’t used to it that much so we felt pretty disoriented when we got on stage and before we got ourselves together the show was over. But the room filled up really quickly and people seemed like they were enjoying it.

Blue Chesterfield and us at Metelkova

By a funny coincidence our Pilsen friends from Blue Chesterfield were on tour and had a gig in Ljubljana that wasn’t part of the festival on the very same day and they played a club that was literally ten meters away from Klub Gromka. Our show went on at the same time, so we couldn’t attend each others gigs, but we spend the night together in the Metelkova area. There was a lot of other gigs happening there, I caught the end of some happy hardcore thing that sounded good but I was pretty tired from the drive and the gig so I went to bed early. The others stayed up late and saw some good shows and had some beers and whatnot.

 Iris among the trees in the center of Ljubljana

The next day we headed to Kino Šiška, probably the most known venue in Ljubljana where there were some panels and interviews and we attended a great talk by Valentina Magaletti, Italian drummer based in London. We didn’t know her before and were impressed by what we heard. She talked about using drums unconventionally, about collecting records, how to stay sane, about her cat and thought processes behind music in general. She seemed really unpretentious and pure, it was really refreshing to hear someone speak with so much enthusiasm and passion. With all the traveling, booking and organizing gigs and all the stressful things that come with that it’s sometimes easy to forget that the main thing behind it all is the music itself and one’s love for it.

Birds near Tromostovje

We spent the day eating, drinking coffee, talking the inner workings of our band and just wandering around the city. In the evening, Mára, Iris and I took the funicular to the Ljubljana castle to see some shows there. The program started with a drone-y performance from three Slovenian musicians playing harp, kalimba, various homemade gadgets, guitar pedals and so on. Mára then went back to the city to see Austrian band Gardens, and also this other band which name I forgot. Me and Iris stayed at the castle as we awaited the concert of Valentina and it was the best decision we made because the performance was unbelievable. She moved effortlessly between a drum kit, percussion kit and a vibraphone and did an hour long performance based mostly just on rhythm. All the things she was talking about during the interview now made even more sense as her enthusiasm transformed into this beautiful music right there before our eyes (and ears). We spend the whole concert in a state of trance and when it ended I turned to Iris and she was crying from what she just saw. It was a beautiful thing that we got to experience. I have to check out more of her music and collaborations, I’m sure it’s all great.

Then we moved on to the chapel where Juli Deák was playing. She organized our concert at BUSH in October, but we didn’t know she is also a musician. She plays flute and uses circular breathing and extended techniques like tapping, overblowing or singing into the instrument. I wouldn’t call her music ambient, but it is certainly minimal in a Steve Reich kind of way. It’s not about melodies (although they’re definitely there), but more about textures and harmonies. It’s crazy how many different things one instrument can sound like. There are certain overtones you can create by overblowing woodwind instruments that sometimes feel like there is second note happening when you technically only play one. Then you add the „singing“ and tapping and one flute becomes three or four things at once. Especially in acoustically rich room like the chapel it fills the space really beautifully.

Juli Deák's performance at the chapel

I would be totally fine going back to our hotel after those two shows as they were the best thing I’ve seen in a long time and there was a lot we could think about, it was really inspirational. But we wanted to meet with Mára and Kuba and so down with the spectacular funicular we went! We all (minus Slajmer, who took a night bus back home to play a concert with China Soup) met at Stara Elektrarna, old power plant in the city center, another venue that was part of the festival. There we saw a nice gig by Milan W. and then moved once again to Metelkova for a crazy show by Julian Mayorga, a Columbian guy combining traditional latino rhythms with bursts of noise, Tom Waits-like percussion and vocals shouted in Spanish. If Captain Beefheart was from South America and had a sampler it would probably sound something like this guy. His signature move was to suddenly throw a fistful of confetti above his head right before the music drops with a plain „Confetti!“ statement. He had a song about giant creature that comes from the sky to kill all the rich people and as they are being eaten their bones make the sound „chak chak chak“, which is the name of his album. It was a fun gig to end the day with.

Saturday started pretty lazily. We got out of beds late, made ourselves a typical Czech zelňačka, had some more chill time and then headed once again into the city to take a walk.

A person eating Bavarian wurst and a person holding a cup of tea

Last concert that we saw was aya at the big hall in Kino Šiška, singing and manipulating electronic sounds on some sort of a controller with a laptop and it was really amazing! The music seemed to me like amalgamation of many types of electronic music. I heard some sound design techniques used in hyper-pop, but in a different, darker dystopian context. It reminded me of something Squarepusher would do on his Ultravisitor album (a great record by the way!), like the song „50 Cycles“. But I also heard traces of footwork and other things… all in this violent disorienting stream of energy. The sound was outstanding, the subs were loud and tight, everybody was dancing and we all really enjoyed it. After the concert we also discussed how we liked the stage presence she had. She was really cheeky, sometimes even arguing with guys from the front row in the middle of the song in a really twisted funny way, or just talking bullshit. Iris described how she likes it more when the artist seems to hate you than when he or she’s doing everything possible to make you like them. There’s always a band whose bassplayer pulls off this mean face and scans the audience with his eyes while pretending to be the god of rock music… that’s utter bollocks. Anyway, enough of ranting, the visuals were also amazing. It was some kind of projection on a transparent foil behind the performer from both sides of it. Kind of minimal, fast and angular, it was often equal counterpart to the music, synchronized with the performance, with bits of lyrics appearing here and there.

In the city and at the castle

On Sunday we drove to Munich to see Madison Cunningham play, but that's beyond the scope of this write-up...

View from the car on our way back