It is time to explore what Eastern Europe has to offer when it comes to experimental music. Loads of books has covered the legacy of western electronic and experimental music, so it is about time that we indulge ourselves in what the eastern realms have to offer. Berlin, and Europe in general, are important spots for experimental sounds. This massive volume will inform you on how this came to be through ingenuity, technical and artistic, across central and eastern Europe. These artistic cultures flourished during the Cold War, sometimes with support from Communist states, sometimes very much in the face of adversity and resistance from those same nations

SOUND EXCHANGE embarks on a search for the roots and current state of experimental music culture in Central and Eastern Europe, which can boast a lively, internationally-linked scene of musicians, artists and festivals. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, however, local traditions and their protagonists have partially been consigned to oblivion.

SOUND EXCHANGE wants to ensure that these traditions can once again be seen, and position them in the context of current developments within local music scenes. Between November 2011 and November 2012, SOUND EXCHANGE DAYS connected to local festivals in seven cities – Kraków, Bratislava, Tallinn, Vilnius, Budapest, Riga and Prague – took place with concerts, performances, workshops and a wandering exhibition on the experimental music scene in Central and Eastern Europe.

Together with the co-curators on site, country-specific programmes were developed on topics such as electronic sound experiments, Dadaist happenings and New Wave, minimal music, Fluxus, experimental electroacoustic Music, graphic notations and real-time improvisation. All programmes are presented in a bilateral exchange and in cooperation with local music festivals. SOUND EXCHANGE FESTIVAL CHEMNITZ closed the project in November 2012, bringing together programme modules from the participating countries in a three-day festival.

There’s 400 pages – in both German and English – with a massive range of information. There’s experimental rock music in Germany, radio art from Czech, intermedia and multimedia art from across the region, what Latvia has been up to in experimental music since independence etc. Technology and music practice go hand in hand as workshops and music concerts intertwine to spread new ideas – both before and after the fall of communism, via different conduits.

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