Negative Face  

Multi-genre, multi-instrumental, multi-personal. That is a brief description of Matěj Lipský’s music project called Negative Face. It is their second album “The Garden of Wishes” which I’m currently digesting after a several-hour listening session. To give an explanation of the introduction – Negative Face merge metal, jazz, ska, folk, grunge rock, crossover, hardcore, maybe even bits of punk or funky, maybe even something more. Besides the usual rock instruments, you can hear violin, ukulele, saxophone or darbuka. And why multi-personal? Well, there were more than twenty people involved in the recordings. The first name I’ll give is Matěj Lipský himself, who besides writing all music and lyrics, played the guitar and did the singing. Another important member is Maťo Mišík, who was responsible not only for production and arrangement, but also played the bass guitar, the guitar, keyboards and percussions. I definitely can’t forget Daniel Kroft (Latitude 77), who is the author of the rather long intro “Falling a Sleep”, actually consisting of six introduction parts, and who was co-producing the album.

Now to the album itself. I don’t know exactly what words to use to give specific description of the concept album, so I’ll quote the author: “The Garden of Wishes tells a story, which brings us to a mysterious place, which no one entered before. A place of mystical encounter which can change your life. On the other hand, it can wake things that you might not like at all…” This is maybe not enough for you, therefore it might be better to dive under the surface and start listening. However, I recommend to devote enough time to the listening, because making pauses or skipping tracks will immediately break the continuity. Garden of Wishes is simply meant to be listened as a whole, otherwise you’ll miss a lot.

The journey starts right away with the intro, which really brings around a feeling of places unknown. The Way, by its unusual combination of rock/metal and ska, triggers a positive mood, but as it’s coming closer to the – rather psychedelic - ending, you start to feel uncomfortable. It’s as if you were clinically dead and your mind was free to soar, but you are still curious, what’s next. The first tunes of “Woman” slowly unveil the unknown and you carefully look around. The feeling of insecure soon vanishes and you allow the melody to carry you forward, until it gradually changes into somewhat frisky “The Garden”. It is now when you realize that this is a different world. Usually, you’d find such a sudden change unacceptable, but in this strange dimension, it is absolutely alright and you carry on traveling, dreaming through “The Dream”, thumping through hardcore-like “Morning Star” and finally arriving to rock concert “Ego”, where you won’t feel that lonely as you have felt till now. When it’s over, a gentle jazz breeze swings you into a fresh night on the smile of “Her Face”. You feel relaxed, but your subconscious is expecting something fundamental to happen. Therefore you don’t stop and dance through light-hearted “Forever...”, sneak through tension-building “The Name” and properly torn-apart “The Tears”. It ends in an awakening and your soul is slowly leaving the beautiful world, quite unknown to you before. A radio someone turned on is speaking the voice of Lubomír Lipský, the great actor, and guided by his sweet sense of humor you enter the final “Zahrada Emocí”, where you try to understand what has just actually happened. To understand who or what you were supposed to meet. Yourself, your fate, your emotions or secret wishes. I went through all this after finishing “The Garden of Wishes”. But don’t make this a rule. These were just my personal feelings. Perhaps it was the author’s intention, to make everyone look deep into his own soul and discover something he was not aware of before. So he might be actually right when claiming that after listening to the CD, your life - or at least your approach to life – can change.

When I first heard a piece of this CD it instantly flew through my head that there will be problems with this. And there were. I persuaded anybody for a long time to write a review and everybody gave the CD back to me with that that he dares not to write it. So I resigned to that that I’d write the review on this CD myself although I dare not any more. I postponed it a long time but I can’t do that forever. So let’s do it.

Negative Face is unspecified amount of people (I counted ten in the booklet), plus guests – Lubomír Lipský (which reads the introductory story) and Zdeněk Šikýř. Although regarding the fact that Negative Face is apparently just a project, free group, the term guests is very vague :) The soul of the project is Matěj Lipský, grandson of the actor Lubomír Lipský, guitarist, flute player, bassist and singer. Well and now we get to the music. And this will be the hardest nut. The question almost gets to my mind if this music can be labeled as metal. It’s hard to describe something like this. It’s a mixture of most varied genres and styles from the most ordinary pop music to excellent dense something like death metal. Most of the album flows in the slower bemused tempo which is though every now and then interrupted by any faster interlude. Overall this music is very hard to listen to but it has its charm. It’s audible from it that there’s a lot of toil and experiences behind it.

But I won’t only compliment, I also have some objections. First I don’t like the distorted guitar sound – inexpressive, muddy, muttering. And then I don’t like Matěj’s (if it’s Matěj) murmur. A lot more naturalness would suit it. The separate chapter would then be the lyrics. Beautiful lyrics, mostly in English, though too sensational and lyrical for my taste.

And a few words about booklet. It is really well made. And it means both graphics and content too.

Well and how to draw it all up? Excellent elaborate music that hardly fits any style. Definitely it’s not the music for everybody. I’d dare to play a prophet and say that regarding the complexity and composition this music will have the hard way.