If you don’t know how to spend the end of this week, this is a very good alternative. We invite you all to take part in 8th edition of Hradby Samoty Festival which will be held on 28.-29.-30 of june 2018 on the castle in city Rosice u Brna in Czechia.
[text: Premysl Ondra] “Please don’t be upset if the following lines won’t sound like the typical press release or catchy PR text about a summer festival, in which we present the best headliners, the most generous sponsors, and which features all the cool extra attractions to be expected at a crowded tent camp.
Instead I’d like to personally invite you to a truly unique musical/spiritual séance which is not – and never was – trending, neither in the Czech Republic nor in Slovakia.
Unlike festivals which started similarly, like those taking place in Bolkow, Wroclaw, na Litvě or perhaps Austria, Hradby Samoty (Walls of Solitude) has not grown to a similar size, although many predicted it would.
Throughout the last eight years the organizers have stayed true to their concept that at the core this is not about an ever growing stage and greater and greater names on the lineup, but that it is about the very visitors and their collective experience, a fact which makes me personally look forward to Hradby Samoty more than to other, more prestigious festivals abroad covering similar genres.
Quirkiness is perhaps the first word that comes to the connoisseur’s and layman’s mind when they skim the lineup of this year’s congress of the fallen in Rosice. In it’s eighth year (time flies, doesn’t it?) we are keeping up the tradition and featuring a whole host of followers of the macabre arts as well as dark reflexions of literary and audiovisual happenings.
The succession of performing artists takes you deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, which resembles a magic séance in which all the creative and spiritual forces spread equally throughout the whole area of castle Rosice. Together they create a unique world, and for four days magic seeps through every corner of this half-forgotten structure, which was partly converted to serve as a post-apocalyptic bunker for the communist elite in case of atomic cataclysm.
Actually it doesn’t really matter whether you decide to enjoy the string of audiovisual sessions on the stage of the ancient theatre, or if you choose to unleash your mind in the nets of poetry and light illusions in the surrounding area. You could also walk in the shoes of the paranoid elite of the red brotherhood, retire to the bunker or the cellar and experience full blast tonal katharsis – full transcendence beyond this world is guaranteed on every step throughout 72 mercurial hours.
It is pointless to focus on one particular element, as it is equally pointless to describe one detail of a painting by Bosch. Only if you contemplate the whole of his Garden of Delights can you imagine the sound of twisted flutes, appaling bagpipes, disgusting beaks, unhuman throats and deep metal cauldrons in one unwholesome symphony which chaotically celebrates primal human joy and pushes the absolute limits of mind and perception. Sound alchimists aim for a similar target at this year’s HS.
Here it is not important to peg the changeable Der Blutharsch and the Infinite Church of Leading Hand, to describe the acoustic intensity of Anemone Tube or Pogrom, the nihilistic atmosphere of Treha Sektori, or the industrial shamanism of Bön or Oorchach. You know how to access their music anyway, so try to spare an hour in the evening with your earphones and take your time to listen to the music of the names that you see on the webpage of Hradby Samoty, even if you may not be planning to come to the festival – just for the sake of it. You will be much better at associating their music with specific emotions than I ever could describe.
The music, however, is only one element of what makes Hradby Samoty. Visual artists and poets have become a fixed asset of the festival, and it doesn’t matter if they choose the interdisciplinary approach like AVA kolektiv or if they orthodoxly stick to one art form like the infernalist movement. At this year’s Hradby Samoty you can absorb both, and why not do it instead of the music or film programme?
It is difficult to describe the host of impressions every person takes with them from the festival each year. However, if you have seen the film “Panna a Netvor” (Beauty and the Beast) by Juraj Herz as a child, if you have admired how timelessly the castle was captured, if you have been fascinated by the immense contrast between fairy tale and creeping horror, beauty and monstrosity, curse and redemption, then this year you won’t find a better way to rid yourself of daily routine and spend at least a while with people who, like you, have not forgotten how to dream and wander through the endless corridors of imagination.”
Santa Sangre 