Ah, good old Czechia, land of Kafka, Svankmajer, and - to bring the absurdist tradition into the 21st century - a small portion of my musical un-career. For reasons I can no longer explain to myself, let alone a prospective employer, I moved here from Japan in 2003 to gain a foothold on the European continent and particularly to get a glimpse at the singular scene that had been going on next-door in Vienna for some years before. Though this ended up being an act of self-sabotage in some respects; sacrificing the opportunity for heated vending machine coffees and bullet train rides nevertheless did result in some of the most lasting friendships and unique experiences that I could have hoped for.

A kind embrace by the local "industrial" and "dark ambient" artistes in Prague led to a number of local bookings for my then very transitional music project. At least one of these - a gig at the anarchist center Papirna, for which I don't think anyone realized I was even on stage - still stands as maybe the worst public appearance I have ever made, and I can only hope the attendees were more focused on the broken toilet on site or the unsurprising visits by the local militarized cops to notice how miserable I was trying to piece together a comprehensible show with half-functioning equipment. To be honest, I probably ended up saving my best material for "road gigs."

*This* Prague soundboard recording from December 2003, however, I have a soft spot for: the humorous and "more avant-garde than thou" performance shared between myself and the terrific "broken turntable" act Birds Build Nests Underground was great fun, more so because these sinister audio cartoons were drawn out to an excruciating length before an "industrial festival" audience who I think were expecting a bill of fare consisting mostly of dark comfort food a la Lustmord. Well, they got that anyway, but not before this absurdist assault of records skipping, things exploding, digits decimating and molten audio kitsch.

I rarely consider rehearsals for shows memorable, but in this case, the events immediately following the pre-gig rehearsal somehow managed to foreshadow how the show itself would turn out: taking a tram from the rehearsal space back towards the nearest Metro hub, I kept seeing grown adults in angel and devil costumes stumbling and tumbling through newfallen snow and occasionally, it would seem, passing out altogether (I later learned this is part of the "Mikulas" holiday and really nothing out of the ordinary for the date).

Birds Build Nests Underground (at the time Petr "Phaarentz" Ferenc and Michal "Mysak" Brunclik) has since played a good deal of shows throughout Europe and raised the sophistication level without my contrarian ways to weigh them down. Ferenc was responsible for my being a semi-regular columnist in the premiere Czech "adventurous music" magazine HiS Voice, while also being a keen translator and later joining Nurse with Wound on some of their continental live engagements.