Various - Sedmikrasky (Daisies)

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Phil on Thu 22 Nov, 2007.

Crazy, got up early this morning, caught the early bus and got here in time to completely do my head in with this incredible Daisies album on the Finders Keepers label. This is the soundtrack to a Czech 60's cult film and I believe this is the 1st time the music has been issued? I've not seen the film, in fact I'd not heard of it until now, but after hearing this I'm intrigued about it. Musically, it's completely crazy.... parts of it are almost cartoon like.. other bits are like soundtracks to 1920's black and white films, other bits are medieval and baroque sounding....crazy sound effects gorgeous instrumentation and arrangements make this a total winner in my book. It shifts from genre to genre when it likes and it leaves you wondering what it's gonna do next. This is well good.

Previously unreleased experimental soundtrack to Vera Chytilova’s groundbreaking sixties Czech New Wave classic.
•Back in the latter half of the 1960s the burgeoning idiosyncratic group of alternative filmmakers coming out of (then) Czechoslovakia known as the Czech New Wave were taking art house cinemas in Western Europe and America by storm. The hour long films that came out of the infamous Barrandov production house played a competitive rival to that of the French and Italian New Waves with their very own immaculate and spellbinding takes on cinema verite, film noir, surrealism and cinema concrete. But after the Soviet Union invaded Czech in August 1968 the clampdown on non-conformist creative arts saw over 70 films either banned or withdrawn from production in a mass culling of film reels until 1970. It is not until recent years that the genre has become widely recognised as a veritable and virtually untapped source of inspiration for fans of experimental cinema, psychedelic cinematography, baroque costumes and scenery, music and graphic design.
•‘Daisies’ pulls together what you might call the ‘Holy Trinity’ of the Czech New Wave - director Vera Chytilova, costume and set designer Esther Krumbachova, and cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera - arguably the three most forward thinking and truly experimental minds in the whole of the CNW collective.
•The follow up to the critically acclaimed release of (the previously unreleased) ‘Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders’ – another Czech masterpiece – this release was previously unprepared for public consumption and taken from the original reels. This immaculate album has been compiled in close accordance to the original storyline and comes complete with unseen archive images, original international poster designs and new and extensive sleevenotes by Andy Votel and Professor Peter Hames. This release also carries personal endorsements from Jarvis Cocker, Trish Keenan (Broadcast) and Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth).

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!