Rock alternative Otras comes out “live in Prague”
Written by Hevhetia on January 26, 2023
Within a year and a day, the live album of the essential Slovak rock alternative group OTRAS is published by the label Hevhetia (2023 on bandcamp), capturing their concert in the well-known Kaštan club in Prague on January 28, 2022. The reunited band after twenty years consists of long-term bandmates from various projects Peter “Varso” Varsavik (vocals, guitar, songs) and Julo Fujak (drums, voice, arr.), as well as Jožo Hruška (fretless bassguitar) and David Šubík (keyboards, electronics), former music producer of the first album Kysucký postindustriál (1998).
During the more than a year-long tour of performances in a season 2021/2022 – which were every time connected with the projection of a thematic film inspired primarily by the persona of its frontman Varso “I open the door and I don’t know what’s going on” with the music of OTRAS (directed by Kristián Grupač, 2021) – the group stopped in Prague, where as part of a double concert with MCH3, the legend of Czech alternative Mikoláš Chadima (saxophone) joined them as a special guest!
“In terms of style characteristics, we could perhaps simplistically categorize the poetics of OTRAS (The Shake) as new-wave progrock or artpunk, on an aesthetic level as horror-like civilian surrealism, and philosophically, I would clearly see it as Kysuce post-existentialism. It is no coincidence that on their booklet of CD Kysuce postindustrial there is a quote from Carl Gustav Jung, who says that while searching for your true motivations you discover yourself, but you achieve this knowledge only at the cost of strong shakes.”, written in the review by Petr Slabý (HisVoice – 27/01/2022).
