LP Version
Infinite Expanse, a label that likes to do a lot of its shopping in the eastern bloc, returns to the area for a first time vinyl edition of a record they first reissued on tape last year. Why it wasn't on record straight away I'll assume was a matter of resources, since it's certainly deserving of the more extensive vinyl treatment. Richter Band were a Czech outfit led by namesake guitarist Pavel Richter, a prolific musician with a famed penchant for political dissidence. And yet evidence of that dissidence is entirely absent on the band's debut outing, a collection of recordings steeped in the European ambient music tradition and concerned with the same escapist/transcendental approaches that underscored new age composition. Infinite Expanse fans will note the presence of Jaroslav Kořán, another Czech artist with an interest in 'quiet' music, and here he dovetails with Richter and another player, Štěpán Pečírka, to great hypnotic effect, subtle guitar phrases intersecting with almost Gamelan type percussion, apparently the result of a homemade instrument called the 'fidlerophone', a name you'd struggle to take seriously before hearing what it refers to. We'll call this 'ambient' in the absence of any better term to describe it, though i'd really rather not - the playing is intuitive and richly textured in a way that seems to suit improvised music approaches as well as reminding me of some of the instrumental post/ethno-industrial work of Beequeen and the Korm Plastics empire. You get the sense of people playing together and responding to one another, rather than one of faceless ethereal drift. You can easily get lost in Smetana, transporative as it is, but Richter and his assembled band's playing is real heart and soul spiritually-inclined expression that's by no means anonymous.
