#rokolectiv

 Silviu Badea aka Montgomery Clunk is a Romanian beatmaker who arose from the Bucharest scene. With releases on Error Broadcast and the Russian hub Gimme5, the future looks bright for the 22-year old producer. What's more, Monty will also play at our showcase at this year's Sperm Festival in Prague on 24 April, only few days after his live PA at the Bucharest Rokolectiv festival. Watch this space (and check out the interview:) How and when did you start producing music? Cant remember right, had many attempts, starting from 2004 or something. Effective…around 2007, a dear friend pushed me from behind, so here I am. Clunk came alive last year.

What is it in music that you try to find and express? This is tough to answer…I try to blend couch and dancefloor maybe? I hope I can make others smile…no laughs, just to smile a bit in the end.  How is it to do your stuff in Bucharest, is there a community of like-minded musicians as such? What about whole Romania ? There is a community, I guess…I'm not part of it whatsoever because I spend my time in the bedroom. However there are some good artists in Romania…I can mention Cosmin TRG, Minus, Liar, Mountain, Discordless, Parachute Pulse and this Fanas guy. There are also a couple of metal bands that I love but I'm sure you’re not interested in those so i will only mention asiluum.com.

You have a few releases out, such as on Error Broadcast, could you say something about them? I only have a single release out as Clunk, on Error Broadcast. More to come. Sven and Flip from EB are two great guys that know their place. Made me feel like home, gave me musical and visual freedom…there’s nothing but good things to say about them and the label. I’ll spend some time there. How do you perceive your cooperation with Gimme5 and the musicians around the website/label ? With Gimme5…there’s this hidden respect we carry. They helped a lot. I released my 1st track on their site. It’s the proof that Russia does it’s own moves, musicwise. They are also dear to me! There’s a couple of things I like there like Demokracy, Dza, Lapti, Moa Pillar…theres this Russian guy 404, there’s Aleph, Damscray, 813 and a couple more. Respect and all that.

How do you make your music and how do you play live? How do I do it…it's not a process yet…my songs are pretty different…I use my pc and a two midi controllers. I tend to see this question more and more…I won't give you a full answer to this, I hope you understand. It's not a big deal, I just do stuff, the way I do it, it's not rocket science, I keep it simple most of the time. About the gigs…I use the apc20 from akai and a laptop at this point. Things will change probably, who knows.

What are your plans? Got no plans, there’s no need for such things in my universe. I try to make the best with what I got, every single time. Hope you’ll smile.

Even though Bucharest is among the larger East European cities with a population of around 2 million, the underground culture scene seems fairly small and interconnected. We witnessed one such moment of intersection when we met Anamaria Pravicencu, a prolific cultural evangelist who organizes the experimental listening sessions Sambata Sonora. We got introduced to her by Mihaela from Rokolectiv on the first day of our stay. After spending eight years in Paris (Bucharest itself often used to be dubbed the "Paris of the East"), she returned to the Romanian capital slightly perplexed by the East European reality. Where there's void, things are easier to nurture. She then set up the Sambata Sonora sessions together with her partner as well as running the only comic book shop in Romania. When asked for local music recommendations, she swiftly responded "Sillyconductor", who also played a show at her session and whose name kept popping up throughout our conversations with the lovely local people. Sillyconductor and/or Rochite, a sound afficionado who apart from sonic endeavours also writes journalistic pieces about Bucharest wild life...

While talking to Anamaria at the cosy Café Lente, she introduced us to her friend, the photographer Oana Lohan, the author of one of Anamaria's shop bestsellers entitled Bucuresti Proaspat. In the book - a memento to Bucharest as they once knew it - she redrew the photographs taken of Bucharest's disappearing sites and signs which face imminent gentrification and/or consequent destruction.