Label: Warm Winters Ltd.

主にフォークやカントリー、ワールドミュージックを軸としたアンビエントな楽曲を制作、現在まで発表した個人名義音源は全てカセットフォーマットで統一しているチェコの孤高の音楽家Tomas Niesner。化学物質の漏出により汚染の被害にあったチェコのベチュヴァ川。その状況へのアンチテーゼとして制作した2022年最新作。川の周辺で採取した様々なフィールドレコーディングをギターやツィター、モジュラーシンセサイザーのサウンドとミックス、流麗且つ軽快でありながらも何処か陰のある内省イメージを紡ぎ出した全10曲。限定100部。





Bečva is a river located in the Eastern part of Czech Republic. In September 2020, several chemical leaks into the river caused the poisoning and subsequent death of 40 tons of wildlife in the waterway – an unprecedented catastrophe. Growing up in Přerov, Bečva was an ever-present part of Tomáš Niesner’s youth and this environmental disaster affected him deeply. In an effort to understand the river better and inspired by Werner Herzog’s ‘Of Walking in Ice’, Niesner set out on a journey from the spring of Bečva to its confluence with river Morava, a journey of over 100km. It was a romantic quest in wholly unromantic circumstances, an attempt to expiate the irreversible.

Bečvou, the album, is a travelogue of sorts, an aural chronicle of this journey. Arranged and composed around field recordings from the river banks, it also features Tomáš Niesner on guitar, zither and modular synthesizer, unlike many of his previous releases where he’d zero in on one instrument. Combining elements of fingerstyle guitar, musique concrete and drone, it’s an elemental tapestry of enveloping textures, shimmering guitar motifs and soaring synth sounds. At one moment reminiscent of the meandering improvisations of East of the Valley Blues, at others calling to mind the ecstatic minimalistic compositions of Caterina Barbieri and oscillating between moods like dread and hope throughout, Bečvou is Tomáš Niesner’s most complete statement to date, fascinating in both concept and execution.