| In 2013 was the 130th Anniversary of Franz Kafkas date of birth. In 2014 it was the 90th of his death. So Franz Kafka is dead for a long time now. Why don´t we stop then to bother with him?
Because there is more to tell, about Kafka himself and about his work.
The KAFKA BAND does it with a combination of literature and music. With their debut they present the soundtrack of the surveyor K.´s destiny from the Novel „Das Schloss“.
Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš as well as draftsman and musician Jaromír99 are responsible for the project.
Both Prague based artists drew attention to themselfes with the graphic vovel ALOIS NEBEL and won the European Film award in 2012.
Now Kafka after Nebel. The band is inspired bythe comicadaption of DAS SCHLOSS, a coproduction of the US American David Zane Mairowitz and Jaromír99.
Part of the Project KAFKA BAND are some of the renowned czech musicians from bands like Priessnitz, Umakart, Tata Bojs as well as Lesní zvěř. The Guitar is played by Dušan Neuwerth, also producer of the album. Other musicians are: a.m.almela (bass, mandonline), Jiří Hradil (keyboard, piano) as well as Zdeněk Jurčík and Tomáš Neuwerth (drums and percussion).
„We have two drummers because in literature and music rythm gets most important besides the intonation“, Rudiš justifies.
The songs came directly out of the pages of the novel and graphic novel. Kafkas german is mixed in the songs with czech language, rezitation is mixed with singing. The music is down to earth, passionate, dark, rough and sibilliant in the same time.
„That´s how the persons in the novel are. Who nows, maybe a similar band to ours invited the frozen surveyor K.to the pub in Kafkas Novel „Zur Brücke“.“ Jaromir99 speculates.
It seemed time was right for this project. Material and also the necessity to work on the themes definetly wasn´t missing the band.
„On the album are 10 songs, 10 stories from „Dass Schloss“. Franz Kafka, as a german writer, has been a persona non grata in his city and country. His bookes have been banned a long time. Our generation can only read it since the wall came down. Kafka very often is beed received as a very dark author, but in „Das Schloss“ is lots of dark and absurdous humor. And a lot of beer is beed drank. All of this is part of our coutry and culture and has influence some of the songs too.“
„Das Schloss“ has been recorded in SONO RECORDS Studio in Prag and in Studio Portáš . |
