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Music

Kateřina Winterova Is Prague's Imogean Heap

Popular Prague-based musicians EOST integrate wearables into their live performances.

Tomáš Zilvar, the editor of VICE Czechoslovakia, truly loves The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa (the Prague-based band, not the sculpture), especially since he’s married to the lead singer, the lovely Kateřina Winterova. He gives us the lowdown on the tech-forward band, their performance gear and why they might be one of the most interesting bands in Eastern Europe today…

This year marked the twentieth anniversary of EOST, the punky-psychedelic band originally started by Jan P. Muchow, Jan Gregar, Petr Wegner and Irna Libowitz back in 1990. This might sound really lame to all you US folk, but in those post-communist times even the existence of a Mac was like something out of a Ray Bradbury novel. And using it to make music? Well, that was just out of this world. Back then, even getting ahold of a softer kind of toilet paper or a bunch of bananas was a real bitch. We had just entered the nineties, the Iron Curtain had just fallen on our heads and the Rolling Stones finally showed up to play for the first time. Even Frank Zappa decided to come (well, he was real good buddies with our president), as did Lou Reed and all these other big shots. None of them used computers though… synthesizers, maybe. But that was Prague’s vibe back in the early 90s—people were looking to rock out real hard.

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But Jan P. Muchow was a true pioneer. He gave his band a real quirky name and started playing strung out psychedelic guitar riffs with a computer as accompaniment. What was even more unexpected is that a few years later he signed a five record contract on the same label that housed the likes of Portishead, making EOST one of the first Czech bands noticed by MTV.

I thought about [using a] computer as another instrument because the guitar sound, which always used to be dominant, no longer satisfied all my needs. My imagination was asking for much more, so I saw this as something that could broaden my ability to express myself. The computer proved to be much more of a help than anything else I could come up with, remembers Muchow, adding, Today it seems like an absolutely natural synthesis, we've gotten used to [technology] being naturally intertwined. We use computers for everything, same as we do with classic instruments.

Jan P. Muchow and Kateřina Winterová

Today, The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa has only two members: Jan P. Muchow and Kateřina Winterová. Since Winterová came on in 1999, they’ve made three full-length records and a few EPs, all of which you can download on their website. When Muchow isn't consumed by the band he also composes music for film and theatre, and Kateřina has been a stage actress at the National Theatre for over ten years now. Together, they are one of the most interesting byproducts of the post-communist music scene in Eastern Europe.

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They proved that fact at their recent show at the aforementioned National Theatre in Prague. The performance—staged in front of about four hundred people—brought indie-electronic music and technology into the beautiful 19th century classical space. The apex of the show was the LED dress the singer wore, which lit up in tune with their encore "Guns and the Stars" with help from WiFi and a midi controller.

The dress is based on this professional deformation I have being a theater actress, I require a costume, says Winterová. I saw the work of Moritz Waldemeyer and it really spoke to me. It might sometimes be a little too specific but it was exactly the path that I wanted to take. The dress was designed by one of Prague's top fashion designers Denisa Nová, who’s vision was more abstract. We chose a light conductive material and made the dress out of classic LED strips that you can buy pretty much anywhere. Our light designer Jindřich Trapl took care of the programming. He connected the dress to the web and synchronized it with the music and backdrop. What was most exciting is when I put the dress on in his studio and there were all these wires sticking out of it. Jindřich started connecting the electricity through a toy train transformer, and I managed to burn my stomach because I had to stand there for an hour. Once it was finished no one could take their eyes off it!

EOST’s latest video, a rendition of a 12th century prayer about Saint Vaclav.