Urbsounds Collective (The mutant electronic offspring of Bratislava, Slovakia’s punk scene) was established in 2001 as the outcome of friendship, common interests, shared views and love for music. Since then it has become a platform for exchanging experience and supporting creative and unusual electronic and media events, distributing DIY materials, organizing experimental electronic music events and releasing mostly CD-r recordings. It played their first concert in November 2001 at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. From that time on they have been performing at various galleries, clubs, squats and festivals [Digitopia/Slovakia, Multiplace/Slovakia, Next/Slovakia, Alternativa/Czech Republic, Electric Rain/Ireland, Resistance Festival/Great Britain, RX-TX/Slovenia, Grim Electronicitt_/France, Firmanent/Poland] in Slovakia as well as abroad [Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy, France, Great Britain and Ireland].
Members: Slavo Krekovic, Marek Piacek, Oliver Rehak (laptops, electronics)
VOICE OVER NOISE is a trio of laptop musicians from Bratislava. They create sample collages out of “stolen footage” material, instantly building a unique puzzle out of bits of our common past and present. Flow of unpredictable situations where Madonna meets Edgar Varèse, old computer game music sound together with the phragments of J.S.Bach’s. Voice Over Noise are the live Recycle Bin of our pop culture: noisy, energetic, sometimes funny, but also sentimental refreshment of our collective memory.
“VOICE OVER NOISE czyli trio w składzie Slavo Krekovic, Marek Piacek, Oliver Rehak, to kolektyw elektronicznych improwizatorów. Wszyscy trzej używają komputerów oraz syntezatorów i innych urządzeń. Piacek studiował w konserwatorium, Krekovic i Rehak są muzykami, dziennikarzami, muzykologami i kuratorami artystycznych wydarzeń w Bratysławie. Połączyło ich poszukiwanie eksperymentalnych form wyrazu, które kanalizują w kolektywnej improwizacji łączącej wiele wątków z szerokiego spektrum muzyki elektronicznej i konkretnej.” – Musica Genera Festival, Poland
RECORDINGS:
O Art, Where Art Thou? A new album by Voice Over Noise, the ‘live plunderphonic’ trio from Bratislava, is out now on Divis Slovakia (2010), distributed by Atrakt Art. It features mostly material identical to live concert programme performed by the band over the past 3 years, but much of it is also based on live improvisations. Recorded in stereo, no overdubs.
Voice Over Noise track “And You are Asking What About Me” appeared on Short Circuit compilation (Music Centre Slovakia, 2010).
LIVE VIDEOS:
@ Heavy Mental, Fleda, Brno (8.4.2008) / Tribute To Falco
@ Pohoda Festival 2008 (Kdyz se podari / If We Could Make It Happen)
@ Zilina Conservatory Hall 2009 (Voice Over Noise)
Jamka is an electronic music project set up by Monika Subrtova and Daniel Kordik, who first met as philosophy students in Slovakia. After playing in various hardcore and punk bands, Kordik had gradually become more interested in the idea of making musicwith electronic devices, and when Subrtova began to share his enthusiasm for synthetic sounds and misleading compositions, they decided to explore this territory together.
Jamka played their first gig in autumn 2001 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. Using a sequencer and a sampler, they generated raw-sounding rhythms and structures. In the same year, together with RBNX and Urbanfailure, they released their first common CDr/tape, Urb Sound Systems, and founded the Slovakian Urbsounds Collective.
Jamka now reside in London, where they have established themselves as part of the local experimental scene. Using synthesizers, sequencers, samplers and various FX boxes, they touch on the darker side of techno, industrial and noise music, approaching it in their own uncompromising way. Their music is a whirlwind of colliding rhythms and fractured structures, punctuated throughout with hard-hitting sounds.
Juun, Martin Siewert, Bernhard Breuer, Peter Zagar, Daniel Matej, Marek Piaček, Ronald Šebesta
The idea of don@u.com was born in the fall 2002 when Daniel Matej and Martin Siewert met for the first time at Musikprotokoll ’02 in Graz, playing on the same evening and stage with their own bands TRAPIST and VAPORI del CUORE. Sharing similar aesthetic concepts and approaches to improvisation they decided to form an occasional band “open to musicians united by the river Danube and – most of all – by common ideas”. The band then got its name in 2004, at the occasion of its first public performance. Since 2006 don@u.com plays in more or less definite line-up with 7 musicians (Bernhard Breuer, Daniel Matej, Marek Piacek, Martin Siewert, Ronald Šebesta, Judith Unterpertinger, Peter Zagar) and the sound engineer Roman Lašciak. The first CD presents a selection of the band’s first two projects, “Lieder ohne Worte” and “Lieder ohne Worte 2”, created and premiered at the (NEW) MUSIC AT HOME ’04 in Šamorín and at the EVENINGS OF NEW MUSIC ’05 in Bratislava.
