Inconspicuous concerts in high-pitched frequencies go through the city. Their centre is an area called Rumiště, the producer and DJ Snediggen Snurssla stands behind them. This week, his AVA loft sessions are being held for the fifteenth time and they will head from Rumiště to Mosilana. Furthermore, we talked about adventurous music and listening to the city.
You have a project called AVA, let's introduce it. What is it?
At the beginning, there were several people who were interested in music...we call it adventurous music. We thought that it did not have enough space in the media or on the radio. So we met and came up with the programme AVAntýry, reflecting what we liked. And we were also expanding our own horizons. After some time, we found out that we wanted to give a certain depth to what we talked about on the radio. To connect radio programmes with concerts in clubs. And that is how AVA was formed. We have been doing events together for five or six years, I myself maybe ten. I do not know exactly.
It is not bad if a person cannot remember how long it's been...
I am not a fan of archives and it would be hard for me to search for information so I just make my best guess sometimes. But the beginning is linked to the time when I came to Brno. It has been about ten years.
Letting things flow is a little adventure, too, right?
That happens a lot in our case. We have our concepts, stage and type of sounds that interest us, but it is also very spontaneous. Whether in terms of the way, in which it all fits together on site based on the bands that contact us or are passing by. We use a lot of opportunities. When we discover a space and a band is passing by that would fit in it, we go for it.
In what radio did you play your adventurous music?
In Radio R at the Faculty of Social Sciences, it was a hit there for some eight years. Although they profiled as an alternative and community radio, peripheral music did not get so much space. Simon Botten with his excellent show Kitchen Sink and we were probably the first ones who systematically focused on alternative music. Then came other programmes. Today, it looks dramatically different in that radio, unfortunately, and we left a long time ago.
You talked about discovering spaces – where do you hold your events?
We were long looking for a place that we could make our home. At first, it could have been the Boro Club but after it closed we spilled into clubs across Brno. In the last few years, we have enjoyed industrial spaces, half-forgotten places and open spaces that we modified as we pleased. And Rumiště started to operate two years ago – that is the house where I live. It is our home and within the so-called AVA loft sessions, which take place every month, we focus on more psychedelic and intimate things.
Other people probably live in the vicinity so intimate things may be a necessity.
Exactly. There are neighbours. Královo Pole is a relatively quiet neighbourhood. However, we have had 14 events and we have managed to keep the music volume and the surroundings in balance.
So you manage to be isolated from neighbours enough to avoid making them angry. But do any of them come to the concert, too?
A number of promoters coincidentally live in our street. They come sometimes. Intentionally, I am not mentioning the exact place – we leave the address to word of mouth. Immediate neighbours do not come but we should probably work on it.
Will you throw leaflets in their mailboxes?
Initially, we had a tendency to do that but there was not much interest. But we play the game of publicity on thin ice. We want relevant people in the city, who know where to go, to know about us. At the same time, we do not disclose the address and we do not officially say that there are concerts. They are more like sessions, meetings.
Is it a game of voluntary dissent?
Maybe. Once we were visited by our friends in uniforms, even before the start of the nighttime quiet hours. It was about 9:30 p.m. We could be heard over several blocks but thanks to the music that we do there, these are other types of frequencies. I consider it a relatively quiet, crawling music. The police officers said that they quite enjoy the music but someone across the street complained. We had to tone it down but the police looked like they would like to come to watch.
However, you are planning a bigger concert in Mosilana. You will probably need more than word of mouth.
I thought that since we were doing the loft session for the fifteenth times, it would be a good reason to come out of the shell and organise an event again somewhere. The Old Mosilana at Křenová Street has been operating as an art studio for some time, musical events are rather rare. It is a little Czech Manchester, an amazing place. You are walking on the top floor of a high building over the roofs of Brno and you can see in all directions. You can see Hády, the gasworks, factories all around, Petrov, Špilberk.
Why play music in former factories, what brings up these desires in you?
Mosilana is a large space which allows better structuring. There is plenty of space for a stage, a bar and the free movement of people. I like when people have freedom at an event. I do not want to force them to be locked in a room and listen to music, and then go to another room to the bar to drink. I like it when they can step aside, walk around and explore the acoustics of the space, lie down and chill out. I like working with that.
And doesn't it turn music into a complement to beer and coffee?
When I see how concentrated the audience is when they come to our events, I am not afraid. I know that they appreciate the music and look for possibilities of what they can discover in it. We also organise more specific chill-out events that act as a complement to something bigger, often in collaboration with similarly oriented promoters. An example is our last year's stage at Psy-High. The event in Mosilana will certainly retain the character of our loft sessions in some ways. The Black Zone Myth Chant and Chicaloyoh represent the French psychedelic scene and their sound fits into what we do at Rumiště. It is soaring, antigravity music with reference to the ritualism of the experience. It will take place in a huge space where there are many opportunities for acoustic perception.
Working with space is obviously part of the production for you. Can you say about some space in Brno that you discovered it for music?
We were probably the first ones who organised a bigger party in Malá Amerika – whether indoors in the hall or underneath the tracks in the viaduct. In collaboration with Viktor Pantůček and Expozice nové hudby, we utilised the possibilities of the former sports facility in Pisárky next to the Anthropos. We created a spatial sound installation with Bob Ostertag's concert. We play around Brno in places on the border of the woods and a public space. And we discovered Rumiště for ourselves. The attic of that house was somehow asking for it. We have other places in mind, it is just about when their turn comes.
You always talk in plural: we discovered, we created etc. Who is it – we?
I often use plural even though dramaturgy, production and overall organisation is unfortunately my one man show. Matěj Kotouček is in charge of events held in Bratislava. However, AVA has been operating more and more as a loose group, within which more and more people are involved in the events. Marek Salamon, Šimon Kořený, Tomáš Tkáč and Jakub Ryšávka have also been in the heart of things for a long time. Many people operate close to us, for example, Michal Fridrich. The people, who are in it and somehow contribute, have created a pretty wide circle of community. Everyone has the opportunity to come and use their hands or head with an idea. Concepts are quite important for us and we want our events to have a face. It is not about doing anything experimental or whatever is around. We strive to achieve a specific sound.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to try to describe the adventurous music and the specific sound? And, if possible, without technical terms.
That is why I call it adventurous music. When people read our promotional texts, an amateur can run into many terms that do not tell them anything, but it is a play on words and associations. Adventurous music ignores genres, or it seeks to shift the boundaries of genres and scenes further. It is somehow a hybrid. When we talk about bands that come from extreme guitar scenes and a metal background, metal musicians themselves do not consider them to be metal. When we talk about people, who have academic jazz education, they play improvisation based on noise that draws on the jazz world, but turns it inside out. It is not free jazz but it is improvisation. And it is the same with music coming from pop, grind core or techno and electronics.
What audience goes to your concerts and sessions? In my experience, most people in the audience at similar events are people who are involved in the organisation in some way.
These people are certainly the hard core that is still expanding as we are trying to involve the local scene. I am very grateful that Brno does not suffer from the syndrome of saturation as much as Prague. There are not as many opportunities here to completely shatter focus. So when you prepare an interesting programme in an interesting environment and at the same time you add some of the community warmth, people will find the time. And there are more and more of them. I believe that we are not a closed bubble but I am generally pretty optimistic. When I hear other promoters in Brno complain that there are no people, there are too many events and there are no clubs....When we feel a lack of opportunities, we create them. We feel that our possibilities are increasing.
You focus on field recordings. Does it make you listen to your surroundings more?
It is more of a result of some type of perception. The angle of perception is wider and focused on the sound around you. There is much everyday joy in it, when you enjoy amazing syncope at traffic lights, beautifully breathing fans and the amazing interconnection of all the sounds that speak to you. They are inspiration for my own work, DJ sets, the actual music and work with space when organising concerts. The AVA dramaturgy frees itself from the club culture and goes out into the streets. We want to do performances combining movement, space and the audience.
You said that you were planning collaboration with Move the City and Brno dance groups. Is that it?
We do dances at traffic lights, workshops in the woods, we create a loose group of dancers and people interested in field recordings that is still forming. We are interested in sounds and Move the City is interested in movement, I am in between. In the coming weeks and months, this should combine into various performances and unexpected interventions in the public space. We collect people who are somehow interested. Anyone, who is an attentive listener of space or a dancer interested in transferring movement into everyday life, should feel free to contact us.
Since the sound of everyday life is so important to you, how does Brno sound to you?
Brno offers nice opportunities to hear the city from above because it spreads out between three hills. From these hills, you have an interesting perspective where the city mutters to you as a whole. However, when Markéta Lisá and I were putting together three sound paths across Brno, it was not as easy as it might be in Stockholm, San Francisco or Lisbon. Brno is a lazy place in terms of sound. There are amazing fans and wonderful syncopic traffic lights here, but otherwise it is rather average.
