NEMILOVANÝ SVěT (UNLOVED WORLD)

Ar last! Great RIO band from Czech Republic and a very interesting album to add in your collection! Uz Jsme Doma 1991 album is a very strange piece full of weird vocal and winds arrangements. Some moments are full of complicated scales and the next second the music turns into a funny and almost naive piece.

Any way, the entire album is a delicatessen. IMHO Mu Je Ha, Tangrest, Výlov Rybníka and Napůl are the jewels of the album, songs that you have to listen very carefully to catch every musical detail. Even when sometimes the music turns a little repetitive the complete album works very nice. Not easy to listen and not for every taste but if you really like RIO stuff you will enjoy this piece.

Second album from this Czech combo that will see regular line-up changes throughout their career that still runs nowadays. The quintet (plus windplayer Alice Kouslakova) develops an avant-prog close to Gyspy/Manouche jazz and some of the more eclectic and wild group meddling in the same genre, like Miriodor or Hardscore and many others. This album, like its successors, will receive a Velisek artwork that spells out the madness pervading though every pore of their music.

UJD is one of those complex groups mixing many styles from Eastern European gypsy jazz folk to avant-garde prog music with huge post punk theatrics, sometimes veering to the grotesque Oktoberfest or circus-like (in no small part due to the brass instruments), but they are far from the only group to occupy such a niche. Indeed, the spot was first occupied by Debile Menthol, Miriodor and cohorts and there must easily be 20 groups nowadays occupying the grounds: from Alammailman Vasdaat to Rouge Ciel to Hardscore to Estradasphere to Interference Sardine to Taal, and many more. UJD's present album is well within the galaxy just outline here above, keeping a few particularities and quirks, which belong to the group's identity proper. There are few weird twitches as well such as the almost Kobaian choirs chorus line around the end of the title track.

While no UJD album appears to be weaker than the others (though I haven't heard them all), it is safe to say that if you've heard one or two of them, you've heard them all. So you might want to think about that in case you're considering investing in more than two albums of theirs. I'd tell you to check either this one or PZZ among their earlier woks and Usi in their (not-so-anymore) later works.