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For their big debut MMXVIII, Manon Meurt earned the nomination for the Apollo Czech Music Critics Award 2018 and they also appeared among the nominees in the Alternative and Electronic Category at the Anděl Music Awards 2018. Since the October album release party on the boat Alternburg 1964, the quartet from Rakovník has done a number of activities, they have had more concerts and, before the upcoming summer, they will release the new composition Beyond Beside.

The seven-and-a-half minute single Beyond Beside is a postscript and closure to the era of the aforementioned MMXVIII. It was the only song that was not included on this award-winning album, but was recorded during the same recording session. Jan P. Muchow (The Ecstacy of Saint Theresa) produced the song, Derek Saxenmeyer was in charge of the recording in Faust Records studio, and Matouš Godík (Floex, Hidden Orchestra) was in charge of the final mastering. The band did not want to throw it away and leave it in oblivion, therefore they are releasing it on its own as a single. Its opening focusses on the distinctive keyboard sounds of David Tichý, and as it continues, other instruments join in, including the ethereal fragile vocal of Kateřina Elznicová. About half way through, the huge waves of intense post-rock gradually start to pound.

Manon Meurt from Rakovník got together eight years ago. In addition to singer and guitarist Kateřina Elznicová, the members now include Vojtěch Pejša (guitar), Jiří Bendl (drums) and David Tichý (keyboard), who introduced new possibilities and alternatives to their current gripping sound without the presence of a bass player. In addition to the concerts, the four of them made themselves better known with the release of an initially self-recorded nameless six-track EP in 2014. It took the next four years to make a regular album, and Jan P. Muchow became its mentor and producer. Finally last year, MMXVIII was released and it generally received only positive responses, and the music portal musicserver.cz ranked it in second place in the list of twenty best domestic recordings of 2018. MMXVIII in some way represents a new step forward, a new chapter in the group’s working together with the unmistakable Kateřina. It has brought mature music and found the exact balance between the fragile and quiet (almost) intimate passages and dynamic dives into noisy passages.

Manon Meurt will continue to perform this year, and you can see them at several festivals. One of them is the Metronome Festival in Prague, followed by the Hradecký Slunovrat in Hradec nad Moravicí and Beseda u Bigbítu in Tasov in August. In the meantime, the group is also working on new material, so we might not have to wait long for the successor to MMXVIII.

Beyond Beside single is available at the following streaming services: Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, Juno, Tidal, Google Play, Amazon, Youtube Music