B EAST Magazine website

– By Al Jackson

In a city gripped by recession tighter than most, precocious good-time guys are urging the youth of Budpest to get out, get happy and get partying.

Bence Meyeri, the brain behind Wacky Parties, who together with Andras Eichstaedt, Janos Prorok and Matyas Lendvai of serial party/production/DJ crew Sick As A Dog, have been throwing dynamic pop-up guerilla raves in the metro stations, underpasses, and abandoned buildings of Budapest for the past year.

The likely lads recently hosted iLLFEST, a libertine mid-January weekender who’s first night took place in the concourse of the Astoria metro station. Chosen precisely for the heavy footfall of Friday night revellers traversing busy Karoly Kut avenue, attention was guaranteed and the minimal tech-house pumping from a makeshift DJ booth of trellis tables and ironing boards outside a news kiosk managed to attract quite a crowd.

After a couple of hours, the 100-strong party halted as the power (jacked straight from an outlet in the wall) failed. Perplexed cops looked on while Plan B seamlessly clicked into action and the throng was whisked to a club where the tunes continued to spin.

Hitches and glitches though are simply par for the course for Bence and the boys. Indeed, they seem to revel in the off-the-cuff ethic of what they’re doing. Importantly, the party goers are all plugged-in to the same attitude too and are eager to be part of it.

It’s just as well ‘cos Saturday night’s installment, in a freezing underpass off Ferenciek Square next to Erzsebet Bridge, was hit-up by the riot squad. As tear gas brought an end to a party that, Budapest’s likely lads at the helm, was thriving on its ‘stolen moments’ vibe, it was a case of grab a lap-top, korg or ironing board and leg it to the van a few streets away.

However, this being a more focused, recession-era, Budapest, the 200 souls who had been waiting for this all week, or had simply stumbled across it and liked what they saw, were defiant. They were not ready for the authorities to kill their weekend (in addition to their economy). Not even at two thirty in the morning.

Again, exit strategies were already in motion and iLLFEST rumbled on in the eclectic Tuzrakter Cultural Centre. The squat-like former school building an inspired choice to sustain the hi-NRG D.I.Y. fun and keep us hedonists drinking and dancing well into Sunday.

In these troubled times it’s heartening to see that Andras, Matyas, Janos, Bence and associates, are throwing down the gauntlet: underground in Budapest, it’s invention vs recession and it’s kicking off.

– post: Al Jackson

When was the last time you were set upon by beat-crazed gypsies intent on making you feel that the world isn’t shitty, that life isn’t one big fucking let-down, and actually get you smiling like a bloody idiot while jigging uncontrollably? For me it was about 4mins 54secs ago.

Many weird and wonderful things are stumbled upon when kerb-crawling the net but the video for I Was Drunk ft. Noze by tech-house sensation Riva Starr (real name Stefano Miele) certainly falls into the latter category. Well, maybe a little bit into the first one too but in a good way. It is total lunacy after all.

It’s a mash-up of Black Cat, White Cat, by controversial Serbian director Emir Kustarica and if you thought the film was an absurdist delight, just wait til you see it set to Miele’s infectious, hook-laden Balkan belter. Like the most joyously riotous, insane, crystal-meth induced shot-gun wedding homevideo ever. Watch it, watch it now.

Riva Starr’s album, If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade is out on Made to Play in January 2010.

Nov 18, 2009

I was supposed to head to Poland today but the flight was canceled, so chilling in my cosy flat in da Ukraine watching classics of Polish animation on YouTube. They’re pretty amazing, and surreal, and a reminder that even during the dark days of Communism, whose downfall made headlines again these past few weeks, Poland boasted a vibrant artistic & theatrical culture that was far more sophisticated than the tinbox cars and shoddy consumer products that the Commies churned out.

Animation in the Communist 50s, like childrens stories or the circus, was far removed from the censor’s gaze, and so there was far more freedom for experimentation there than in the classical arts, like painting or theater. Building on a tradition that dates back to the 20s and 30s, Polish auters like Jan Lenica, Piotr Dumala and Ladislaw Starewicz fashioned a distinctive angst-ridden, paranoid & surreal style that has in the decades since won critical acclaim. When museums want to appear serious and intellectually stimulating—rather than pandering to mass culture, as they do more often than not—Polish animation is given the adulation and respect it deserves. In the last few years, high-profile museums, from New York’s MoMa to Paris’ Pompidiu Arts Center have shown collections of Polish animation. In fact, Polish animation has been so praised by the West that it has become an adjective, with Director Terry Gilliam favorably describing a film has having a “Polish animation feeling” in a recent Guardian interview.

The dark master of this surreal, Kafkaesque genre whose classics include iconic shorts like Rhinoceros, Labryinth and New Janko the musician was Jan Lenica, famously named by Roman Polanski as one of his two favorite filmmakers. He is in fact, best kown in the UK for his poster art for Polanski’s early films, Repulsion & Cul-de-Sac. Their childlike design and gauche absurdism echo the strange, surreal feel of his animated works.

Without further ado then, check out some of the classics of Lenica’s Polish animation below.