MUSIC PRAGUE BAND will baptize a new album in Vagon
The new, yet familiar band recorded their first album “Colored dreams”, which will be ceremoniously presented on Saturday, March 19 at a concert in the famous Prague club. Guitarist Vladimír Zatloukal talked to Spark about the record.
Government, in a nutshell, why did the original MUSIC PRAGUE fall apart in 2015?
Michal Ambrož invited the band to Okrouhlice, where we started rehearsing for 17 confirmed concerts after his illness. During the rehearsals, however, he announced that he had canceled all concerts, he wanted to play only a few concerts in the Czech Republic and one Acropolis before Christmas. He also wanted to change the band’s sound towards psychedelia and another guitarist. The whole of HP did not agree.
Do you consider the birth of HPB as the start of a new band, or rather as a continuation of the original body, albeit with a modified name?
We take it as a sequel to the original HP with the same sound but also with new songs, as evidenced by the record “Colored dreams”. Of course, there is a designated development.
How has your fan base changed? Do you feel that people are used to a new but well-known band?
We feel that the fans have taken us as a successor to HP and we are happy for that. We have a wide age range of fans, from 10 to 60+.
How did the new singer Zdeněk Hnyk earn his contribution? Were there more candidates for him?
I chose Zdeněk because I knew him as a friend, moderator, occasional sound engineer, and I thought, he has a great voice. I just didn’t know if he had a band and sang. I found out through Youtube that yes, and then a contact via mobile phone followed, the first tests and it went …
The debut album “Colorful Dreams” sounds sympathetically old-fashioned, as if one went back to the 80’s or 90’s. I guess that was the intention…
Yes, we wanted to sound like HP on ’90s recordings.
Did the album have its own producer, or do you like everything for yourself?
They produced it with Bohouš themselves, we did not look for the producers deliberately, we are calm and completely at ease, no one pushed us. There was a completely relaxed atmosphere in the Abyss studio. Sound engineer Petr Kovanda helped us a lot.
How many things on the debut are brand new? I guess some songs were taken out of the drawers…
As you say, we only pulled two 40-year-old levers out of the drawer, namely “My darling” AND “Stop it, stop it!” These are things that only fans who went to Lever already know and have never been studio-recorded.
“Someone is going flat” AND “Colored dreams” We’ve been playing for about the last two years, otherwise the eight other seeds we’ve never played are fungl new.
I registered that compiling a tracklist for “Color Dreams” was quite a conundrum. Can you tell us why?
The tracklist was compiled by Bobo and I think he succeeded. Since the LP was also released and it was a division of sides A and B. It came out great, the order is the same. He also had to monitor the mood of the seeds and tones, which is not easy either.
Textually, you stick to classic rock and roll themes, which draw on the daily gurgling of events. How much do they come directly from your lives?
I think some come out, others less, but in the end we have to identify with the lyrics to play and sing them well. It must have a certain charm and room for imagination. Others are so much harder and absolute, more rock. “Where are you going” again, it responds to the time we are going through now. There are 10 lyricists, 5 members of the band sing us, so the record is really colorful.
Before the outbreak of the pandemic, HPB gave a lot of concerts, will it be the same now that the clubs are opening again and playing outside?
We hope so, and that despite all the obstacles that have re-emerged after the covidid, such as the invasion of Ukraine and thus the economic problems, the fans will walk, because they will forget everything for a while during the rock and roll.