E: Music Review, 1994, Prague Post, English

<small>Z Kokolia</small>

autor textu: Barbara Benish

E: Music Review

týdeník Prague Post, 22.6.1994, vyšlo k: I Adore Nothing, Rachot, Praha

"E" is back with nothing, and in this case it is something. As the title of their new CD suggests, this is not music for the feeble of mind, soul or ears. Meshing hard experimental rock, electric Tibetan cowboy riffs, distant Moravian memories set on fire, and an incessant, amelodic beat, this is a recording not to be missed.

The band is made up of three boys from Moravia. Vladimir Kokolia sings (if you can call it that), writes the text/poems and doubles, during daytime hours, as a professor at the art academy and one of the most influential painters of his generation. Josef Ostransky on guitar and Vladimir Vaclavek on bass, both of whom also rock the house with the equally popular group Dunaj, take turns in "E" pounding out infuriatingly disjointed rhythms in between the strumming. The resulting sound of Kokolia's scream-sonnets, Vaclavek's sensual eurhythmics and Ostransky's electric-guitar chants is something so haunting that one's entire body responds. At concerts, few people can stand still to this music. And it is no wonder when the singer is also dancing a gyrating ballet of tai chi mixed with Navajo war dance. He says the uninhibited movements help him contain and focus the energy he needs on stage. At the very least, the audience is held captive by the performance. Combined with his new invention, an electric "floor drum" that throbs under the stomp of his boots during the final songs, the energy Kokolia and his bandmates create is nearly enough to merit a shutdown of the nuclear plant at Temelin.

"E" texts, while never overtly political, call for Czechs to "keep our integrity.". Theirs have never been protest songs, although like many avant-garde performers before '89, their shows were closed by police several times. In the highly politicized climate of the summer of 1989, when I first saw "E" in concert, they'd already been playing together for two years and had a large underground following. The lyrics - then as now - could be interpreted as a highly sophisticated philosophy of change: "I am for silence/Of a thunder tracking the light/I am for silence/That tears ears off." The themes are so universal in their appeal, their humor and poetry, that to apply them exclusively to a political revolution seems banal. This music transcends mere songs. But only for tough ears.