Rokolectiv 2014 festival guide

FESTIVAL FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC AND RELATES ARTS THURSDAY/24.04 CNDB 20.00 Wilhelm Bras (PL) Innode (A) Cut Hands (UK) FRIDAY/25.04 MNAC 22.30 Pharoah Chromium (DE) Forest Swords (UK) Dubbel Dutch (US) Bogman (RO) Dreamrec (RO) SATURDAY/26.04 MNAC 22.30 Discoteca pres. Adrian Enescu (RO) Redinho (UK) Stellar OM Source (FR) Hush Hush (DE) Alejandro Paz (CL) Dreamrec (RO) SUNDAY/27.04 GUEST HOUSE 06.00

Afterparty Bogman (RO]/ Alexandra (RO) & More

ROK OLE CTIV 2014

It is the year 2014, in Bucharest, a city that precipitated to jump over big gaps left behind by decades of discontinuous, fragmented electronic music history, in a burning desire to become one of Europe’s most dynamic scenes. Live concerts, party labels, ambitious promoters pop up in a startling rhythm, constantly filling in the local agenda. Where does Rokolectiv Festival sit on a 2014 insomniac scene?

Celebrating the 9th edition, Rokolectiv Festival is rather a platform built on small steps and continuity, a pillar that one can get a grip on every spring in an otherwise dizzy and tormenting city. From 24th to 27th of April, the festival continues to highlight off-beaten music trajectories constantly crossing and feeding each other, while simultaneously being fed and feeding the big pot called pop. The line up also winks at the dawn of the white “Western sound”, and the colorful explosion of “outer-national” influences.

The Opening Night is hosted this year by the National Dance Centre. British underground legend William Bennett presents his solo project Cut Hands inspired by Haitian vodou, using Central African percussions like djembe and dundun in an exorcising techno set. “Proto-sonic” could be a suitable term to describe the new project of Stefan Németh (Radian) and Bernhard Breuer (Elektro Guzzi), Innode, as their live show goes from acoustic percussion to raw, unprocessed waveforms generated by analogue synthesizers. To complete the white noise Thursday, Polish DIY producer and synthesizer-constructor Paweł Kulczyński performs his new techno-leaning project, Wilhelm Bras.

Friday and Saturday unfold on the rooftop of the Contemporary Arts Museum, with an array of juicy, bold performers and DJs, and less of the “usual suspects” - those artists pampered and glamourized by the leading off- and online publications. However, a special reverence shall be made to Rokolectiv’s special guest this year: early synth pioneer

Adrian Enescu, the man who took Romanian electronic music from cult to profane with his disco-infused hits and spacey soundtracks, brought on stage by the rom-pop archeologists from Discotecă.

It took four decades of digital revolution and few more years of “after-taste”, for music to shift from Enescu’s sound to Liverpool’s enigmatic Forest Swords, with his thunderous grooves and cavernous melodies rubbing shoulders with hip-hop and R&B shuffles. Likewise, Stellar OM Source, a dedicated member of the DIY synthesizer community, revolves new constellations with her mutant drums and synth melodies. In a constantly shifting paradigm, German-Palestinian artist Ghazi Barakat, the man behind the golden mask of Pharoah Chromium, relates his ethno doom infused sound to “meta music”.

On the sunny side, Hush Hush, master of earthly ceremonies, engenders his furious and feverish “self-styled hit-machine” in a brilliant one-man show; multi talented Londoner Redinho performs a talkbox-meets-synthesizer funk infused solo, whereas Austin DJ / producer Dubbel Dutch drops a panoply of collective global styles including UK House and Grime, South African House, Kuduro, and Rap/RnB. For the epic ending, Santiago-born Alejandro Paz returns to Bucharest to give a new preaching on what Cómeme stands for: bodies that give themselves away! Expect some of these names to pop up at Guest House for the after-party on Sunday, hosted by Bucharest’s own Bogman and Alexandra.

Alongside the rooftop performances, MNAC’s face-lifted 4th floor will host a selection of special projects, with an intervention of the art and design collective Apparatus 22, Sillyconductor’s “Pianosaurus” and Monotremu’ s “Q.E.F.” installations. www.rokolectiv.ro

WILHELM BRAS PL

Wilhelm Bras is the new techno-leaning project by Paweł Kulczyński, Polish DIY producer and synthesizer-constructor, who is also known for recording and creating sound installations under his own name and the Tropajn alias.

His new album - “Wordless Songs by the Electric Fire” - is a prime example of noodles and glitches sourced from his living and breathing electronics, a result of years of DIY nerding and sonic research.

Danceable, bubbling analogue beats and trippy atmospherics make it as apt for the dancefloor, as for home listening. The warmth of analogue and the weird sounds conjure a world that’s playful and utterly likeable.

INNODE AT

“Proto-sonic” could be a suitable term to describe the new project of Stefan Németh (Locrian, Pan. American, Cleared) and Bernhard Breuer (Elektro Guzzi, Tumido). Innode’s pieces are composed around the central aspects of rhythm, reduction, and precise forms. This technical approach is then contrasted with the elements of human intuition and unpredictability. Drum machines interlink with acoustic percussion, one being shaped, extended, and complemented by the other. At the same time, these percussive patterns are substrate for electronic textures, made up of raw and unprocessed waveforms and generated by analogue synthesizers. It is the function defining the choice of sounds; hence, resulting elements can be as simple as white noise or a pulsewave. Comparable to this process, it is the focus on essentials regarding the form. The organization of chunks of sounds, as well as structuring microscopic details emerge from the same idea of using just as much as needed: the minimum simply fits best.

CUT HANDS UK

From white noise to voodoo, Cut Hands is the solo project from a legend of the British underground, William Bennett. He dominated the experimental scene of the 80s with his power electronics group Whitehouse, whose industrial sound and unforgiving crassness paved the way for noise as a musical genre. Since 2011, Cut Hands is Bennett’s vice for his fascination with Haitian vaudou, and Central African percussion. The title of his first release, “Afro Noise”, accurately describes the feel.

Using loops of traditional instruments like the djembe and doundoun, Cut Hands reflects a salacious preoccupation with the continent’s intense polarities of beauty and horror. All in an intricate relationship with his other main interest: linguistics. Bennett’s experimental mass communication project “Extralinguistic Sequencing” premiered at Tate Britain in 2010.

PHAROAH CHROMIUM DE

Ghazi Barakat, the man behind the golden mask, is a German-Palestinian musician and performer who defines his project as “meta music for meta people in a meta world”.

Named after a song of the band Chrome, Pharoah Chromium takes inspiration from diverse sources: free jazz, rituals from the ancient past and the near future, the dream syndicate, science fiction novels and neo-brutalistic architecture groups like Archizoom and Superstudio.

Sound wise, Ghazi Barakat moves in waters close to the German sound of the psychedelic avant-garde of the 70’s and the industrial bands of the early 80’s, on top of which he uses an assorted choice of instruments from the Middle to the Far East. His “Electric Cremation” LP does smell of ethno doom spirit.

FOREST SWORDS UK

It’s been 4 years and a lot has changed since Pitchfork posted an article suggesting Matthew Barnes was part of a new generation of producers / composers, alongside James Blake, Mount Kimbie, Burial, and Four Tet. His last album, “Engravings” released via Brooklyn label Tri Angle, saw Barnes refine and streamline his unique sound to huge critical acclaim, and perform at festivals including All Tomorrow’s Parties, CTM and Unsound.

Liverpool’s enigmatic Forest Swords makes textured, gauzy music as indebted to the region’s rich musical heritage as it is the windswept and beautiful coastal environment from which it was born.

Rokolectiv Festival welcomes Liverpool’s chilling and blurred soul in its most acclaimed take on electronic music of the past years. Clattering beats, thunderous grooves and cavernous melodies shall rub shoulders with hip-hop and R&B shuffles, in propulsive soundscapes with visuals and live bass.

DUBBEL DUTCH US

After relocating to Austin, Texas via Brooklyn, DJ / producer Dubbel Dutch (a.k.a. Marc Glasser) burst onto the scene with a slew of remixes and original tracks guided by legendary Brooklyn/Copenhagen-based Palms Out Sounds blog and label. A self-proclaimed “internet-digger�, his crates are full of obscure records from around the globe, as well as his own productions, re-edits, and exclusive material from like-minded collaborators.

Both his DJ sets and tracks pull inspiration from a panoply of collective global styles including UK House and Grime, Dancehall / Soca, South African House, Kuduro, Bubbling, and Rap/RnB. Rokolectiv Festival is the last stop on his European tour, so enjoy his cosmic tone poems and club anthems from the abyss!

BOGMAN RO

Bogman’s history goes all the way back in the 90s, when he started a Hip Hop Radio Show for Radio Nova 22, and the first Romanian hip hop parties. The Laborator series of social events that he later on set up with DJ Vasile turned a small games house in the legendary place that every ‘cool’ kid in town has set foot in - The Web Club. In 2001, Bogman jumped the fence to New York, where he lived for 7 years, out of which 5 years illegally, as a manager for the Turntable Lab store, resident DJ for Apt and Nublu, and qualified hunter of obscure vinyls for a lucky few.

Back in Bucharest in 2008, he set up the Fantastic Boogie parties, and nowadays co-works on the programming of Control Club. For the first time at Rokolectiv Festival, Bogman will do what he does best, make you swim and dance till dawn in deep waters.

0

DISCOTECA PRESENTS

ADRIAN ENESCU RO

Adrian Enescu is the guest of honor at this year’s edition of Rokolectiv Festival, an exclusive appearance after years of no direct contact with the stage and the public. Born in 1948, Adrian Enescu graduated from Bucharest’s Music Conservatory where he studied composition with renowned professor Aurel Stroe. He began composing electronic music in 1975 and became one of its pioneers in Romania. Slipping between musical genres with remarkable ease, Adrian Enescu created an oeuvre that encompasses various styles, from progressive to jazz, from pop to film, from jazz to contemporary.

He composed three essential Romanian electronic music albums — “Basorelief (Poem pop)” and “Funky Synthesizer” I and II, produced instrumentals for revolutionary pop singers such as Grupul Stereo, Loredana Groza or Silvia Dumitrescu, collaborated with outstanding performers in local jazz (the likes of Johnny Raducanu and Marius Popp), and wrote over 65 soundtracks for the Romanian cinema.

Discotecă is a sonic archeology collective that brings up a concept of entertainment addressing the history of Romanian pop music (RomPop) with a focus on its most productive decades — the 60s, 70s and 80s. While connecting nowadays local clubbing with a fascinating and lesser known musical history, Discotecă creates contexts in which an entire universe of old, often obscure Romanian pop music opens up to a completely new audience through recitals of local pop stars of the past and DJing of RomPop.

REDINHO UK

Welcome to an idiosyncratic world that fuses funk-informed cadences with lush production touches, making liberal use of sharp synth rhythms.

Londoner Redinho is a multi talented producer, songwriter, vocalist and live performer. Following time spent playing synths and talkbox in live funk bands, Redinho began working on his solo material with Numbers in 2010, when his beat tape “Bare Blips” was released in its raw demo state. His last couple of years have been spent grafting in the studio and refining his talkbox-meets-synthesizer live shows. In the process, he’s been garnering a varied musical fan base – including Jessie Ware, Mark Bell (LFO / Bjork), Mark Ronson and Hudson Mohawke. His performances have taken him to Berghain, Sonar, Primavera and Bestival.

STELLAR OM SOURCE FR

Stellar Om Source offers no straight club tracks, but a faithful leap into infinite beats. Her mutant synth melodies and revolving drum constellations aim to propel one’s self on a pathway to higher consciousness and cosmos. After a long academic focus on musical theory, composition, and classical music performance in Belgium and France, Christelle Gualdi underwent a process of “unlearning” by performing with experimental ensembles and then becoming an integral member of the DIY synthesizer community, self-releasing CDs, amongst peers including Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, and James Ferraro. Cristelle has a special dedication to early Detroit techno and electro, Warp releases, analog synths and the TB-303.

HUSH HUSH DE/US

Master of profane ceremonies, Hush Hush engenders furious and feverish performances, pounding stage after stage into a sort of asexual jell. Hush Hush is one of the multiple alter-egos of American artist Christopher Kline, who has been performing in Berlin since 2006 under different pseudonyms.

Mixing r&b, soul, dance and less palatable genres, Hush Hush describes himself as a “self-styled hit-machine”, considering every track a single and defiant creation of pop music which is not, in fact, very popular.

Hush Hush is a contemporary artist camouflaged as a pseudo pop star, with many side projects in visual arts and performance.

ALEJANDRO PAZ CL

They say “Cómeme means a body that gives itself away”. Matias Aguayo’s label champions a kind of musical and geographical outsiderdom, a fringe operation powered by wanderlust and situated well beyond the traditional hubs of club music (Berlin, London, NY - sorry). Santiago-born Alejandro Paz is a central voice within the project. Each of his releases has a particular groove that smells of South American heat. Alejandro has collaborated with bands like Genéricos and The District Union as well as remixed artists such as Javiera Mena, DJs Pareja and Auntie Flo. He is currently directing Radio Cómeme alongside Avril Ceballos, for which he produces the radio show Ladrones.

El house, cumbia a lo lejos, edits del corazón, we couldn’t figure out a better way to catch the dawn on Sunday morning.

DREAMREC RO

Silviu Vișan is involved in various projects from video mapping to interactive design. He developed the a:rpia:r collective’s video side in the last couple of years, with some special appearances in Fabric, Trouw or Nordstern. He is also touring extensively with the more experimental music project Rochiţe, or alongside the Aparatus 22 collective.

Late 2013 he created at Victoria & Albert Museum a spectacular projection mapping on the cast of Trajan’s Column, combining motion graphics and 3D animation that playfully highlights, deconstructs, augments and manipulates the Column’s geometry and reliefs. His project The Shuffle (with Sillyconductor) - an algorithm of infinite probabilities of overlapping one million images of 1kb with one million sounds with a duration of 1 second each, was shown at the Bucharest Young Artists Biennale.

APPARATUS 22 RO 7 Uncertain Scripts 2014

Apparatus 22 is a multidisciplinary art collective initiated by current members Erika Olea, Maria Farcaș, Dragoș Olea and late artist Ioana Nemeș (1979, Bucharest – 2011, NY) in January 2011. Apparatus 22 works with ideas and actions that will ignite the critical potential of clothing and fashion and that will unveil outstanding narratives on such topics. A string of very diverse works (installations, performances, texts etc.) shapes their practice, in which reality is mixed with fiction and storytelling merges with a critical approach in which they draw knowledge and experience from design, sociology, literature and economics.

The work of the collective was exhibited at La Biennale di Venezia 2013, Romanian Official Representation II - “Reflection Centre for Suspended Histories. An Attempt” exhibition.

MONOTREMU RO

© Ștefan Sava

Q.E.F. Sound installation 2014

Romania is amongst the poorest and most religious states in Europe. Monotremu’s work is a fake and deceiving call to an imaginary mass-ceremony that gives the promise of a better life.

The installation is part of the series “Survival Kit”, through which religion is seen as a last resort for all our social and political problems, when everything else seems to fail. Out of its ordinary context, “Q.E.F.” becomes a ceremonial sound installation, an ironic/iconic display in opposition to the construction of the “national redemption” orthodox cathedral rising just in front of MNAC.

SILLYCONDUCTOR RO

Pianosaurus Sound installation 2014

“Pianosaurus” (Pianodisastrous) is an improvisational mechanism that investigates the possibility to prepare a piece of software, an instrument or an infinite number of virtual instruments (in this case four pianos) through extensive pre-programing.

Built to explore one or more pianos beyond the physical or mechanical limitations in the reproduction of a note, “Pianosaurus” creates motion shortcuts that favor the fastest ways to manipulate the volume, length, timbre, tonality, speed and octave of a sound, while instantly changing the tonal modes or elaborating new ones. “Pianosaurus” was inspired by early mechanical instruments such as The Imperial Alnico Bösendorfer piano of Conlon Nancarrow, The Ocular Harpsichord of Louis Bertrand Castel, or by the Orchestrion. Basically, it is a virtual “turbo-fied” piano able to accelerate on the spur of the moment from 20 beats per minute to 999 beats in less than 0.3 seconds.

BAR\CONLISIO RO

Installation 2014

Sergiu Doroftei, Bogdan Susma, and Ion Cotenescu conspire to turn the very long staircase going to MNAC’s rooftop into a moving walkway, trough sound and vibration. Frustrations aside, the ascent may become if not easier, at least more rewarding. Beware what you grasp by the hand!

Sergiu Doroftei, Bogdan Susma and Ion Cotenescu are a working group with interests ranging between new-media engineering and art. They teamed up to implement several such distraction methods at previous Rokolectiv editions, out of which last year’s Pingtime.

„I WANTED MY MUSIC TO BE A CHARACTER” An interview with Adrian Enescu

Adrian Enescu (born in 1948) composed the original soundtracks for over 65 Romanian movies, and in 2013 received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the TIFF film festival. His most recent releases are the album “Bird in Space” (2013), and the soundtracks compilation “Invisible Movies” (2014).

(…) When and how did you first get in contact with electronic music?

It must have been around ’67-’68, right after I got accepted at the Composition Department of the Conservatory. My professor Aurel Stroe took me to a Computing Centre run by the mathematician Grigore Moisil. I got completely blown away by this computer the size of a wall, and got very found of electronics. I started to decipher the world behind those massive machines, some of them built in Romania. Then I got deeper into theory through the books suggested by Aurel Stroe. Since I was anyway into technics, it couldn’t have matched better. For instance, my first pop music record (A/N: the LP “Basorelief – Poem pop”, released in 1977 by Electrecord) combined orchestral sounds with electronic music. You can even hear a Moog Satellite on that album; it was one of the first synths that made it to Romania. The one I used belonged to a guy I knew in Timișoara. I invited him over in’73-’74, and recorded the electronic part already at that time.

Were you aware of what was going on in electronic music internationally?

In 1970, Sala Dalles hosted an American exhibition that featured a Moog synthesizer. I went there with my good friend Dan Andrei Aldea, we saw it and got completely stuck in front of it: “Man, how we can get our hands on one of those?!”. We grabbed the chance and went to the guy who was taking care of the stand. We told him we were students at the Conservatory; so he allowed us to us touch it. We started to play with it, and swore to come back there every day to test new demos on that machine. Dan Andrei Aldea, who had built himself a sort of synth based on a Roland diaphragm together with Bibi Ionescu, already had an idea how to manipulate it. For me, though, this was the first encounter with a real synth.

So it’s not too wrong to say we owe the birth of electronic music in Romania and the beginning of your career to the Americans. The moog, the exhibition from Dalles…

Absolutely! We owe it to the Americans and, later on, to my professor Aurel Stroe, who had just come back from Darmstadt with a great baggage of information about electronic music, from the perspective of that school. Actually, around that time, the Bucharest Conservatory also had an electronic music lab, basically a lab where you could experiment with classical music on oscillators. A lot of experimental works that are very important for our music history have been produced there. Best examples are the music of late Corneliu Cezar, or the works of Octavian Nemescu. (…) What was the first synthesizer you purchased?

A Roland SH-5 and an electric ELKA Rhapsody, both purchased abroad by

some sports guys, former colleagues of mine (A/N: Adrian Enescu used to be a professional rugby player). All the money I made I changed into dollars and used it to buy tools. In 1981, I also bought myself a computer, a Commodore 64 of course, the first one that had a dedicated music software - a sequencer.

Then I got myself an Atari, and so on…

Coming back to the electronic music poems from your early days, can you tell us the story of your debut album, “Basorelief” ?

I have a background in classical music, that’s what I studied in school. But I have always been curious to “escape” in other music genres, from the ones of the 10th and 11th centuries to world music, and from jazz to manele. I had a time when I was deep into the music of the 10th - 12th centuries. It is very interesting what happened at that time, as that’s when pop music was basically born, with the trouvères and the troubadours. How did it happen? They took religious hymns and tried to adapt them so that they get closer to the big public. Yet, the process went both ways, as various elements of their music were migrating back in the official songs written by theologians. A vivid exchange happened between the two cultures. And it shows how one can find enrichment by exploring all sorts of areas, gotta leave idiosyncrasies at home! My project “Basorelief” was also intended like that, it’s a mix of various styles and sources. (…) And after the success you had in Sibiu, you recorded the album…

No, the album was recorded in ’73-’74, but it had to wait. Someone didn’t want it to be released until 1977. And now I know why. It’s because I used lyrics from Ioan Alexandru’s “Imnele”, which was religious poetry, and also quotes from Bach’s “Johannes Passion” and “Matthäus Passion”, so the political regime of that time didn’t like it. (…) The two “Funky Synthesizer” albums, released in 1982 and 1984, respectively, were a total Romanian premiere. They are the first electronic, instrumental music albums. What’s the story behind them?

I am obsessed with freedom. I was pushed by the will to be free in a time when freedom had a delicate connotation. I wanted to be original, to prove that I can do what every other musician in this world can do, that I don’t have fears, and that I am competitive. A pulsating heart guided me on my way to the abyss.

On the cover of the second vinyl there’s this word, “dance”. Was it intended for the club playlists?

Yes, I wanted Romanian electronic music to enter the discothèques. And it did. Some of the tracks from “Funky Synthesizer 2” made it in all the clubs or “cultural centers” where people used to go dance from Friday to Sunday, but

also in the only real discothèque of those times, disco Ring from Costinești.

You could also hear them on the radio, but only at night, as they were forbidden in the daytime. (…) We might have to go back to your first album. The complete title of this record is “Basorelief (Poem pop)”. Why “pop”?

Pop is a music genre. What I was doing at that time could have been rather called “symphonic pop”, which has a different connotation, still.

I agree, but was that the beginning of your transition towards pop music, since you mostly got famous doing pop productions in the 80s?

I only wrote 21 pop songs. Not more. Luckily, and I don’t want to be a hypocrite, one of those – “Bună seara, iubito!“ – was chosen “The most beloved song” at the 80th anniversary of the Romanian Radio.

However, people refer to you when speaking about the pop or schlager music of those times. You did mark some important moments in the history of this local genre...

It was pure coincidence. In 1986 I made a bet with someone on 1000 lei that I will revolutionize Romanian pop music. (…) We wouldn’t want to forget here the album of the band Grupul Stereo released in 1993. It is, if you ask us, the first coherent electronic pop release in Romanian 80s music. We would like to know more about the context of its birth.

I composed the music for the whole album, and recorded the voices in my own studio. Luckily I knew a lovely lady working for Electrecord who helped with the release. Later on, I knew another lovely lady, Daniela Caraman-Fotea, my guardian angel at the Romanian Radio, who saved me a lot of trouble. Thanks to her I could record all sort of crazy stuff. Unfortunately, the story of this record is not completely a happy one, as Grupul Stereo dissolved right after the release of the album, so they never managed to perform the songs on stage. Unlike the one I did with Loredana Groza, who went and sang those tracks across the country, even if her album had been banned on both radio and TV. (…)What was this Grupul Stereo album meant to be? What did you want to say with it?

That I am free to make that kind of music. That nobody tells me what to think. That I can still invent and come up with something new, based on the

discoveries I make while listening to music. I was really listening to a lot of music around that time, especially at the Library of the University. They were able to order a lot of novelties and had all sorts of crazy stuff, from classical to world music, from progressive electronica to rock. It was the time when disco was making it into the mainstream, when “italo” was being born, that’s what you could hear on the radio. So Electrecord also had to buy some licenses or release some of that stuff.

The album you did for Grupul Stereo has a pretty dark vibe to it. Both the sound and the text. Does it reflect the times you were living?

Of course it does! The living conditions were like in a forest. I used to stay in a central flat around Piaţa Romană, which happened to be at the end of the central heating pipes. The gas was regularly cut so I also couldn’t use the gas to heat up; the temperature in my flat was constantly –2 Celsius. And outside, the streets were totally dark, as the public illumination system was a joke. It was a pretty cinematic endeavor to take a walk outside. The passers-by had ghostly silhouettes; everything was shadowy. So there was no other way, but to detach yourself and live in your inner universe, with your most intimate emotions. (…) Let’s talk about the other essential moment of our pre-’89 Romanian pop, the album you did with Loredana Groza. How did you actually discover her?

I saw her on TV. But the story is way more interesting than that. I made that bet I told you about, and I really started to work on it. In my own head, the music had to be like a combination of pop and rock. Someone told me they knew this great vocalist who was rehearsing with a rock band at Sala Polivalentă. Sorina Moldovan was her name. I went to meet her and really liked her. So we worked together for about seven months, recorded the music and prepared it for mastering, when suddenly Sorina decided to leave the country and never come back. I was puzzled! So I threw the stuff in a drawer, told myself it’s bad luck, and went on with my other projects. But… one day I saw Loredana on TV and shouted: “That’s it!” So we started all over again with the seven tracks, this time adapted to Loredana’s voice. The rest you know, the record sold 1 million copies.

You were saying that the album was banned on the radio, soon after it got released. How come?

One of the reasons was the title track of the album, “Bună seara, iubito!“ Some guys in charge of the censorship decided a line like “Some want to put a lock on our love… handcuffs on our lust” is too dangerous for the people.

But I was also told that the sound was too aggressive. Yet, despite the ban, Loredana really toured and sang those songs everywhere, thus making them famous. Obviously, both she and the music seduced the Romanian youth.

Around the same time, in the 80s, there was this other music bubble that started to integrate electronic instrumentals. Bands like Azur or Generic brought electronic rhythms into suburbs music. How do you relate to that proto-manele culture?

I was and I am still listening to such music. There is this lady, Speranţa Rădulescu, a former colleague of mine, and a great ethnologist that I once helped with some mastering. She was the one who opened my ears for it, as she studies the genre. It simply hides treasures once you get over the “low” level of the lyrics. Take a manea, for instance one sung by Adrian Copilul Minune, and put it on a symphonic arrangement. It can blow your mind away!

The texts or the arrangements don’t necessarily favor the music, but there IS! music in there. Like I said before, there is no genre that cannot be a source of inspiration for me. (…) You declared once in an interview that you regret the fact that Electrecord was not much interested in releasing film soundtracks. Yet your soundtracks will be finally released?

That’s what I’m working on now. I will finally release this spring a record with a selection of music I composed for the cinema.

What would you save from the many soundtracks you did?

A lot of them! Film soundtracks educated me; they made me explore the most obscure areas of sound. I trained myself with scoring, and I could experiment a lot with it. I love the visual side as well. When I was a student at the Conservatory, I used to go to the Theatre Institute and make a lot of audio-video experiments, as I was a good friend with Dan Piţa and Mircea Veroiu, whom I collaborated with for most of the films. I always wanted my music to be a character and use all possible languages to get there: pop, symphonic, camera, electronic etc. For the cinema, but also outside of it.

Courtesy of “Dilema Veche” magazine. Full version of the interview by Paul Breazu and Marius Chivu is available, in Romanian, in the special issue on electronic music during communism (no. 526, 13-19.03.2014).

BUCHAREST SURVIVAL KIT BARS & CAFES

Bar A1 1 Piaţa Amzei / nicest & most relaxed bar, café, bistro Control Club 4 Constantin Mille Str. / bar, garden, club Eden 107 Calea Victoriei / bar, garden, club Café Verona 13-15 Arthur Verona Str. / café, garden Origo 9 Lipscani Str. / best café in town

FOOD

Shift Pub 1 7 Eremia Grigorescu Str. / international cuisine Zen Sushi 86 Șerban Voda Str. / Japanese Restaurant La Rocca 36 Theodor Aman Str. / Romanian & International cuisine Rue du Pain 111 Calea Floreasca / boulangerie, patisserie, bistro Vatra 19 Ion Brezoianu Str. / Romanian traditional restaurant

NON-STOP QUICK FIX

Divan Express 19 Șelari Str. / Turkish fast-food Nic 15 Piaţa Amzei / supermarket

SOUVENIRS

Ping Pong 7 Intrarea Roma / décor & collectibles Eclecticó Studio 18 Constantin Budișteanu Str. / décor & collectibles Romanian Peasant Museum 3 Kiseleff Avenue / traditional crafts Cărturești 13-15 Arthur Verona Str. / book shop Valea Cascadelor 22 Valea Cascadelor Str. / flea market Vitan 450 Splaiul Unirii / flea market

RENT -ABIKE

36- 46 Mihail Kogălniceanu Str. @ The Faculty of Law

TRANSPORT

Bucharest’s public transportation is not ideal, but it works. Ask around or check your itinerary on: http://transporturban.ro Cabs are pretty affordable, provided you stay away from the so-called ‘sharks’ and get one of the companies that display the 1,39 lei/km fare. Or, even better, download the Star Taxi application! It’s free and it saves you a lot of trouble.

VENUES:

MNAC

Parliament Palace Calea 13 Septembrie Gate B3

CNDB

GUEST HOUSE

80-82 Mărășești Bd.

82 Popa Nan Str.

TICKETS: Festival pass*

4 days

70 lei

24.04

Opening night/CNDB

20 lei

25.04

Day ticket/MNAC

35 lei

26.04

Day ticket/MNAC

35 lei

27.07

Guest House

free with festival pass/ ticket

*Buy on www.eventim.ro and in the Eventim network.

Please note that only the festival pass can guarantee your access to the festival. Tickets can be purchased at MNAC / CNDB in the night of the event, but are limited to the capacity of the venue.

Rokolectiv Festival is part of ICAS/ECAS, an international network of like-minded festivals. icasnetwork.org

WWW.ROKOLECTIV.RO