Tomáš Knoflíček — Vaguely Delimited Targets

Knoflíček’s debut album, Vaguely Delimited Targets, recorded during spring lockdown of 2020, presents a combination of glitch and ambient structures, modular loops generated by a granular sampler and field recordings. The starting sound material of the album consists of common acoustic instruments, among which probably the most important place is occupied by the psaltery — one of the most widespread European musical instruments of the Middle Ages. These instruments are then complemented by a number of field recordings, the geographical radius of which gradually narrows during the album, just as the action radius of the musician himself narrowed during its recording. Though in some passages it sounds a bit volatile and eloquent, the album tends to the exact opposite. It is a report on the search for lost concentration, which the current state of timelessness encouraged.Tomáš Knoflíček is a musician, sound organizer, and curator based in the Czech Republic. His activities have so far mainly been related to post-everything quartet Gurun Gurun (Home Normal), in which he collaborated with a number of mainly Japanese musicians (e.g. Haco, Asuna, Aus, Cuushe, Moskitoo). Since 2004 he has been working at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music University of Ostrava, where he focuses mainly on interdisciplinarity in art, especially the relationship between image and sound. He is the co-organizer of the Kukačka project, focusing on art in public space, and also the curator of the Lauby and Dukla galleries in Ostrava. As a curator or co-creator, he participated in a number of sound art projects and collaborated with many visual artists, for whom sound is an important means of research (e.g. Christoph Zwiener, Julia Gryboś, Barbora Zentková, Matěj Frank, Jan Krtička, Pavel Sterec, Lišaj). Knoflíček is also the author of several music videos and VJ-sets for Gurun Gurun, Wabi Experience, and Haco.

Reviews and mentions

Full Moon Magazine #121