In Musical terms, Ecstasy of St. Theresa is one of the most influential Czech bands of the '90s. Their domestic and international standing received a major boost early in the decade from the BBC's John Peel, and they recorded three CDs for the British Go!Discs label. After a five-year lag between the albums, this year the group released In Dust 3 (Monitor-EMI). Ecstasy now comprises multi-instumentalist Jan P. Muchow, whose ongoing projects include composing the score for David Ondříček's film Samotáři (Loners), and vocalist Kateřina Winterová, who as a member of the National Theater drama ensemble is currently appearing in Mnoho povyku pro nic (Much Ado About Nothing].

Ecstasy will play the final gig of their current Czech tour at Roxy on Wednesday, Dec. 8.

The ecstatic duo spoke with Tom Liška.

The Prague Post:

In the '90s your musical development has come almost full circle - from shoe gazing and fuzzy guitars through experimenting with ambient sounds to firmly structured atmospheric song mainly generated electronicaly.

Jan Muchow:

We develop with each record. And we do not want to bore ourselves with the same routine. As time passes we learn more as musicians, as composers.

Kateřina Winterova:

It's like, reading this interview after some time, we would think, yes, we put it nicely, but now we would express it much better. We are not standing still.

TPP:

Your lyrics are always in English, yet on the new album you have a song with spoken word samples from the Czech film Ikarie XB1.

JM:

The song is a tribute to the Czech national heritage, or in particular to that classic Czech sci-fi movie. In the same song we also sampled Smetana's Vyšehrad from Má vlast.

TPP:

The singers for the other two outstanding Prague bands at the present time, Ohm Square's Charlotte and Liquid Harmony's Tonya Graves, are native English speakers. Why do you sing in English?

KW:

I didn't fint it dufficult or unnatural. Anaway, most of the music I have listened to in my life wassung in English, so for me it is quite natural to sing English as well.

TPP:

You released three CDs in England. Why is the new album on a Czech label?

JM:

Go!Disc became successful, and then fell victim to a takeover. When PolyGragm bought them, they were completely restructed and the division Free Records we were on simply disappeared. We felt we would be in a better position for signing a new contract with an album released al least on a local label than just with a demo tape.

TPP:

Did you consider settling in London?

JM:

I lived in London for a while, recieved some advanced payments, rented a flat and things went fine. But at that time I got the offer to write the score for the film Šeptej [Whisper, David Ondříček's first film], so I returned to Prague, and then I got stuck here somehow. Originally we planned to take only six-month break in recording the album, but the film shooting got delayed. Meanwhile the record company ceased to exist.

TPP:

You official Web page, www.eost.cz - still under construction - has the Czech suffix .cz rather tahn international .com. Do you want to belong somewhere?

JM:

The international domain was already taken, but perhaps you are right, it is better to be from some particular place. At Free Records they did not consider our being a Czech band a problem; quite opposite, they used it for publicity.