Band on the run

Describing a band without a home country or discernable style is no easy task.

Metamorphosis is a name perfectly suited to this band's genre-bending sound. But the band's insistence on musical innovation is not the only element to its enigmatic nature, according to guitarist Martin Alacam.

"We were never locally active anywhere, because the members keep moving. In the '90s, we played a lot in Vienna and the Czech Republic. Then for some time we had an agent in France, so we were playing there regularly. Then that faded and we played about five tours in Russia," he tells The Prague Post.

Consisting of Austrian, Czech and Turkish musicians who currently reside in Russia, the Czech Republic and Turkey, Metamorphosis is certainly not latched onto any local scene. With unusual instrumentation that includes cello, violin, classical guitar and electric guitar, the band likely raised a few eyebrows in the punk venues where they frequently played early in their career. Between the squats and the clubs, Alacam admits, "It was a mix from the beginning." 

Since forming in Vienna in 1996, Metamorphosis has embraced the raw energy of punk while taking extreme liberties with the general conception of a string quartet. Despite their rough and tumble beginnings, individual Metamorphosis members have provided music for a variety of projects ranging from interactive art exhibits to film and ballet.

Now, with more than a decade of touring and four original albums to their credit, Metamorphosis continues to attract an audience of jazz, progressive rock, classical and punk rock fans. Their most recent album, Luff, released in 2006, was widely praised for its combination of disparate musical elements into a unique sound that is cohesive yet enigmatic. The band retains the raw energy of rock but smoothes the edges with a classical sense of instrumentation and composition that is precise while remaining unrestricted.

The freedoms enjoyed by the band include violinist Christoph Pajer and cellist Jan Kavan's bag of electronic effects. Challenging the concept of a string quartet even further is the interplay between Richard Deutsch's electric and Alacam's acoustic classical guitar.

Deutsch's post-rock electric guitar owes much to the improvisational approach of Derek Bailey and Fred Frith. Similarly, when Alacam says, "I use a lot of noisemaking techniques like whistle and itchy, scratchy sounds," you can forget about hearing the usual nylon string acoustic references to Bosa Nova, Baroque and Flamenco.

There is a labyrinth of musical abstraction in Metamorphosis' guitar section, ranging from angular math rock to the acoustic inspirations Alacam found in Czech guitar maestro Štěpán Rak's futuristic 1994 CD Terra Australis.

Metamorphosis' avant-chamber-rock brings other influences to the table as well. Alacam lists "minimalism and 20th-century music starting with Shostakovich, Stravinisky, Bartok and later on John Cage." Such disparate sources of inspiration make for a beautiful and curious combination.

Metamorphosis has been compared to the Czech bands Dunaj and Už jsme doma, but Alacam is correct in saying, "They had a certain influence on us, but we really don't sound like them." A more apt comparison with Czech music would be Metamorphosis' artful playfulness, which shares much with Iva Bittová and Pavel Fajt's 1980s collaborations, as well as the collective spirit of Agon Orchestra and Kilhets.

In today's music world, where the quest for originality has led musicians to extreme acts such as surgically changing their skin color, or touring a live show that out-splatters gore filmmaker Russ Meyers, Metamorphosis' emphasis on honest creativity is refreshing. Being hard to classify may be, as Alacam says, "a blessing and a curse," but in the mobile and diverse 21st century, Metamorphosis' distinct and elegant music makes sense, nonetheless.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at
features@praguepost.com