The Range of Diversity and the Depth of the Feeling

Lithuania’s Current Music Scenes are Well Prepared for the Europe of the Future

As the young composer Artūras Bumšteinas tells us, everything developed from the enthusiasm of the people. ”It is difficult for somebody from the West to imagine how one can organise a whole festival with hardly any money. But everybody wanted to do it, some people even invested their own personal money in it. The Contemporary Art Centre helped too; it was a unique, big collaboration.”

It seems as if Lithuania’s musicians, composers, and all the persons engaged in the cultural sector have kept their enthusiasm until today, even though life has become tougher over the last few years. For as composer Antanas Jasenka asserts, experimental music is no longer presented on the radio. In the middle of the 90s Jasenka was also the editor of a programme for new music on the national radio station LR3, until the management decided that the music he presented didn’t have enough listeners, that is, was not profitable enough. In Lithuania people watch such developments with amazing composure, for to them it is at least evidence that the situation in their country is beginning to normalise. The determination and confidence with which those engaged in Lithuania’s musical and cultural sector carry on is also astonishing. ”My impression of Lithuania’s current contemporary music scene is very positive. There are a lot of exciting events, including in the area where official avant-garde and underground overlap. To me, the whole scene seems very alive. I don’t think the situation in Lithuania’s music scenes is essentially different from that in Western Europe.”

At heaven’s door – fighting with moderate optimism for what is new in music

At Heaven’s Door is the title of an electroacoustic piece by Šarūnas Nakas, which seems to correspond perfectly with as much positive thinking Lithuania can exude at the moment: the ugly demarcation is a thing of the past, new possibilities lie ahead, at heaven’s door, so to speak. Šarūnas Nakas is from the generation that pioneered the last new trend, i.e. the years from the middle of the 80s onwards, and although he has to admit that the positive signs are obvious, he nevertheless draws a somewhat ambiguous picture of the new Lithuanian self-image:

”I think we had, and still have, a unique chance to live in various systems, which is a very rich experience, although it also means that we saw a thousand and one illusions collapse. But illusions and wishful thinking arise anew, and turn us into polyglot beings: people possessing keys that open different systems, people speaking different languages; someone that stays cool, looks at things with composure, and doesn’t get lost in romantic dreams about life. I think the exterior and interior lives of an artist differ greatly. They are out of sync, two different levels. My musical style, for instance, has hardly changed over the last 20 years. Paradox though it may seem, the external changes have little bearing on our creative aspirations. Moreover, we are talking about a short period, approximately fifteen years, that is really short, it passes just like that. When you write, you work slowly. You can’t change your style at the same tempo the external world changes. And that’s good because over-productivity can easily turn into writing mania.”

The compositions of Šarūnas Nakas delve deeply into basic matters. ”Yes, there are some basic ideas which interest me very much, such as ‘time flow’, ‘fire’, or ‘pyramid’. All the other conceptions are grounded in them and you can quite often find them in my compositions, whether the music is very lively or extremely calm.” Thus an instrumental piece from 1996 has the title chronon, and its third part, for instance, The Sea, the Heaven, and the music flows, accordingly, with dignity. But Šarūnas Nakas is also the pragmaticist to partake in the phases when society awakens, as in the middle of the 80s, and to still appreciate those changes. ”It is really difficult to see the actual processes which control the most important mechanisms and configure the whole situation. In Lithuania the post-industrial world obviously has not fermented yet, it’s still developing. Many spheres of life are not structured and regulated at all. Under such conditions greater possibilities begin to unfold, which is very important for the arts. Such unclear and non-definable periods are most fertile, paradox though it may seem.”

In the middle of the eighties Šarūnas Nakas composed a weird piece for acoustic and electronic instruments, Merz Machine, a milestone and the signature of an epoch. With an eclectic mixture of instruments and means and a vigorous directness the music refers back to Schwitters and forward to the dawn of a new era so that we can arm ourselves adequately and in time. Vytautas Barkauskas Junior, Gintaras Sodeika, Rytis Mažulis, and the above-mentioned Šarūnas Nakas - a new generation which then formulated the new strategies for the arts: against the system as well as the sentimental-national approach; for the extreme and individualistic expression, whether it is austere or elaborate. ”From an aesthetic point of view, I think that at the turn of the 20th century musicians no longer feel the need to join together in organisations, or write manifestos, or unite in aesthetic-spiritual groups. In our times the emphasis is rather on individualism. And we should not forget how the Russian-type artists’ associations formed; they were like a censorship board. Today nobody wants, or needs, such unions, and as far as aesthetics is concerned, the functions of such organisations are negligible.”

On the tango in Moscow and the fairy in Vilnius

Co-editor Robertas Kundrotas tells us that the first issue of the music magazine Tango was published at the end of the 80s, shortly before the ‘Wende’. Preparations for this moment were made as it were over many years. ”I met collectors from all over the Soviet Union, I met people from Latvia, Kaliningrad, Belorussia, Russia and Estonia. We exchanged music and information chiefly in Riga, which became the centre of our illegal activities. We were not alone here in Lithuania, and when at the end of the 80s we eventually decided to publish a music magazine, we had already a lot of information – in Russian, in English, in German, even in Spanish. So we started to look for translators and put together the first issue of Tango.”

The first issue had a fabulous circulation of 5,000 copies. Robertas Kundrotas tells us that the reaction was absolutely euphoric. The young thought that Tango was a youth magazine and were happy that, finally, they had the opportunity to read about the Sex Pistols and The Residents in Lithuania too. The feedback from the West was also very positive: Tango was reviewed in German and American magazines, even BBC London was interested. ”In those days, the whole world was looking at Lithuania. After the Soviet Union had collapsed, everybody was anxiously anticipating something new to happen, and Tango was new, you see. Over the years we’ve concentrated more and more on experimental music, on the music that really interests us, which has resulted in the number of our readers becoming smaller and smaller. Today Tango has a circulation of 200 copies only.”

Those 200 copies are no longer produced in a printing firm but published with a xerox copier, for the magazine’s sponsor of the first years, Los Centras, changed the broad thrust of its activities shortly after the ‘Wende’. Originally a youth centre and today an advertising agency and commercial radio station, Los Centras cut off funding in the middle of the 90s on the grounds that Tango wouldn’t make enough profit. Kundrotas decided to continue publishing at his own expense. His commitment has not diminished to this day. To draw attention to the main topic of the year 2002 for the first time a CD was produced and given away with the magazine. The examples of Lithuanian experimental music selected for this compilation include, for instance, minimal electronica by Darius Čiuta, who is also an important exponent of the country’s noise music scene; an impressive experimental carillon track by Raimundas Eimontas; and with his odd pop song Antanas Jasenka adds the due grain of humour.

”In Moscow people got the same Tango magazines, thus close contacts developed. It was our way of communicating and therefore Tango played a major role for a while,” remembers Jasenka, who was also influenced by this music magazine in the 90s, and above all by the social environment it provided. Consequently, he released his Opus Magnum on the Russian label Electroshock in 2001. In its title the almost hour-long montage of music, language, and noises refers to the classical theatrical pseudo-solution, a god descending from the gridiron, a god from a machine, Deusexmachine.

”Repeating it over and over, I immersed myself in this total noise, which also included some by Merzbow, though it didn’t really influence me in particular,” Jasenka says. ”I am a person with a very dramatic nature. When I paint a picture, I concentrate on the contrasts, the strong contrasts of colours as in some paintings from the second half of the 20th century. This goes for language too: when I combine one word with another, I’m again interested in the contrast. I emphasise contrasts and thus arrive at the intensity I’m striving after in dramaturgy. This is most strikingly evident in Deusexmachine, where I use all artistic means: electronic and acoustic sounds, the human voice – the natural and beautiful voice of a woman – but also a roaring machine, and I combine all these complex contrasts. All this is characteristic of a man with a dramatic nature.” Noise, language, music, and titles for chapters, such as Straight Across, Crucifixion, Intensity, but also Silence – although there is never silence – illustrate and emphasise what is of concern to the artist.
For some time Antanas Jasenka too had a hand in DIY activities, organising festivals and developing structures. Well, strictly speaking, he had a very skilful hand. ”While I was a student I often spent hours in a coffee shop, sitting over a pile of books, taking down notes, always writing with utmost concentration. I usually didn’t notice people coming in or leaving. What happened one day could thus be called a miracle: this coffee shop was also frequented by a lot of businessmen, who saw me sitting over my books. Suddenly, one of these businessman walked over to me, put his card on the table and said, ‘Why don’t you come to my office tomorrow, I’d like to talk a little with you.’ I went to see him the next day and got a bank cheque, a check for 2,000 dollars, which was quite a lot of money in 1992. And with that money we organised three music festivals.”

Between underground and ”upground”

It happens quite frequently that composer Gintaras Sodeika, who has been teaming up with the renowned Lithuanian theatre director Oskaras Koršunovas for ten years, draws musical inspiration from the underground, especially from jazz and hip-hop and, as he points out, from the specific mix of these two styles he got to hear in some of the clubs in New York. ”I love the music you get to hear in the clubs or on the streets in foreign cities, it fascinates me and inspires me. It thus can happen that, for instance, a beat I heard in a club in New York five years ago unexpectedly becomes the inspiration for a new piece for piano.” As was the case with his composition Tone Ontology No. 2 in 1998. The restless and insistent piece for two pianos, which Gintaras Sodeika likes to call academic techno, is a contribution to a compilation released by the Lithuanian Music Information Centre.

Being inspired by club culture, Gintaras Sodeika stands for a young generation of composers whose musical work often resides in those fringes which, from another perspective, are usually classified as underground. However, it soon becomes obvious where the boundary line really runs in a country like Lithuania, where a structural framework for funding subculture hasn’t yet developed: only composers with an appropriate academic training have a chance to enjoy the benefits granted by the Composers’ Union, which still distributes the major part of the public money available for contemporary music, as we got to hear again and again. Open-minded though some composers may be as far as their musical work is concerned, they can quickly change their receptive minds when it comes to giving up old privileges and revising obsolete laws and regulations from Soviet times. Gintaras Sodeika knows what he’s talking about, since he is, among other things, the chairman of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union. ”Those old regulations are still in operation, and many members say that we should adhere to them. Maybe we will be more open one day, but definitely not in the next five years. Lithuania is a small country and there are many amateurs who make really bad music, above all in the field of pop music. So if suddenly everybody were able to join the Composers’ Union, where would we draw the line? Our budget isn’t that big. We can’t look after the pop and jazz musicians either, especially when they are supported by the private sector anyway – contemporary composers aren’t. We ought to spend our money for our activities and therefore we are still a closed society in many respects.”

As Artūras Bumšteinas already observed, it may be difficult for Westerners to imagine how one can organise festivals with almost no money. But Westerners will also have difficulty in categorising a relic of the times when government heads tried to smother the arts with socialist strategies: pretty terraced houses with a slightly bigger building right in the middle of them, like a quarter, planed and built by the Socialist government to place the country’s artists and musicians under its guardianship. There they could live, work, rehearse, use the offices, or organise concerts – and to some extent they still can, like Onutė Narbutaitė, who is in her late forties and one of the most prominent composers of the country. For artists who graduated from state-run institutions and weren’t conspicuously dissident, the material aspect of life was not the big problem; the lack of an idealistic perspective, their self-imposed artistic isolation certainly was. ”Our generation was still growing up in such complicated conditions,” Narbutaitė recalls. ”Maybe we really are a bit different from people who grew up in a free country. It leaves marks on you. We take things a bit more tragically and seriously.”

Of course it was possible to adopt counter-strategies, but a certain melancholy remained with an artist who wasn’t young enough to make a radical new start when the circumstances permitted. Onutė Narbutaitė touches upon something that is present throughout all times, whether as indistinct feeling or provocative attitude: the pride of the Lithuanians, the strong commitment to their history. In connection with today’s youth this can lead to a situation which to visitors from the West might seem absurd, that is, that the only independent label of the country, Dangus Productions, has based its identity on the admiration of ancient pagan rites and customs, close to ultranationalist ideas. As to contemporary composed music, it has inspired efforts in Lithuania too to give special attention to old scales or rhythms. However, this is not a theme in Narbutaitė’s music: quotes or customs are not her cup of tea, instead she likes a basic melancholy and atmosphere. She has a simple and blunt explanation too: ”Over centuries the past and the present were vital sources for many people in Lithuania to find out who they are and what they are, which ultimately made them stay and go on living. It came quite naturally that this is also reflected in my Vilnius oratorio. I grew up in the oldest part of Vilnius, I’m very attached to this city. I even think that the architecture of Vilnius has also influenced the music - it is a reflection of this non-geometric, picturesque setting.”

Onutė Narbutaitė called the piece about her home town Centones meae urbi (roughly translated ‘patchwork of my town’), for the most part luminous fragments encompassing centuries of compositional history with a big, open heart. ”It is more than a piece of music: it was like a journey into the history of the town. I went to the old cemeteries and copied the epitaphs on the gravestones in order to use them in my composition, I also collected fragments and texts from the 19th century. Of course the music reflects the different epochs, but it is not a copy or a quotation, no, it is my own music which certainly has a specific atmosphere that produces associations.”

At the current time the Lithuanian Music Information Centre, which is associated with the Composers’ Union, mainly supports those musicians who are members of the Union. Daiva Parulskienė tells us that the greater part of her work centres on handling, managing and completing an archive of manuscripts and sounds. ”Our limited resources hardly allow us to extend our activities to other musical genres, though it would be important and we all would like to. Our current contacts to groups and initiatives that are not based in the house of the Composers’ Union are not very intense yet. Of course we should make the effort to become a centre for everybody, we should build a network first and then perhaps continue with the collection of information, or the release of musical examples. It is all possible insofar as the basic resources are available.”

Linas Paulauskis, who runs the Lithuanian Music Information Centre together with Daiva Parulskienė, also draws musical inspiration from club culture, as is plainly audible for instance in his piece Life Giving Water Machine. In Life Giving Water Machine Part II, a roaring tenor saxophone gets lost in an ecstatic drum 'n' bass beat. Life Giving Water Machine was released on a promotional CD that was given away with the programme of Jauna Muzika 2002. The festival’s subtitle e-muzika stood for the first step in a new direction, that is, a focus on works in the field of electroacoustic and electronic music, as Linas Paulauskis points out. ”Jauna Muzika is a festival for composers with an academic background, at least now that everything is at its beginnings,” he maintains. ”We want to provide a forum where they can present their electroacoustic and electronic works. However, the field we define as ‘electronic music’ has become so complex, and the borders to other music genres are so blurred that in the future it should no longer be of any importance whether a musician had academic training or not. Thus, musicians from the improvisation scene or experimental DJs should also be invited to the festival.”

About three years ago the Virpesys crew, Gediminas Ušackas and Denis Shafoval by name, decided to take things in hand: spurred by sheer love for music and at their own financial risk, they launched their platform for experimental music. In the summer of 2002 they organised their first festival of experimental (electronic) music, called Baltas Triukšmas, near Vilnius. About one and a half year ago Ušackas and Shafoval rented a space where they now organise parties and concerts two times a month. As soon as Gediminas Ušackas starts the ventilating system there, you feel like you are standing in the middle of a noise concert. The Virpesys location is situated underground in the true sense of the word, that is, in a former air-raid shelter in the centre of Vilnius. ”Under Soviet rule you weren’t allowed to enter this place. The cellar was to protect people in case of a nuclear war. About fifteen years ago it housed a laboratory where various instruments for measuring radioactivity were tested. When we started the club, we had hard times, since the neighbours were suspicious of us because shortly after the ‘Wende’ – that is, at a time when the cellar apparently belonged to nobody - it was a popular meeting place for drug addicts. Every now and then there were illegal concerts. Now we are legally renting the cellar from the local council.”

Despite its altogether authentic and charming ambience it will not be easy to convert the former air-raid shelter into a club suitable for concerts. It is not possible to build a stage, because the ceiling isn’t high enough. A light and sound system has to be borrowed and installed especially for every show. You realise immediately that life outside the protected workshops of the Composers’ Union and Music Information Centre is a lot harder. Gediminas Ušackas emphasises that to them good sound is very important. ”We always try to offer the best quality possible, but the room resonates a lot, which is a problem in live concerts in particular. We try to figure out what we can use to cover the walls in order to reduce the echo.” When we ask him whether the loud ventilating system isn’t a bit annoying too, Ušackas replies that it is, quite simply, drowned by the music; as a matter of fact, they are glad to have found a place for shows, anyway.

While some are struggling with an involuntary ventilation soundscape, others expressly create a soundscape for a gallery - it is only more subtle. As a kind of artistic sound design for an exhibition in Vilnius Artūras Bumšteinas created a sonic veil of telephone noises and delicate sounds. The biography and the interests of the sound artist and composer plainly indicate that he oscillates between various scenes. But even this description might appear to be far too dramatic in his eyes. ”There is no strict division between experimental and academic music,” he asserts. ”What was previously organised rather vertically, today is fairly horizontal. In the Contemporary Art Centre for instance, you find video art next to post-techno and string quartets. Likewise, the Jauna Muzika festival has been open to the contemporary art scenes for years already. There aren’t really any borders between ‘underground’ and ‘upground’ any more.”

Underground and ”upground”: Artūras Bumšteinas studied composition, he writes chamber music just as he produces music for audio art festivals. He played at the Virpesys festival and thus is living proof that, as far as culture and politics are concerned, Virpesys is not afraid of academic or conceptual infiltration. On the contrary! Ousting, one of his current projects, is a work in progress that was developed in an international setting. ”I like the idea that sounds from Tokyo or Istanbul come to Vilnius,” Bumšteinas says, ”or from New York, wherever. All these incoming sounds are concentrated in my composition Ousting – New York clashes with Istanbul, the street noise from Tokyo drowns out New York only to be drowned out itself by something completely different. Strangers send me sounds, and I play with their sounds as you play an instrument. Somebody in Chicago becomes my instrument, so to speak.”

Open and at the same time centred

In the year 2000 the composer Antanas Kučinskas took part both at the Virpesys and the Jauna Muzika festivals. ”When we cut ourselves off, we eventually begin to reproduce what we’ve been doing all along, and when we only reproduce what we’ve been doing, we also ignore the developments around us. But today of all times you have to be open, since to withdraw not only from cultural activities but also from politics is not good – it’s virtually dangerous,” he argues. Not to cut himself off but to keep an open mind on new influences and developments, yet remain true to himself, this is Antanas Kučinskas’ philosophy of work and life. ”If I want to write new music, I have to know first who I am. For whoever is not conscious of his or her self, will start copying before long. I think that the formula for the 21st century is to reflect upon who we are, both as individuals and as a collective. We have to become aware of our position. What do we want to express by saying that we live in the West? How do we define ourselves as a person? How do we define Europe? I think that everybody has to ask these questions, composers too. I have to understand why I am here, at this of all times, and for whom.”

In a slightly ironic way, at first sight at least, his new project touches the nerve of the dilemma many musicians and composers have to solve today. Kučinskas is currently working on the cycle Loop Catalogue, using as a source material for each piece an existing composition, for instance by Schubert, or Bronius Kutavičius, who broke fresh ground and is regarded as the creator of a new national style. In the 70s he was one of the first Lithuanian composers to turn to minimalism, though he did not follow Western colleagues like Steve Reich but used archaic musical elements from his homeland. Jatvingian Loop - Bronius Kutavičius’ oratorio From the Jatvingian Stone deconstruced and restructured by Antanas Kučinskas - is also documented on the above mentioned giveaway Jauna Muzika festival CD. Like a parasite Kučinskas eats his way through the history of music, leaving raw sound traces behind. ”I also wanted to portray the situation we are in. Without having considered their impact, we too often and too quickly adopt the ideas of other people. Our lives are more and more based on consumption. We consume without giving any thought whatsoever; television, the products from the supermarket, public relations, music production too, everything is based on consumption. I hope that my Loop Catalogue pieces also convey how worried I am, for consuming all the time without trying to develop something means to turn one’s back on the future.”

The longer you listen to Kučinskas’ twelve-minute-long piece Jatvingian Loop the more relative the feeling becomes that it pushes forward at breakneck speed. A force inherent in the music seems to scatter the minute tonal particles from within, ultimately creating the paradox impression of a standstill. With his music Antanas Kučinskas really succeeds in opening up to new influences while remaining centred in himself.

Saxophone and drums – where Vilnius is most European

Never before has music from Vilnius defined European standards so much as in 1976: after the Ganelin Trio, which was formed a few years ago, had played at the Warsaw Jazz Festival, the map of European free improvisation looked different. This was very important for Vilnius, since the three musicians of the trio were Russians who had made the Lithuanian capital the centre of their life because of its tolerant climate. Inspired by pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin, a Lithuanian jazz school began to develop which today is represented by exponents such as the saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas. ”Lithuania could be called the land of the saxophonists,” says Jūratė Kučinskaitė, jazz critic and organiser, who is also in charge of a jazz programme on Lithuanian radio. ”Our saxophone school is very good indeed. I’m thinking of Liudas Mockūnas, who only lives in Lithuania sporadically. He’s really a unique musician, unique in that he works with microtones and overtones, and a master of all techniques, which is extremely rare in jazz in particular. Microtones are characteristic for Oriental countries, as a matter of fact, and we are proud that Mockūnas can express himself in such a way. Dainius Pulauskas, who plays in a sextet, is the most distinguished and internationally renowned musician. I think, however, that this project isn’t really experimental and radical. The most radical work is done by guitarist Juozas Milašius. He says it’s music for driving, and it is very romantic and light indeed. But with such statements Milašius obviously plays with his artistic identity.” Juozas Milašius and his partners can sound like jazz rockers or noise music bands, but also like the radio of a hardly reliable convertible in a melodrama with Morricone music. The finale of his current CD j.m.eilė is a clanking and rattling lamentation intoxicated with sunsets and an e-guitar stripped of all its symbolic significance.

Adventurous though Lithuania’s musicians and organisers may be, this is exactly the reason why they are bound to reach the limits of their small country before long. Not least from her particular viewpoint as an organiser, Jūratė Kučinskaitė argues from a historical perspective only to arrive at funny problems of the present. ”In Soviet times, Lithuanian musicians could travel and play all over the Soviet Union, the big cultural area ‘Eurasia’, which was a vast territory. After Lithuania had declared its independence, our musicians were not invited intentionally at first, the borders to the East were closed. Meanwhile, going to festivals in the East, or inviting musicians from Eastern countries to play at our festivals, is as expensive as going to the West or inviting people from there. We were supplied from the East at one time, now from the West. But Lithuanians haven’t often travelled to the West yet. I think, the way to the West still hasn’t been cleared.” A great deal of hope rests on the energetic and accomplished jazz saxophonist Jan Maksymovicz, who is also among the favourites of the indefatigable Jūratė Kučinskaitė.

”In 1990, when the big empire collapsed and Lithuania became independent, so many possibilities opened up and sprouted a rash of jazz clubs and festivals in particular. But these developments do not also imply similar developments in music. I even contend that it was a kind of brake, an obstacle, because the market has become so incredibly small. As a consequence, the musicians are facing a big problem: it is impossible to develop as many programmes in the course of one year as the audience expects to hear at the three or four consecutive jazz festivals of the country. It won’t work. Not here, not anywhere. Thus, the market has to become bigger than it is now,” Jurate Kutcinskaite maintains.

Robertas Kundrotas too places all his hopes in Lithuania’s admission to the European Union. ”I am really very glad that Lithuania will soon be a full-fledged member of the European Union. We will simply be a state among many European states then, and we will no longer have to prove that we can keep pace with the Western artists. I hope that the situation will improve soon.” Optimism and positive thinking are essential, but Antanas Kučinskas points out that enthusiasm and personal readiness and determination alone won’t do, and outlines a scenario that ought to make us all think, not only those who are engaged in the musical and cultural sector in Eastern Europe. ”People have ideas, a lot of ideas, they can do a lot of interesting work - work that would not only benefit Lithuania but the West as well, yet everything depends on money, you see. If you don’t have enough money over many years to be able to work in a professional manner, if you can’t afford a recording session in a well-equipped studio, for instance, or hire musicians to perform a newly composed piece, your professionalism will suffer after some time. This is really terrible! For in about ten, fifteen years the economic situation will have improved, that’s what I think, and our government will say: ‘Now we have enough money to support you!’ But we might no longer have any ideas by then.”

September 2003

(1) The festival organisers kept their word: Jauna Muzika 2003 included Pita Rehberg and Pure from the mego label.

(2) Virpesys is also a good example of the rapid development and changes taking place in the electronic music scenes of the former Eastern Bloc countries at the moment. The club in the one-time air-raid shelter doesn’t exist any longer. Both Gediminas Ušackas and Denis Shafoval left Virpesys. According to Artūras Bumšteinas, the new Virpesys crew now mainly lets rehearsal rooms to local bands. Moreover, they released two CDs, one of them being Bumšteinas’ solo album floating points. A new platform for experimental electronic music, the mp3 label Surfaces* (http://surfaces.tinkle.lt/), has been attracting attention for some time now, featuring for instance Gintas K., whose music oscillates between high-frequency sound engravings and noise.

(2) Virpesys is also a good example of the rapid development and changes taking place in the electronic music scenes of the former Eastern Bloc countries at the moment. The club in the one-time air-raid shelter doesn’t exist any longer. Both Gediminas Ušackas and Denis Shafoval left Virpesys. According to Artūras Bumšteinas, the new Virpesys crew now mainly lets rehearsal rooms to local bands. Moreover, they released two CDs, one of them being Bumšteinas’ solo album floating points. A new platform for experimental electronic music, the mp3 label Surfaces* (http://surfaces.tinkle.lt/), has been attracting attention for some time now, featuring for instance Gintas K., whose music oscillates between high-frequency sound engravings and noise.

English translation by Friederike Kulcsar.

This text was written in 2003 in connection with the Ö1 series of programmes 'Zeit-Ton' as a contribution to the Ö1 series 'nebenan' (next-door). The results of research carried out among Austria's neighbours can be found in the book + double CD box "Europäische Meridiane. Neue Musik Territorien. Reportagen aus Ländern im Umbruch" (European Meridian. New Music Territories. Reports from Countries in a State of Change), which is published by PFAU-Verlag as a joint production by ORF Radio Österreich 1, line_in:line_out and musikprotokoll steirischen herbst.