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December 5th, 2008
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A different drummer

Percussionist Pavel Fajt launches a new disc with Autopilot
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
February 13th, 2008 issue

Photo by ALEŠ OTÝPKA
Fajt weaves everything from ambient electronics to mystical numerology into his innovative soundscapes.
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Autopilot

When: Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 9
Where: Lucerna Music Bar
Tickets: 180 Kč, available at the venue

It seemed more than apt when the innovative Czech drummer/composer Pavel Fajt joined the internationally renowned composer and guitarist Fred Frith in closing last year’s Stimul Festival. Frith, a veteran of both the European art-rock circuit and New York City’s downtown scene, delivered compelling electric guitar explorations. In the end, though, it was Fajt’s drumming that enabled Frith’s ensemble to blow the roof off of Archa Theater.
This came as no surprise to Frith, who has worked on occasion with Fajt since the ’80s. As Frith told me in an interview years ago, “Fajt is a fucking monster, actually!”
Such backstage accolades ring true for anyone who has seen Fajt play live or heard any of his numerous solo and collaborative recording projects. Since 1983, the path Fajt has cut through the Czech alternative music scene leads to the region’s more inventive, sophisticated and satisfying rock music threads.
Starting with the progressive rock unit Dunaj in the ’80s, Fajt showed a tasteful approach to rhythmic ambience that gained further acclaim in his collaborations with Iva Bittová. In the ’90s, projects with his band Pluto and sessions with Mikoláš Chadima built on Fajt’s experimental yet accessible approach.
     “It was like a breath of fresh air” is how Fajt describes sitting in with Frith and crew last October. In his myriad activities since 2000, he’s also dabbled in everything from the world-beat inclinations of Slet buben ku to composing live music for modern dance and theater to his most visible work with the ambient groove project called Autopilot. Taking a quick break from his recent preparations at Roxy NoD Gallery for a Jan Nebesk production based on the work of Fernando Pessoa, Fajt talked about his ongoing musical evolution.
“I’m still very focused on rhythm, of course, but I’m thinking more these days about the potential of the ambient style without rhythm,” he says. “I would like, for instance, to spend more time with the piano and work more with melody and harmony.”
Those elements already seem rife in Fajt’s work, including most of the tracks on Autopilot’s debut CD Ido. Released this week (on EMI) and produced by J.A.R.’s Roman Holý, Ido captures Autopilot as an electronic rock vehicle giving earthy nods to the legacy of King Crimson’s progressive dynamics and Brian Eno’s cool music concrete. But Autopilot continues Fajt’s signature physical approach, bringing a welcome solidity to what often gets lost in the wash of other ambient-tinted efforts. This is balanced with no shortage of intensely bouncing electrons. Yet, as always with Fajt’s projects, he avoids the gratuitous edge that often renders hi-voltage rock unnecessarily abrasive. Adding to the sensuous tendencies in Autopilot, Yumiko Ishijima’s Japanese and English vocals soar above the spacey outback animism of Ondřej Smeykal’s heavily processed didgeridoo.
Also informing Fajt’s music over the past four years has been an esoteric musical pursuit based on the mystical geometry of the 18th-century Czech-Italian architect Jan Blazej Santini-Aichel. Santini’s innovative use of light and shapes suggest a sort of visual melodic sense, but for Fajt what is more inspiring is what he calls “a spiritual and mathematical side to Santini’s work.” This includes Santini’s numerology, which Fajt says “places emphasis the factors of six, eight and nine, and naturally suggests compositions working with signatures like 6/8, 9/9 and so on.”
Wherever Fajt finds fuel for his musical dreams and realities, he usually manages to disprove any notion of Czech rock music being incapable of originality. Although Fajt’s honesty makes it easy to trace his influences and inspirations, with Autopilot, as with his past projects with Bittová, Frith, Chadima and others, what always emerges is something distinctly Fajt.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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