Wild Tides: winning band 2014

30. březen 2015

The Czeching 2014 expert jury composed of Jana Grygarová, aka Apačka, Pavel Turek, Bára Šubrtová, Tomáš Zdeněk, aka Lorenzo, Pavel Kučera and Libor Lisý voted for Prague-based surf-punk trio, Wild Tides, to represent the best of Czech bands on the European scene. In the listeners chart, the band ranked second behind Manon Meurt. Czech Radio gave Wild Tides – as the winning band – the opportunity to record their five-song album, Sever Fashion.

Listen to Wild Tides’ new EP, Sever Fashion, recorded at Czech Radio.

Cheeky remarks directed at the audience, sweaty hair, hurried but accurate drumming, frenetic singing, two guitars, no bass, songs of up to two minutes in length, and maximum drive – these are the attributes that help to describe the legendary atmosphere typical for the concerts of the Czech surf-punk trio Wild Tides.

Prague's neighbourhood of Letná is hugely popular. Many young people have moved there in the past few years, having been tempted by the relaxed atmosphere of the cafés, bars, garden restaurants, two adjacent parks and by the situation of this part of the town as such – it is three minutes by tram and ten minutes on foot from the centre. Jakub Kaifosz has lived there all his life and proudly claims allegiance to Letná. However, he doesn’t claim as much allegiance to surf-punk, but that is quite common because most musicians tend to become uneasy when they are labelled.

The first steps under the name Wild Tides were made by Jakub himself around 2011. He suddenly found himself without a band, but with quite a clear musical vision. He recorded two tunes by himself and posted them on the internet along with an ad saying that he was looking for bandmates and then he left for his honeymoon. Surprisingly, he soon got a response from somebody called Michal, who said he played the drums and was ready to go for it. With Vegy, who manages to play in a few other bands besides The Wild Tides, it was a different story. Jakub had known him since he was sixteen but they had never exactly hit it off. In spite of that the busy guitar player took up the offer. A bass player showed up at a rehearsal but when she never turned up again, the trio figured that their music sounds fine without a bass and that they actually didn’t need one.

Within a relatively short time Wild Tides played a considerable number of shows in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Holland and Germany. Even though they go to great pains to make good studio recordings (two EPs, a single and last year's debut album Hung Loose), the principal reason for the band's existence is to perform live, which is something that brings them a substantially increasing fan base. Moreover, they don't use the stage only for communication with the audience, but also - no matter how absurd this may sound - as a kind of substitute for a rehearsal room.

Wild Tides

"When Michal and I are writing a song, we really want to get it over with, which has reached such extremes that we don't rehearse at all and the songs that were only finished in the studio are played by all of us together on stage for the first time. Poor Vegy sometimes gets to know the songs in this way: I record a 'tutorial' on the guitar using a webcam and send it to him by email, he conjures something up and that's it. We simply can't rehearse, but we can play gigs" explains Jakub and that might also be the answer to the question where this Czech group takes such natural and authentic energy from.

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