![]() ![]() The Lunchmeat associate Jan Hladil’s laser projections constantly switch between the CPE logo, various familiar forms, a live stream of the hall and dynamic laser movements, which provide the fitting background for CPE’s high-intensity productions. He’s mixing hands on, in the moment, replicating the twisting of knobs and moving of faders with his whole body. Cocktail Party Effect’s show doesn’t have that pre-programmed vibe, which sometimes makes electronic live shows feel unadventurous and uninspired. It’s exciting to hear some of my favourite club weapons of the past few years, such as 'When The Gun Claps' or 'For The Memory Exchange', performed live by its producer. An amalgam of panoramic, vertiginous nature shots, amorphous digital art, strong flashing light and nauseating editing, their AV spectacle results in one of the most rewarding multisensory experiences of this year’s edition. The ecstatic, at times mellow, rhythmically jerky productions from last year's LP Unison synchronise perfectly with Zamagni’s complex visuals. Instead, they allow brief pauses between tracks, almost like a band, time to breathe in and out before immersing ourselves in the next song. The duo of Guglielmo Barzacchini and Matteo Zamagni let each track play out in its entirety, ignoring traditional sequencing. From my experience, it functions better as a sitting session. The show from these SVBKVLT protegees, however, is a bit different. The audience perhaps sit for a track or two and then flood the dancefloor in front of the stage. Most AV shows at Lunchmeat Festival start as film projections before they turn into raves. And while the Club Stage nearby was in my experience sometimes a bit overcrowded, it too hosted some solid performances. The immensity of the screen along with the intensity of the soundsystem, which occasionally resulted in a pleasant bottocks massage for those sitting, offered the artists an ideal infrastructure for their music to really come alive. The vast concrete auditorium provided a great setting for the ambitious AV spectacles that took place there on Friday and Saturday. When I was on my own at the shows, I spent time getting lost in Molly’s constantly changing face, projected on the screen of the Concert Hall in-between shows. It was built around the AI generated, ever-evolving image of the face of our virtual festival guide Molly. Though I’m somewhat suspicious of the conceptual electronic music festival bandwagon, particularly an ambition to come across as sophisticated as possible, I think Lunchmeat Festival managed to pull it off successfully by incorporating the theme into its visual identity. It acknowledges that we are fluid, ever-changing, multi-layered beings with many voices and faces. ![]() The theme for this year was "our essence is non-binary". After the Friday talks there, I went to the room upstairs where the synth-making company Bast Instruments had its showroom, intuitively tweaking knobs on the affordable synths and pretending I knew what I was doing. The symposium, which I also took part in and covered some currently relevant topics (Eastern music VS Western media, local music infrastructure, AI & music etc.), was held in a room nearby called the Korzo. Throughout the weekend, it provided all the festival’s infrastructure. After walking into the Kolektor bar at the National Gallery, situated at the Trade Fair Palace, I immediately fell in love with the space. Along with similar regional festivals like Unsound (Kraków), Elevate (Graz), Next (Bratislava), Sonica (Ljubljana) and ZEZ (Zagreb), it presents and promotes contemporary dance music aesthetics, new trends in experimental electronic music and sound art and cutting edge approaches to immersive AV projects. Or perhaps it is just because Prague is such a picturesque city permeated by an air of omnipresent History.Įstablished in 2010, Lunchmeat Festival has become an important bastion for advanced electronic music and art in the Central and Eastern European region. Maybe it was the homeliness of the dining hall at my hotel (which reminded me of some Yugoslav era halls back home). It may be due to the underlying feeling that we people from Central European Slavic states, all belong to the same cultural sphere. ![]() Despite it being my first time there, I felt strangely at home during the whole weekend. Spending Sunday on the road travelling down the former Austro-Hungarian empire, I had all the time in the world to reflect back on the 13th edition of Lunchmeat Festival. ![]() With delayed flights and the airlines ghosting me, I had to make a last minute decision and say goodbye to my hopes of making it back to Ljubljana by the early afternoon. My 10-hour bus ride home from Prague was not really something I’d planned. ![]()
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