KRÁSNÉ NOVÉ STROJE

Krásné nové stroje biography
Krásné nové stroje (meaning Beautiful New Machines), Czech Rock/Prog/Underground/Ska/Punk/Jazz/Avant (yes, all of them) is band very difficult to categorize. The band was active from 1982-1988 and then 1991 till now (more or less). Established by vocalist Stanislav Divis, guitarist Robert Nebøenský (who would later go on to start his own band Vltava) and dancer & occasional vocalist Martin Choura.

It's important to state that in Czech Republic, music issues in 80s were different from the rest of Western world a little bit. It can be considered as golden era of Czech Prog, but also as terrible time for free thinking and independent music. On most of groups except Pop and Disco music artists, communistic government was trying to suppress them as much as possible. So it wasn't easy to do something, especially as crazy as Krasne nove stroje. Luckilly, this band avoided unwanted attention quite a lot.

Saxophone/trumpet dominated sound, songs that changes pace and tempo very quickly, extremely weird lyrics (I would compare it to Zappa's work, but more in Czech style) and a lot of other ingredients makes this very unique experience.
There can be heard influence (mostly because of saxophone and weird lyrics) of famous The Plastic People of the Universe, categorized here as RIO/Avant.

They were unique by their way of performing live gigs, musicians with wild makeups, moving frantically when playing on state.

Sadly, the only materials from their main era is one demo, three live albums and sadly, no LP. They only appeared on compilation of few new Czech groups called Four Tops, which is however extremely rare nowadays, so their main body of work, over 2 hours of music, is formed by two CD's from 90s.

These 2 albums are free to download and each link is on albums pages (in release notes).

--------------------

Adapted biography from Czech Television site special about Czech 80s music.
by Marty McFly