The Richter Band

Smetana

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

First time on vinyl for this gorgeous artefact of early 90’s Czech ambient folk, issued in 1990 and gaining considerable interest over the last year or so since a tape reissue via London’s Infinite Expanse. It’s prescient fusion of soft-focus, meditative new age, tape music and spiritual jazz will hit hard if you were snagged by Daniel Schmidt’s gorgeous ‘In My Arms, Many Flowers’, or if you’re into Laraaji, Merope, Steve Reich, Loren Connors or Oren Ambarchi at his most outer-zoned.

Political outsider and erstwhile rock guitarist Pavel Richter formed The Richter Band in the mid '80s and, like many of his peers in Prague, was fascinated by the possibilities of more insular, quiet music. Luboš Fidler's custom-made "fidlerophone", a gamelan-like percussion instrument made from different sized jars and played with plastic strainers, gives 'Smetana' its distinct sound, with Richter adding electric guitar, marimba and mechanical instruments, and Štěpán Pečírka playing trumpet to complete the immersive sound bubble. Opening track 'V Muzeu', is a perfect prologue, a swirled muddle of brass and woodwind that sets the scene before the band fully show us their hand.

Pečírka and Jaroslav Kořán both play the fidlerophone, tapping out gentle microtonally-tuned rhythmelodic sequences while Richter creates tension with Vini Reilly-ish tremolo guitar and ECM-referencing harmonics. The band intensify from this point: 'Česká Řeka' is a blunted roll of vanishing soft-pitched rhythms spiked with marimba rattles, and on 'Dvanáct Hodin', the trio pull back, treating the fidlerophone more like singing bowls and letting the notes ring out, unencumbered by any additional instrumentation. Richter mutates his guitar into Vangelis-like synth wails on 'Náhodná', playing kosmische riffs over percussive dings, and as the album pulls more readily into the second side, he augments the sound with more innovative electronic elements, creating Reichian repetitions on 'Líbivá' and beached atmospheres on the album's clockwork-fantasy 'Český Smutek'.

It's astonishing how well the material has aged; over three decades later, it sounds as if Richter, Pečírka and Kořán were surveying the landscape of outsider improv, nascent ambient music and globetrotting new age and responding with the kind of subtle mastery that wouldn't fully emerge until many years later.

LP (Black Vinyl) (10)