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LP
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FKR 009XA-LP
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New 2018 edition. 2018 marks ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Lubos Fiser's immaculate soundtrack music for Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders ("Valerie A Týden Divu") from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative "Film Miracle" that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label. Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval's 1935 avant-garde novella -- a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst's A Week Of Kindness (1934) and Lewis Carol's Alice In Wonderland (1865) -- has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers, Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric. Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia-fueled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, Valerie would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastic. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jires and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism, and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories. By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jires was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Jires managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade. Remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. This new edition is available in two sleeve designs, both based on the original theatrical posters.
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LP
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FKR 009XB-LP
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New 2018 edition. Second of two sleeve designs based on the original theatrical posters. 2018 marks ten years since Finders Keepers Records first liberated Lubos Fiser's immaculate soundtrack music for Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders ("Valerie A Týden Divu") from the vaults of the Barrandov Studio in Prague. As the inaugural release of an ongoing discography of previously unreleased scores from the hugely creative "Film Miracle" that occurred during and after the Czech New Wave (CNW), this score will always retain a special place in the heart of the label. Having grown in status from an obscure and misunderstood socialist-era art house oddity, via the hands of risqué foreign fluff merchants, to finally find its rightful audience as a bona fide surrealist cinematic masterpiece of world class standards, this 1970 film adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval's 1935 avant-garde novella -- a film that literally cross-pollinated Max Ernst's A Week Of Kindness (1934) and Lewis Carol's Alice In Wonderland (1865) -- has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Inspiring ongoing generations of visual artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers, Valerie continues to impregnate their daily artistic referential fabric. Commonly considered to be the swansong of the CNW, following a huge paranoia-fueled government film cull in 1969, owing to the fact it is last government approved feature film of the post-Prague Spring era to combine the efforts of controversial filmmakers from the FAMU (Filmová A Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzických Umení) film school, Valerie would also be the first of an exciting and essential new fertile strain of Czech made cinema fantastic. Successfully condensing the final drops of CNW lifeblood through a series of presumed apolitical scary/fairy tales, directors like Jaromil Jires and Juraj Herz used surrealism, traditionalism, and fantasy to rejuvenate the creative energy of apathetic filmmakers evading government scrutiny via creatively coded artistic allegories. By strategically choosing to adapt a pre-war surrealist melodrama written by a communist convert author called Vítezslav Nezval and based in a non-specific traditional era, the previously censored filmmaker Jaromil Jires was able to craft what many consider his finest filmic hour and what would later become his most universally received achievement. Jires managed to unintentionally establish a new genre format that was both stylistically and sonically tuned to the trends of the impending decade. Remastered from the original studio tapes with updated liner notes. This new edition is available in two sleeve designs, both based on the original theatrical posters.
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7"
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FKSP 012EP
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RSD 2017 release. Housed in unique packaging based on a rare variation of the original Czech film poster. Limited edition of 1000. Finders Keepers Records celebrates the 2017 10-year anniversary of the label's 2007 release of the Czechoslovakian soundtrack to the 1970 surrealist new wave masterpiece Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divů) with a very special 7" EP of previously unreleased variations, vocal tracks, and newly resurrected themes from the original master tapes of composer Lubos Fiser. Possibly the most treasured modern surrealist artifact from the vibrant and indelible Czech New Wave "film miracle" (alongside Věra Chytilová's Daisies (1966) and Fruit of Paradise (1970)), Valerie and Her Week of Wonders was directed by the controversial Jaromil Jires (a member of the original '60s FAMU film school community) and featured young freak fairytale regular Jaroslava Schallerová (Malá mořská víla (1976)) and Helena Anýzová (Daisies, The Cremator (1969)), but in addition to its stunning cast and breathtaking design and costumes (by Ester Krumbachová), it was in fact the delicate European cinematic small-orchestra score that would future-proof this film for decades after it was first released in the eye of a 1970 communist censorship cull (thus earning Valerie the highly touted and debated status as the final film of the CNW). Rewound, mislead, misinterpreted, over-analysed, and undersold, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders would be scantily syndicated and repackaged in various decontextualized arenas throughout the '80s and '90s via B-movie and Euro-sleaze channels before being eventually adopted by the VHS generation with the reignition of films by Jess Franco and Jean Rollin; it finally regained its rightful status as a genuine European new wave masterstroke emerging from the rubble of the final fall of communism in the early 90s. Expanding on a soundtrack that would form a direct inspiration for bands like Broadcast and Espers, this seven-track 7" also features macabre sound design, effects, and dark atmospherics that are not available on the Finders Keepers LP version.
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10"
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FKR 060A-LP
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2013 release. Galvanizing its ongoing commitment to the lost music of the Czech New Wave cinema movement from the late 1960s and 1970s, Finders Keepers presents the score for Czech New Wave cinema film Morgiana.Lubos Fiser's score visits darker hallucinogenic corners for this tale of two sisters seen through the perspective of giallo- esque "cat's eye" camera work revealing poison-induced hysteria fuelled by sibling rivalry and desperately twisted jealousy. Adopting his mysteriously macabre musical persona, the versatile Fiser interweaves chimes, harps and harpsichord with echoing flutes, lutes and piano, applying his signature orchestral tension and experimental percussion traits in the form of treated pianos, vibra-slaps, tape samples of striking matches and spring reverbs to this oblique heady selection. From a country and era when isolated soundtrack music remained commercially-unreleased, these two scores have been rescued and remastered, featuring extensive liner notes by Andy Votel and Dan Bird.
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