Petr Vrba
The Book of Pig
The Franco-Czech duo Kesherul Neg Pineg casts a spell on ritual reductionism, offering unsettling, even gloomy, psychedelic grooves. Frenzied attacks, atmospheric soundscapes, the music remains unpredictable but full of abundant energy and unexpected turns. The two musicians bewilder the senses, creating illusions and deceptions, diverting their instruments, extended trumpet, dizzying analog synthesis, prepared percussion… These two activists of improvised and experimental music met in Prague in…
Schallschatten
Tip! “For the first duo release, Birgit Ulher stays close to her primary instrument, the trumpet. She plays that, as per usual, in combination with a radio, speakers and a voice changer. Early February 2020, she recorded a duet with Petr Vrba, also on trumpet and electronics, during a two-day met in Hamburg. Both musicians have quite a reputation when it comes to playing improvised music. Well, maybe improvised music covers only partially what they do. The addition of electronics and objects mak…
Something Wrong There
The science fiction yearning for utopia sometimes falls into dystopian space. Kurt Liedwart with Ken Ganfield and Petr Vrba tried to follow the impulse of getting to the ideal world but their most powerful and fearful predictions and prophesies came to the fore and “Something Wrong There” happened all the time. Liedwart recently became dissatisfied with the improvisation’s disability to create sonically fresh sound worlds and completely remixed the studio recordings. Did it prevent him from maki…
Punkt
Petr Vrba explores non-idiomatic improvisation using trumpets, clarinets, vibrating speakers and other electronics which made him one of the most active experimental musicians in Prague. He works with a lot of projects like Prague Improvisation Orchestra, Poisonous Frequencies, NOIZ, Doppeltrio, Rouilleux and Junk & The Beast. “Punkt” is his second release on Mikroton following “Trailer” with Veronika Mayer released in 2017.
Kurt Liedwart, a Moscow-based musician and curator of Mikroton Recordin…
Resonators
Four pieces from a residency in the Czech Republic by the trio of George Cremaschi (double bass and electronics), Irene Kepl (violin and electronics) and Petr Vrba (trumpet, clarinet and electronics). "We're concerned with using the acoustics of the resonant spaces we seek out as a sort of additional member of the group, composing with this interaction particularly in mind." Acoustic instruments and feedback devices combined in old stone spaces, such as the courtyard of a monastery, creating a r…
Esox Lucius
The tracks of the album Esox lucius were recorded on high end analogue technique at the Czech Radio Broadcasting Studio in Prague. Four exceptional instrumentalists are creating bubbling and zizzling chamber music, they are blurring the edges of their instruments, but contemporarily dialoguing with a precise and unique vocabulary. The record is based on minimal drones, refined with analogue trumpet glitches and extended vocal techniques. Brass is bubbling, feedbacks are shrieking, it sounds as i…