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October 16 2019

Machinarium Remixed is the title of a 7-track remix album celebrating the 10th anniversary of Amanita Design's robot city adventure. The Prague-based independent studio teams up with 7 different music projects from across the globe to shed new light on Tomáš Dvořák’s (aka Floex) critically acclaimed soundtrack. The album is out on both vinyl and digital today in collaboration with Minority Records.

“I played Machinarium when it first came out and it quickly became one of my favourite all-time games, with my favourite game score of all time. In fact simply one of my favourite albums of the last ten years,” said Orbital's Paul Hartnoll about discovering Floex’s soundtrack. “When Tomas asked if Orbital would like to take part in the project I jumped at the idea knowing full well which piece I wanted to do and how. I was thrilled to find ‘The Glasshouse with Butterfly’ was ready and waiting for us. This has been one of the most fun remixes we’ve done for years, and to top it all we asked Tomas to remix an Orbital song in return. He didn’t disappoint, he delivered one of our favourite remixes that anyone has ever done for us. What a joyful creative transaction!” he added.

The rest of the line-up consists of some of the most frequently praised artists and music projects within the indie games community such as C418 (Minecraft), 65daysofstatic (No Man’s Sky), Jim Guthrie (Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP), Baiyon (PixelJunk Eden), Ed Critchley (Lumino City) or Amanita Design’s very own freak-folk duo DVA (Botanicula, CHUCHEL).

The 7-track album is out today on all major digital platforms. Collectors and vinyl enthusiasts alike can order the exclusive amber-coloured 180-gram vinyl, strictly limited to 700 hand-numbered copies. The LP comes in a gatefold sleeve with Eva Marková’s reimagination of Adolf Lachman’s original artwork for the game.

This autumn, Tomáš Dvořák aka Floex will be touring the Czech Republic with a brand new show, playing his music for video games live for the first time ever. The main concert will happen on 27th November 2019 at Palác Akropolis, Prague.

Machinarium Remixed is available at the following streaming services: Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, TIDAL, Youtube Music.

May 31 2019

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

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