Tearoom ambient
Big fan of everything about this NTS feature on 'tearoom ambient'. I thought I'd dig in a bit on the tracks that I liked.
Jaroslav Kořán - Jarní Píseň
"A patient and deeply intuitive album, Zahrada turns everyday sound into something fluid and hypnotic. Kořán, recording at home in Šumava with his brother Michal, let the environment shape the music. The distant chatter of children, birdsong spilling through an open window, the metallic resonance of self-built instruments - each element dissolves into the next, creating a landscape that feels both familiar and otherworldly. At the heart of it all is Orloj snivců (“The Horologe of Dreamers”), an instrument Kořán assembled from found metal and repurposed objects, shifting between delicate chimes, deep drones, and raw percussive textures.
Pavel Richter Band - Čínský Potůček - Poloviční Chytání
"Pavel Richter gained a considerable reputation as a guitarist, playing in a number of Czech avant-garde rock groups, including Švehlík, Marno Union and Elektrobus, and became one of foremost figures of the Prague scene which opposed the socialist regime of the 70’s and 80’s. Towards the mid 80’s, he began to focus on calm music and subtle sound structures, playing a number of gigs channelling this energy wtih Oldřich Janota and Luboš Fidler, and eventually forming a new group alongside Štěpán Pečírka and Jaroslav Kořán. Smetana is one of the highlights of that creative period, characterised by a fusion of Richter’s gentle electric guitar alongside the fidlerophone, a unique percussive instrument, invented by Fidler, made of jars and struck by plastic strainers, and whose sound is similar in character to Tibetan bowls or Gamelan."
Vlastimil Marek - Závěje Hlasů
"From 1996 to 2011 , Vltava prepared a pre-midnight program of new age, ethnic and ambient music for Czech Radio every 14 days under the title Oasis, music for encouragement and calm . He brought world music to the Czech Republic (his band Amalgam tried it out and played it as early as 1979 , when it was not even called world music in the world), overtone singing (at the Ostrava festival in 1991 , his friend, from whom he bought and imported other sound and instrument discoveries, Tibetan bowls , and a meditation steel drum, Jörn Raeck, sang), in an article in the magazine Regena (1990) and with practical demonstrations he presented the ancient Vedic ecological method of burning dried cow dung with clarified butter ghee and a few grains of rice while chanting mantras at sunrise and sunset, the so-called agnihotra, and in the zero issue of the quarterly Baraka (1996) he introduced the labyrinth as a rediscovered ancient therapeutic option (he later initiated the creation of several private labyrinths and collaborated in the presentation of the labyrintharium at Loučeň Castle )"
