The ongoing Itch My Ha Ha Ha Festival focuses on music ranging from electronic experiments to rap and contemporary pop. The deformator of tape loops William Basinski, energetic Young Fathers and the lone singing preacher Richard Youngs found their place in the programme. The common denominator for the various performers could be that their performances resemble a musical ceremony. That may be another reason why the band Ospalý pohyb led by Slovak composer Martin Burlas fits so naturally into the festival programme. Their performance was part of an art birthday celebration on 17 January.
Did you come to Brno to celebrate the birthday of art or is it an ordinary concert for you?
We cannot talk about ordinary concerts because we revived the band after fifteen or maybe twenty years. It depends on whether we count from the last album or the last concert. It is still very pleasant, new things are being created, for now there is nothing ordinary about it.
The new album of Ospalý pohyb should be released this year – is it already finished, or is it being recorded or produced, in which stage is it?
In November, we released an EP and eventually we had so many new things that they will not even all be on the new album. The album should be released in the spring. Originally, it was supposed to be an LP simultaneously with the CD, but eventually we found out that people are buying vinyls more often. The shorter runtime of the vinyl also suits us, so we cleaned up the material.
Do you work with the format of an LP also in terms of the need to split it between the two sides?
This is just a technical necessity that must be accepted. We also like the possibility of a shorter runtime, with which I practically grew up, it used to be normal. In addition, I do not see it as a restriction but instead as an opportunity to choose the best things. And we are more into songs so for us it is more logical. And we do not have an A and a B side, we do things so that it is not clear which one is the main one. We did it this way already on the EP and hopefully we showed sufficiently that it does not matter. The order must be dealt with somehow, even at a concert. However, I am convinced that when things work, their order does not matter too much.
When did the artist inside you wake up, when did you become the bucket in which someone dropped a dry sponge?
I have a little problem with the title of an artist, because if a term is generally used and there is a social contract associated with it, it may become a phrase. For example, when you say "entrepreneur", there is automatically a pejorative undertone in it, people perceive it similarly to the term "con man". This is not correct and sometimes it is the case of art which is used as a designation for some sort of pseudoeffort. So I am afraid of using these common terms and I would prefer talking about music, painting and the like. Otherwise, as far as I remember, I was always very lucky. We used to have an excellent library full of world literature at home: Beauvoir, Kundera, all that was available to me. And one would have to be completely dull not to be absorbed by it. I listened to classical music from the age of 13, but also Rolling Stones, King Crimson as well as Troggs and Doors. I even saw one of the first concerts of The Primitives Group, they played a fantastic concert in Bratislava – in 1967, I think. It was clear to me that this is my world.
You studied with Ján Cikker and you probably did not like his work too much, since you modified his compositions so that you would pass in school...
He was an old man and he was very ill. He had Buerger's disease, where there is a risk of the lower extremities dying. He beat it but he had problems like everyone, the communists ostracised him a lot at the beginning of his career. They did not allow his first opera to be performed, he had some trouble. But then he acclimatised, it was a typical disgusting career, we were all exposed to it. Everyone dealt with the regime somehow if they did not want to end up in jail or not being able to do what they liked. And he was so visibly upset about it that nothing interested him anymore. When he received my aleatorics, he responded irritably. It was obvious that this Rubicon River could not be crossed. So I accepted it. Paradoxically, he had a reputation as a liberal professor, but it came more from his youthful years. In his old age, he was a tired and irritable person.
What is the sense of the school then, what did it give you?
In the worst case, every art school gives a man one thing: they can do what they like for five years. In the best case, of course, they meet a good professor who teaches them a lot and is inspiring. Although I would bring such things to my professor to make sure that the emperor got his dues but beside that I had five years of my life to dive into things that interested me. That is irreplaceable. It showed a lot in the military when a man had to be a puppet somewhere after the five years and they stole the best years of his life. Compared to that, there were five years dedicated to what I liked, a fantastic thing.
Your style ranges from rock bands through electronics to symphonic compositions. Do you have a creative method?
I do not and it actually surprises me. Eventually, it does not look good and I would not recommend it to anyone. I would say: "Focus on one thing and do it well." I do not know if it is a character downside, I did a lot of things and I cannot even really explain it. But I have never done different things simultaneously. Today, the requirements are so extreme that whoever does not focus on one thing and does not do it at 150%, has virtually no chance. Therefore, I would not recommend this method to anyone, but I did not manage to do it any other way. It is also a matter of ideas that come unexpectedly. Sometimes at night and I rarely remember them until the morning, often when working during the day.
So you are not a rational thinker who has a result and a clear path that you want to take in front of your eyes?
Sure, I am. I know what I would like in any particular genre and what still needs to be done. However, when there are no ideas, it is just babbling and wishful thinking. And when the idea comes, it works by itself: some ideas are more into classical music, sometimes a song is created. One waits, throws a lot in the trash – and people should do that often. The atmosphere is already thickened with everything possible. It is possible to only release what is excellent.
According to Vladimir Kokolia, avantgardism is the only official art direction for a hundred years and it still looks like it is the victim. Do you feel like an avantgardist?
It is strange that even our representatives of postwar avant-garde had such an approach. We thought that it is just the attitude of the Slovak avant-garde but apparently there is something encoded in it in general. Pierre Boulez, a fantastic personality, died recently but exactly this type of avant-garde had a clear mind. Not to accept anything from the past the way it was. To start with a clean slate. Paradoxically, I advocate that as well but I have a different explanation. However, they designed new systems, they did not like synthesising approaches and some returns. They hated the music that returned to tonality, although it was clear that it had to happen. We noticed it too and people, who represent this direction in the Czech Republic, looked like the victims their entire lives. Maybe they influenced the situation more than it would seem. But I cannot explain why it was happening. However, today, the world is so clearly synthesising that the total cleaning of the slate became useless. A band, which plays Elvis retro music, can be fantastically interesting – it is very complicated. You never know when the shift occurs, when it gets interesting, even though it is an apparent copy. It is a big puzzle.
And how do you explain the need to start with a clean slate?
It is not because I would like to ignore everything from the past but I try to get rid of whatever I consider to be bad, useless, what would not help the matter. However, when I am creating the matter, I do not mind that it could resemble something, even though I try to walk down an uncommon and non-ordinary path. But today it is really a lottery and in most cases it works so that when I – or anyone else – think of something, consider it to be original and find out that someone else did the same on the other side of the world six months or ten years ago. Those are nice surprises.
Jaroslav Šťastný wrote about you that even if you choose a relatively conventional rate and limitation to tonality, it still leads to a very extraordinary result...
I strive for that too, but statistically all the possibility of working with twelve tones have been exhausted. The only option – whatever system I work in – is to get them in such relationships with the surroundings as to achieve a certain shift.
Your Hymnus za zlyhávajúci lásku on the album Leter Tu Develoter by the Ne:Bo:Daj band gives me that exact impression. It is a nice vocal thing and at the same time...
That is close to Gregorian practices. The lyrics cannot be sung in a church and I was hoping that the lyrics would get it to a paradoxical level.
How do you choose your lyrics?
It is hard, very hard. Sometimes by accident: I wrote an orchestral composition and when working on in, I came across lyrics written by my colleague. She cut out stupid advice, on how women should behave, from women's magazines. It was such a fantastic picture of a society manipulated by trends that I rewrote the orchestral composition to a piece with choir (Spam Symphony, Ed.). It came at the eleventh hour. I cannot use conventional poetry: probably everyone knows that when poetry is good, perfect, setting it to music only ruins it. There must be some space, vacuum, something unfinished, imperfect, to be able to shift it somewhere with musicalisation.
Last November, your song Hexenprozesse was played at the Next festival in Bratislava and a record was released. The only version before was from 1990 – do you often come back to older work?
No, never, really. Five years ago, I did not let Miroslav Tóth re-launch this piece – it was a period when I did not want to do anything at all. Then something happened – I do not even know what – and we began to work together again, it started to look good. With the Musica falsa et ficta ensemble, we made it farther, they make even better homemade instruments, we created a lot of space where to go. However, I do not like returning to old things, it is important to do new things.
With Ospalý pohyb, you also returned after a long time.
However, we only play new things or things that I left at home during the break. At the beginning, we played three or four old ones to have something to rehearse. But then it started to work and the entire repertoire is comprised of new songs. With one exception among the fifteen songs.
