On a typically miserable Prague spring day I hauled over to Jan Muchow's studio for an interview. The studio, Balance, is just off the notorious Wenceslas Square in Prague, just by the famed locus where not so many years back student Jan Palach set himself aflame for the sake of freedom.

You won't be reminded much of Russian tanks while walking the streets of Prague now, where the only real enemies now are the nagging beckonings of Dunkin Donuts and KFC. But keep in mind it was only 12 years ago when the Czech Republic became independent. Culturally, they've gone an awful long way in a very short time. Political-historical lines break down sharply between generations. There is a huge gap between the experiences had by those who were 10 in 1989 and those who were 16; today's teens have no idea what it was like back then, whilst todays 20-something's can look back and compare. Perhaps due to their tricky historical influences, when Czech stars become stars, they really become stars. If you are really good at what you do, and especially if you are known in the UK and in the USA, you are golden in the eyes of Czech media.

Jan Muchow holds a particular place heading up the small but accomplished Czech experimental electronic music scene. He starred in the movie "Whispers," an independent film for which he also wrote and produced music. Because of his success with Ecstasy of St Theresa and also in the film and theater industries, he's always dodging TV cameras at concerts and events. Yet he's not a pop-star in the InSync sense but rather as a really good experimental producer and songwriter. Yes, in a country where the President's favorite bands include the Velvet Underground, you can have experimental artists who are pop-stars. Go figure.

Jan let me in and made me the best cappucino I've ever had:

HM: How did you start playing music?

JM: When I was about 15 I played soccer, I actually thought I wanted to be like the new Diego Maradona or something. My older brother started to play acoustic guitar- like the old stuff, Paganini, stuff like this-I would come home from training, tired, and I fell into bed and since we shared a room he played there, it was like I would hear his playing while falling off to into dreams. Maybe this is why I started to want to do music- I heard those notes and they opened something inside.

HM: So you went on to play guitar?

JM: That was the only instrument we had at home, so of course I asked my brother to show me a few chords. When I learned like two chords, I would make songs. Now I think I'd be a a lot more careful about it, but then I was like shameless and just wrote whatever I could from the two chords. That's why I started a band then and we all knew like three chords- it didn't matter, we all just felt that we wanted to play together in a band.

HM: How did that start then? Who were the others that you started with?

JM: We started with friends from school. We were listening to bands like Smiths, Cure, Cocteau Twins, so-called Ś80's indie stuff. We used to hang out in the Café Slavia, now it's not like it was in the 80's. It used to really be a place for artists and intellectuals and stuff-

HM: That is known as Havel's favorite café-

JM: Yeah, in the 20's and 30's it was historicaly the place in Prague where poets met. So in the 80's it was where young people came and met. Above the café is a film school. We started going there since it was like the closest place to school. We quickly found that there were always interesting people there to talk with. So when the band started it was like three guys from school and one guy we knew from the café-

HM: Hang on, what school?

JM: I was studying film. You know, we have in the Czech Republic that when you are like 13, in the 7th class, you have to choose what you want to do for your life, which is very stupid. I wanted to go to sports school, but of course it was the time of Communists and there was only one sports school which was the school to play soccer. But, they unfortunately would take only 20 guys a year from the whole Republic, and of course these 20 would be like friends of somebody or sons of famous players, so I had little chance to go through. I tried, my exams were great, but they told me sorry, you made the exams but there were like 100 times more people trying to get into the school than they could take. And you couldn't take exams for more than one school, so there were only schools left which were not full, and In the end I had to go to this like, how do you call it in English, prumyslovka-?

HM: I guess like trade school-

JM: Yeah, like a college where I could at least get some work after it, but there was no interest for me in it. In a was it was good that I stopped thinking about my future in this direction and had more time to spend at the Slavia café and start being like a so-called "artist."

HM: Were there concerts there as well?

JM: No, and it was still Communistic 80's, so there weren't many clubs or anything. People would often go to the café and just talk and talk and talk and not really do anything, and then after we also just talked and talked and talked so much to so many friends that we had a band, we were like, well, we actually have to do something! So, there was an old room where we had our instruments and stuff and we started playing.

HM: This was around-

JM: Around 86-88, like slowly knowing what was a C-chord! Our first gig was in 88 and the first proper gig was in 89, the year the Revolution came.

HM: Were you called EoST at this time?

JM: No, at this time I was playing in like 3 bands at the same time then, it was quite normal in the underground levels that people played in like 5 bands. I had one band that I was- how would you call it, like the leader?- I was singing, and this was quite a mistake! It was called Nocturnal, after the Souixie album. I was also in a more Cocteaa Twins -sounding band, and one more like Sonic Youth , rock-noise. In all three bands I played with this guy who we call Pudding.Together we decided that it didn't make sense to play in 3 different bands, none of which were playing exactly what we wanted to do. So we found a guy who played in two of the other bands, Peter, to play drums and we started EoST. We knew I wouldn't be the singer, yet we needed a singer. I heard a tape of a girl singing, which was given to my friend as a birthday present, just some songs she had recorded for him since she had no money to buy a gift. That's how we found Irena. This was in 90, and the first gig was in January 1991.

HM: What was it like, playing live at that time?

JM: Well, it was funny, there still weren't many places to play, just a few clubs. And some places thought that our band name was too honorable to play there! There were other really small clubs with really cheesy PAs, at least there was some chance to play in these. There was no newspaper yet which would cover this, there was only Melodia- which still exists, it's big pop now- every month it came out. We did an intervew for them in April and it came out in September, which exactly shows how not-fast everything was going at this time! We knew we never had any chance to have like a recording deal or anything like that, so we saved up money and begged friends for money, and managed to pay for studio time to press a record ourselves. We made 1000 pieces of vinyl. This was our first, an ep Pigment, it was recorded in the summer and came out in September.

HM: Wow-

JM: Before then we played just a few gigs in Prague. It was mad- sometime in March, Radio 1 got started. We gave them a demo tape of a couple of songs. Our next - really our first official- gig was in April. And it was totally sold-out. When we played the very first time live in January, we were like "no, this isn't really it." And we went back to the practice room and wrote new songs and played. It was this new material on demo that we had given to the radio. We played this April gig in Rock Café, which was opening at this time-

HM: This was what year?

JM: April, 1991. The fact that it was sold out was to us, like "no way," we thought it was really mad! I remember that we went into this place where there was some English band called like Megacity Four, and it was almost full, and we were thinking how great it would be to play to so many people. So, when it happened, it seemed to us really out of the blue, and we had at our show more people than at their show. I guess we were at the right place at the right time or so.

HM: That's nuts-

JM: Yeah, it was. I was in one bar one night right after the gig, and this guy next to me started talking to me asking me if I knew about this new band called Ecstasy of St Theresa, and I said "no no no, I don't know it" so he started telling me, oh they are amazing and stuff, blah blah blah. I thought this was a bit weird, so I started asking him, like what did they play ? He didn't know, obviously someone had just told him something and, he was just trying to be "in" to talk about music and stuff. This was mad, really mad. As well at this time we played one gig at a church, St Sabat, which was amazing as well. People were standing around the castle trying to come in. We just did the gig because it was across the road from a bar we used to go to a lot. One day at this bar we got to talking to the guy that sort of takes care of the church, and his said, "wait, you are called EoSt, you should play in our church!" We said sure, that would be great, we did it as a benefit for the church, to raise money for them. Under Communism, there was no money to take care of churches. So, after the gig, they were amazed how many people came, and we were as well. Two days later also we played at Rock Café, which was also sold out. This was an unbelievable time, young people used to ask us for autographs on the street. We hadn't been on TV or in the papers or anything, anything people knew about us was from Radio 1 and from gigs in Prague, and from word of mouth. There was one time we were in the paper, when our record was out.

HM: Did you guys start looking for a label or manager or so, or-

JM: Actually at this time we started to have a manager this mad guy called Rene, who thought he would do it big. So he helped us to get a few gigs in the UK and Rotterdam, so that was the first time we played out of town. We didn't have any like promotion or anything in the UK, and the bands we played with played different music than we did, and we weren't playing like as a respected band or anything. The shows in Rotterdam were actually more successful than the ones in the UK. So the tour in some ways was a big pointless. But when we got back, the record was just back from the factory, right after we sold out all of the initial copies we pressed of the first Pigment ep. With the money we made from selling these, we recorded new tracks. A few weeks after we signed a deal for a new album.

HM: With whom?

JM: With Reflex records, which at the time was a new label. We thought it made some sense, because it a cooperation with the magazine Reflex. We thought it would be good but at the end of the day they thought they would be signing some new top-seller artist, but we were doing experimental stuff. We were at the end of the year nominated Newcomer of the Year, so they thought we'd sell loads and loads. When we came back from the studio with a recording which was all this weird noisy stuff they were quite surprised!This record was supposed to come out in February but it came out in late April 92.

HM: This was which album-?

JM: Susurrate, which was rereleased in the USA in 1999, which is like a joke to me because I think it sounds so bad-

HM: I love that record, it's the greatest noise-

JM: Yeah, perhaps there is one realy good thing about this record, there is no other record that the sound (quality) is quite as bad! No, seriously, we sent this album to John Peel- we had started to listen to more music and to read some magazines, so we knew very well who he was. Then we found one day that Peel was playing our songs on the BBC, on the air. So this mad guy Rene took some of our records to the UK and managed to get us a few dates in London in the end of 92. One day they called me from Reflex that some weird English guy had stopped by the office asking for us. That he was some DJ. I joked to them, yeah?, like it's John Peel right? Actually, yes it was. I said, you mean to tell me that John Peel was at your office asking for US?

HM: You mean, he'd come here to Prague?

JM: Yes yes, and they said he even tried to call you at home, but your mother said you were out. I asked them, do you know who John Peel is? Thy were like, no. We sent him a fax and he wrote back saying that he wanted to invite us to the UK to record a Peel Session.

HM: Fantastic, and so this coincided with your tour plans-

JM: Yes, so we told him we were coming to the UK for a few dates, and he said that's great because they probably couldn't have paid the ride. Finally he set the date of January '93, so in one week we played five gigs and did one Peel Session recording. At this time was all going so well for us on those five gigs. On the third concert, a guy came up to us and said he really liked the show, that he had heard our music on the Peel show, that he'd come again on Friday, and that he really was into the fact that we were from the Czech Republic. He was the owner of Go Disc Records, Andy McDonald, who did Paul Weller, then later Portishead, among others, we knew the label ok. He came to the show in Friday, which was actually a much better show, and then we got together to talk about maybe some deal or so.

HM: A successful trip then-

JM: Yes, it was really crazy for us. I mean, we went back to Prague a week later having recorded a Peel Session , played some good gigs, one of them was reviewed in Melody Maker and it was actually quite a nice review. After like a few weeks MTV called, and they wanted to do a Prague special and we were to be the main act. This was like a few weeks in the start of 94. Finaly it took a few weeks to negotiate a deal, we signed finally in like March or something. We thought the best start would be to buy off BBC the recordings we had done for John Peel, and we all liked the recordings. So they bought the recordings. Instead of calling it a "Peel Session"- we all thought it would be a stupid way to start a debut single in the UK- we just called it Fluid Trance Centauri, three words taken from eachsong from the recording. We also made a video clip for this. When the record came out it went to the top of the indie charts to number six, and after this we signed a deal with Go for five records. So that was like the start.

HM: How did the name Ecstasy of St Theresa come up?

JM: One day I was just going through every thing in my home, writing down lots of ideas. After too long, I had to go meet the others, and we were like, we have to come up with something. We all had written down like ten names, but at the top of my list was Ecstasy of St Theresa. I suppose I had seen the name in art books, and we all were into the stories behind Saints, the sculptures in Rome - somehow it all came around in the name.

HM: It definetly fits the music- somehow both the earlier stuff and the newer. Now you guys have a record deal with EMI Czech,-

JM: Yeah, they have a sub-label called Monitor, which has lots of interesting stuff, like also HERE.

HM: Having been through the amazing history you've been through do you feel like you're approach to making music has changed drastically since when you began, or...?

JM: Well, I don't know notes or scores and I don't write songs by chords, I do all writing by ear. Sometimes I really wish I had all this theory knowledge, sometimes it would help. In this respect, it's all the same- I really have some more knowledge now about instrumentaion, and I can play more than two chords for sure on the guitar! But generally I think I appraoch music the same as always, I approach each song as a blank slate. Yeah, if I were involved more with the industry, I might have tried different steps than we did, but in the end when we're talking about labels or anything, I'm not so interested in being involved with the industry stuff.

HM: So how do you usually write?

JM: I start with something in my head - could be a sound, like my guitar falling down and making a cool noise. Then I tape it and play it back many times, trying out loops, until the noise starts to form a song. Sometimes it's by accident like this, and sometimes even I've had songs form in dreams. I've woken in the nights with songs in my head, and then I get up and try to remember the notes. Sometimes I'll start with the sequencer or bass, it depends.

HM: The sounds on In Dust Three, you kind of hear a sound like - it sounds silly to say, but like an "outer space" quality to the music, the way that the sounds and melodies overlap., and in Katerina's lyrics- does Katerina write these lyrics?

JM: We write them together for the most part, on the album 2 songs have lyrics by Katerina and the rest are by both of us. I don't think there is anything sci-fi involved, but we really like the sounds. Don't know wny, since we started I played on guitar. As soon as I had some money I was buying effects and I really like these sounds.Our sound is not because we're obsessed with the new century or anything or that we want to have our bedrooms on the orbital, but that's not really going to happen anyway

HM: Would be alright, I think-

JM: Well, I don't know but somehow nonetheless the music is taking us there.

HM: Speaking of these sounds, you've got a very distinctive sound as a producer. I mean, you can really just tell immediately if you've produced it- I heard a song by HERE on the radio, a remix that I didn't recognize at first but I knew that it was your work-

JM: Every time somebody tell s me that I'm shocked. I never want to sound the same in the work that I do. If I'm producing other people, I approach each indiviaully, like first asking what is the best thing about this, and how can I bring that out? I never want to get stuck on, say, some bass sound so that I would use it on a Naceva album and also on HERE. I even don't like other peoples' records, when they sound the same from the start to the end. I do as much different stuff on one record as I can. I guess it comes up somewhere from the subconscious to the Eqing - anyhow, that always surprises me.

HM: I think it's a positive thing, when a producer can find a voice, a clever signature in music-

JM: Yeah, but not if it's overdone, like you have to say "oh, not again!"-

HM: Sure, there are bands who get stuck. Going back to the studio stuff, this studio that we are in now, it's yours?

JM: Yes, my friend and I ahare it- he's a sound engineer. We put it together together-

HM: This isn't Pudding, is it?

JM: No, his name is Michal, he was studying trombone and then got into sound at film school,, went on to engineer. We had made records together, he knows all of the theoretical musical stuff, which helps. We work together sometimes, and we also work individually. He actually has just produced this big Czech pop band Chinaski-

HM: So where did you start learning about studio work?

JM: By the time we were in the studio with EoST, I had to know. I mean, there weren't any technical engineers at that time, and if there were they certainly didn't understand what we wanted. So, we ended up being really hands-on, standing right behind them at the desk and taking a look to see what we could do better in the mix. In like 94 I was asked for the first time by a band to help them in the studio. I guess I felt by that time, yeah, I must know something about this by now. I learned just by doing it, by being a producer, There just weren't many or any people in the Czech Republic to learn from.

HM: The studio is called Balance, yes?

JM: For now, yes, but we might change the name officially. I'm not very happy with this name.

HM: What are some of the projects you've worked on recently here?

JM: We've done here lots of stuff for films like recently we worked with Petr Hopka (Hapka =), a well-known Czech name who was doing like chansons, for the National Theater here, for the hiphop band Trotsky (Trosky =), the singer Lucie Bila, for OHM2, for HERE, and with Chinaski we've done some projects. The stuff we did with OHM2 was more acoustic, and it's not on the record because the rest of the record is more dancey .

HM: What's your favorite gear that you work with?

JM: My guitars excluded, if you just count the other stuff, probably the AKAI sampler. It's a tool that's really fun to play with. I also the POD Pro by Line 64. For guitars it's great cuz you can get lots of sound and you don't have to have like 8 amps, plus it's less noisy. I love ProTools in Mac, it's really handy for quicker work. Often I like to go to some bigger studio to record something on an instrument on tape, then I'll bring it back here to work on it of tape, if I have the time. I also really like my tape echo, it's a Roland 500 something, it's on repair now.

HM: What would you say about electronic music here in Czech right now?

JM: Well, when we were recording in London, a guy who owned the studio came out and said to me, Are you the guy from Prague? I said yeah. And he said, now I finally got to hear you guys, and I swear I hear that Kafka weirdness in your music. I would say this is a bit typical for the Czech uncommercial scene. There is not like a typical like dance band. All the bands are more complicated. There's no like straight like pop band, they all like things more complicated, or maybe more unsure. For example, like OHM2 are called a drum n bass band, but I don't think they are in fact, it's not jungle, it's something different. Like Liquid Harmony too, they were supposed to be a dance band, but it was more something between jazz/funk and a dance band. Sometimes it seems that Czechs complicate things too much, and we maybe get lost inside it like Kafka's in the zamek, the castle. It's like it's so unconcrete sometimes that there's nothing to grab onto. Or perhaps it's just my opinion, because I'm in the middle of it. But perhaps that's why we want to do our new record if not simple then just not too complicated. I think sometimes there are too many notes or too much information in songs. Like in the English band Blur, they have simple ideas in the songs and then they fill it out in the uncomplicatedness of the choruses. It's somehow more understandable for listeners. And it's not bad this way.

HM: There is a good size scene here though, including the DJ scene-

JM: Yeah, it's true but at the same time there are only a few who think beyond just basic parties mixing- it's like they don't really think about it or something.

HM: Why do you think this is?

JM: Maybe it's a bit a question of self-confidence. I mean, we've never been that big a nation, and maybe it's because of the 40 years under Communism, like you get trained to not step out of line. People maybe think, "If I go out and play those two chords straight ahead, it won't be enough and so they complicate it more. Now I think, for example, like in Samotari I did almost as a joke on the guitar with three chords, the song "lucky boy." It ironically became a big hit. There are lots of other songs, but they are perhaps more complicated than they have to be.

HM: There's another Ecstasy album coming soon?

JM: Yes, a few songs are done already. We were planning the new album for April but we want to play some shows to see how we feel live before we go into the studio. Probably it will come out in the fall.

Website:

www.eost.cz

Discography:

Pigment EP 1991, on Ecstasy Release (CZ)
Susurrate LP 1992, on Reflex Records (CZ)
Fluid Trance Centauri EP on Free/Go! Discs (UK)
Free-D LP 1994 (original soundtrack) on Free/Go! Discs (UK)
Astralavista EP 1994 (remixes from Free-D) on Free/Go! (UK)
In Dust 3 CD 1999 on Monitor/EMI (CZ)