Jana Kirschner - a child of the bear and blueberry soaked forests of the geographical Centre of Europe, the land locked land now known as Slovakia, mushrooms, berries, and nuts were her toys, the folk songs of Slovaks, Roma, and the Magyar, her education….. Winning spandex clad dance comps at 8 years old down the local Dom Kulture - culture house - disturbingly garish singing competitions by 12, and early forays into songwriting via misguided western wannabe production…. the surest route to 90s era Slovakian stardom. Jana has changed course so abruptly so frequently in her now eight album career no one dare guess her next move, yet with Muzika she has landed, and announced, HERE is music, a celebration, no rules, pompous, bombastic, Day-Glo nonsense, it could only come from central Europe.
It should be awful yet it’s somehow brilliant, the one single lyric “Muzika” repeats as mantra with Krautrock drums and baroque-esque vocal arrangements and blankets of analogue synths ("Kraut Barock"?!)…. What? Why? Because: Musika! That’s why. No more need be said. It will leave no lover of true music behind. On the flip side, the antithesis: Prophet 5 circular pattern from start to close on a slow 3/4, again one single word “Idu” (they’re coming or they’re going) repeated in up to four part harmony, glossing, and sliding in and out of standard tonality…. an ABABA form where the A is instrumented by cello & clarinet, and the B is taken in turn by Cimbalom and Marimba. Time stands still. A dream rest after the revolution of Muzika is complete.
peak pos. 19