HARMONY008: Interview with Alfred Czital & Tomáš Bím

Chat with Alfred Czital

Congratulations on your debut album! How does it feel now that it’s finished and out there?

It’s a big relief. There was a lot of work behind this project and I’m glad it’s finally out. Having my music on vinyl is always very special for me, especially since we’re talking about my first album. Every time we release a record I check all the stores where it’s being sold, and it always gives me goosebumps. This applies even more if it’s my own production. I am very happy with the feedback and with the amount of people that have supported me, especially if it comes from artists who have always been great inspiration to me. It’s definitely a dream come true.

When did you listen to it for the last time? Do you now have the distance to be self-critical? Are you completely happy with it or are you the kind of person who’s looking for perfection at all times?

The last time I heard the track Ghosted was this morning when someone on Instagram tagged me in his story 🙂 I usually don’t enjoy my own music after I release it. What usually happens is that I actually really hate some of my tracks even before they are released. I listen to them over and over, constantly trying to fix small details.

However, in the case of my album it’s different. I still enjoy it mainly due to the fact that, when I worked on it, I have finally managed to get rid of this habit of getting stuck on details, which would usually spoil my overall impression. This time I simply moved on to the next track when I didn’t know what to do anymore, and came back with fresh ideas later. This new workflow helped me spew one track after another and I still had fun.

I could say that I am a perfectionist, but I have learned to maintain a balance between perfectionism and efficiency, which is essential for completing my projects. This music is interesting mostly thanks to those small imperfections, so why waste time fixing them?

Walk us through the creation of Reality Check. How long has it been in the making? I know there are crazy-long waiting times in the vinyl pressing plants.

I’d say it all started around Christmas and New Year’s Eve, 2020. I didn’t feel very well and I made the track Ghosted. Then I made a few other tracks which felt emotionally valuable to me at the time, and suddenly I realised I was actually working on an album. It was a really surprising finding for me, because I expected to release an album way later in my life. I didn’t plan it at all, but the moment just asked for it. I didn’t really tell anyone so that I wouldn’t put myself under pressure.

I had all the tracks done sometime in May. The initial plan was that it should be out around my birthday on August 30th, but we were about six months late 🙂

What were the biggest influences for the album?

The biggest influences were some moments from the past four years of my life – both beautiful ones and also the really hard ones. I recycled the material from an old hard drive and with that came so many nice memories. I wanted it all to be as authentic as possible. In my work the way I feel at the moment affects me the most. In general, the worse I feel, the better things I create.

And the main challenges?

I had a really hard time keeping everything secret until the last moment. For me, it made sense to present everything as a finished product so that there would be no room for any questions or comments. I wanted to do it exactly as I imagined it. Having it any other way was out of the question. It was also the first time we released something at 160 bpm on Harmony Rec. I was afraid. If it didn’t work it would break my heart because I didn’t want to release my first album anywhere else. Fortunately, everything went according to the plan and I didn’t have to deal with anything like that. I was surprised that all of us decided unanimously. It actually hyped me not to be so conservative when it comes to rhythm or style in the studio.

Can you try describing your creative process? Does making music means tinkering in a studio endlessly for you? Are there any other inseparable parts of that process?

It’s like therapy to me. I never have a plan and I just let everything flow. I get through the individual elements of the track until the moment when I feel it’s enough. I work with what I have at the moment and I try to be as spontaneous and present as possible.

I have no problem turning the whole project 180 degrees. When I feel like it could work 40 bpm slower, then I go for it. When I find out that I had recorded something badly and the patch is already gone, I never lose my mind. I just do it in a different way next time and usually it’s far better than before. I try to work fast not to lose my drive. It always pays off if you don’t fight it and get carried away. I take it as a good sign when I find myself dancing to a 16-bar loop for an hour in the studio.

A good example of what I’m talking about is the Window Seat track. I experimented with a tribal sequence from the Syncussion SY-1, which I had a chance to use for a while, and it still wasn’t working out properly. I pitched up the whole project by 40 bpm and it finally started working. That track’s main element is a field recording from a beautiful evening we spent on a beach in Japan. It all started to fit together so well.

I always start differently. Sometimes it’s a groove from my modular or a breakbeat that I did last night on the couch a few minutes before falling asleep. It can really be anything. Sometimes I just lay in my bed all evening making a melody on my Digitone. The most important thing for me is to have a stable basis on which I can build the track in the studio later so that I don’t waste my time.

While listening to the album it reminded me of those early morning train rides when I’m still only half-awake and observing the country through the window. I am slow, but everything around me is moving fast. Not to mention that some of the track titles actually reference traveling (Transit, Window Seat,…). Where were you traveling?

That’s right, you got it very well. This motif, the feeling of observing the rapidly flickering reality from behind the window, is carried throughout the whole record. I don’t mean the transport as such, rather the feelings you experience while traveling. For me it represents a peculiar sense of helplessness and security, along with how fast everything around me changes.

Every time I experience an intense moment I feel like I can’t do anything about it. It’s like everything is already written and I’m here only as an observer watching everything through a window. It’s a strange feeling that might not be pleasant for everyone, but I enjoy it a lot, especially because I always realise how extremely unpredictable this game that I’m playing is.

Chat with Tomáš Bím

Alfred’s new album has been out for a month or so, some of the tracks aired even earlier. What is the feedback so far? How did you celebrate Reality Check?

The feedback has been very positive. A few artists that we see as a huge inspiration have reached out to us, praising the record. It is the first LP on Harmony, therefore we pay extra attention to how it is accepted within the audience.

The pressing of HARMONY008 was extremely slow, as we were affected by the current vinyl crisis. I remember that everyone in the crew was pumped immediately after hearing it for the first time. We knew that Fred delivered something special. I listened to the tracks when Zikmund (Raleigh) recorded the Harmony label mix for Monument. Fred doesn’t like sharing his tracks until they are almost done, so this was the first opportunity to hear them. When I listened to Ghosted, Passenger and Stay in the mix, I got goosebumps. Anyway, even after this moment, Harmony had to wait another 26 weeks to release Reality Check with fans. In the end, all went well, we released it in February. In Prague, there has been a vast demand for the LP, which is amazing as it shows that there is great support for local artists.

The celebrations were quite wild, haha. First time ever for a release party, we booked a venue with more clubby settings (GRID). It turned out to be a great and busy night. A lot of friends and fans came. I also enjoyed the screening of the video clip for the track Ghosted, which was something we hadn’t done before.

Harmony collective started with organising events, the label was established a bit later. Has it been planned all the time to start releasing music?

As far as I remember, there was a moment in 2016/2017 when we finally realised that throwing parties is great, but at the same time, all the effort vanishes after a couple of hours. The only physical memories you have afterwards is some documentation like pics or videos (we usually don’t keep the installations). I think this craving to leave something physical behind, something that would embody what we do and what we stand for, comes from the passion of all crew members, who all wanted to delve into the music even more. Zikmund always says that on the day we decide to stop with Harmony, our shelves will be full of releases, sparking memories of what we have done together. I think that’s become our ultimate goal.

The label’ visuality has a very clear stylistic direction, yet I am curious, what makes a Harmony release? What are the aesthetic choices behind? 

A year ago, we decided that activities related to the art direction of the label would be handled internally. In the past, Harmony worked with a bunch of external artists. Let me give a shout-out to Šimon Matějka and Adams Soukupovič. At some point, the guys started being busy with their personal projects, and we also tried to strip off the vinyl budget. Hence, months before HARMONY008, Fred and I had this spark of being finally ready to take responsibility for the entire process. I appreciate Šimon and Adams, but I think that you at Ankali know well that creative processes function the best when the whole crew is involved.

Right now I try to look after the graphics in general. Alfred paints vinyl covers and visualises our sound into images. Afterwards, I play around with textures and prepare the final files. The current aesthetics are rooted in the style that the Gojo crew and Šimon Matějka laid while working with us. It somehow preserves that organic and abstract feel that fans know from our early parties.

As well as with the music, we plan to experiment more with new elements. From HARMONY010 we will incorporate slight changes in the aesthetics. We have been really into combining techniques and trying things also in a more analogue way, which means we do a lot of painting and scanning, adjusting, and scanning again.

Most recently we have fallen for VHS aesthetics, as we are all 90s kids who remember parents shooting our childhood on tapes. Frederic Blindow is my friend and a person who helped us with all the VHS videos that you saw lately. He also directed the Ghosted video.

Knowing what you do it’s obvious to me you are working closely with label affiliates who became close friends over the years. You are building a large family of like-minded people and that is nice of course, but since the initial release there has been only foreign artists appearing on the label. Why is that?

Around the time when Harmony turned into a record label, there weren’t many local producers going for the same music style as we did. Things have changed throughout the years though. The scene in Prague has been booming, new talents are emerging. I personally do not live in Prague any more, but every time I travel back I can feel the difference.

As Harmony Rec. we are now more open to experimentation with different sub-genres of techno. I can say that a few locals are under the scope of our radar already. In the near future we plan to establish a sub-label that would ensure releasing a broader selection of music and providing more opportunities for artists to release under Harmony.

Coming back to the activities of Harmony as a group – you are a very tight and professional crew, trying to make it work in this messy industry. What is the outlook so far? Are you able to pay for all the costs, or earn something extra even? 

I am glad that we give out this impression. I could say that we really try to plan everything ahead, but the reality is that we often manage stuff at the very last minute and forget about tasks. Things always go well in the end because we have known each other for ages. We are aware of our strengths and weaknesses which enhances the overall process. Besides, our crew has a lot of amazing people around who are always down to help. I cannot name them all, but I will mention at least a few – Honza Slanina, JT, Freddy, M4k, Kasia, David Zubrycký and many more.

To answer your question, we are lucky that parties help financing the label activities. The imprint is kind of self-sustainable, but there are always extra costs (shooting videos and photos, arranging premieres etc.). I can imagine that one person doing this full-time could live off of it, but sustaining a crew of four is unrealistic. So yeah, we have our own jobs to earn money from. Harmony is able to generate enough money to keep itself alive, and for fun things like occasional vacations, where the crew can spend some time together.

How do you plan to handle the vinyl-manufacturing crisis? Does it make sense for you to wait so long for a record to be made? Have you been considering other options? Streaming seems to be a dead end…

As I mentioned already it prolongs the release dates, which slows down the creative process within the label. Right now HARMONY009 is in production. We expected the record to be out in May, but some delay has popped up again, making it impossible to release before the summer. It seems that our distribution company does as much as it can, but the production time increases every now and then. Alfred has looked into a few different options of handling it, but by far we haven’t decided on any major steps.

I am sad as we have had an incredible drive for working on the label in the past two years. The Harmony Rec. family has gained new members and we have tracks that we would like to share with the world, but instead we must wait. Regardless of these issues the crew avoids releasing digitally only. We just don’t see it as a path we would like to follow. A possible solution for tackling the issue is finding a new pressing plant. I’ve noticed that a few are planned to open soon. Fingers crossed.