sound.delirium//reviews - Grandmother Is Dead The Book Of Legionary

    Patriotism falls into a lot of kinds: it can be magnificent and ponderous, unbridled and aggressive, it can cultivate different folk traditions or seem something else. Having listened to the cd The Book Of Legionary by a Czech one-man-band Grandmother Is Dead, I realised that it can also be Czech.
    Don't look here for "knedlics" or "Bekherovka", as it's all about war, moreover, World War the First, which is already an extraordinary fact in itself. On such an occasion I wasn't too lazy to look through the text-books on History. As far as I understood, they are the events in May' 1918: after the rising of a Czech corps there started a massive offensive of all possible counterrevolutionary forces against the Soviet regime. That's why several cities were occupied, Penza and Krasnoyask among them. It's also the name of one of the tracks Attack To Penza. To my mind, this piece of work is an example of musical existentialism, with its study of a human in a boundary state. The CD is not just a story of a legion, the tracks go in chronological order though (Legionary, 4 or 5 Dead, Battalion, War zone, Attack to Penza), but of any person pulled out of peaceful life. Many of these people "went down to fetch some coal and appeared in boots", without a clue what for and for who, as war takes people into the streets out of their beds and clashes them against each other. You can find all of it in Jaroslav Hasek's immortal The Good Soldier Svejk. And as an example a dialogue that brilliantly illustrates it:

    - So, he is killed, our Ferdinand, - said to Svejk his maid.
    - Which Ferdinand, Mrs. Mueller, the one that worked for pharmacist Prusha and drank by mistake the fluid for hair up-growing?
    - No, the one that is archduke, who's fat and pious.

    Everything is synchronised within the rhythmic structure: the blasts and temporary calms along with peaceful and that's why not depressive cricket crackle, dogs' barking, German speech, hysterical orders and just the physical feeling of the lives that are vanishing away (War zone). Thick melancholic stringed instruments, some kind of sloth and disorder given to the melody, a ring as a brain impulse or the phone that will never be picked up… - the reminiscences and reality have interlaced to the degree that you can't draw a distinct line between them. The tracks play themselves patience of yellowed photos of the present-day dead. And senile tinkling voices of survivors that appear at the beginning of each new abstract make a really awful impression. Awful as it is because having undergone it once, one is doomed to drag all the weight along day by day for years that are as long as Lost souls (16:43). This track is the last on the CD, that is full of radiant sorrow and tiredness in confusion with worldly tranquillity air. The one that has the aged war veteran: "…so I looked around, and why, the sergeant-major lay with his legs torn off." Silence and transparency, that let you see everything - as you listen to this music, you get another vision of the apparently known events, a new world, that's probably not very suitable, but sincere. Where you sympathise with someone's fates, someone else's, but very close. They are complicated and seemingly unattainable, but you get inside and live some instants as a unity within.
    This is what I see as real patriotism, free of numerous layers and standards, having primordial significance and tragic feeling back, the feeling without violence and significant knitting of the brows. Because for the long passed events to stay the same the feelings are to be preserved, and there is an abundance of them enclosed into this work.

amiganatallius

A tremendous album! Very emotional, moves you and excites really a lot. Sensually. Sad but very sensual. The theme is like that, it couldn't have been differently, but the whole story is soaked in something very tuneful despite the sadness.. Voices.. voices.. they simply penetrate inside.. I have never heard anything of the kind.. The voices are most probably processed in a way.. but still - this rustle... tinkling ringing.. hard metal ripping in the voice turn us towards the whole world.. it's full of emotions.. Ringing sounds across the ages.. natural sounds.. echo of the war explosions.. a lot of precise details that can still produce visual associations.. The very vivid one for me was the first composition.. I was completely dissolved in it..