Klid! - CD

According to Slávek Janda, this is the most dynamic album in Abraxas’s history. The band’s founder, guitarist and leader attributes its renewed energy partly to last year’s two-CD tribute to the group’s past, but above all to the sixty concerts played in 2014 by Slávek Janda on guitar, synthesizer and vocals, Miroslav Imrich on vocals and show duties, Ivan Doležálek on bass and vocals, and Eduard Štěpánek on drums. Together with lyricist and manager Petr Soukup, they created eleven songs, somewhat paradoxically named after the album’s exceptionally slow track. Abraxas remains the same distinctive combination of rock, funk, disco, Latin music and new-wave momentum. Alongside unmistakable guitar solos, the album features hard-driving rock riffs, radical rapping about irritating people and the tricks of the pharmaceutical industry, reflections on our inner black-and-white nature, and songs about the occasional need simply to dance. Slávek Janda wrote all the music, in two cases adapting ideas from the 1980s to the sound of the present day. The album was recorded and mixed at Cobra studio in Vinohrady, with mastering completed at M8 Service in England. Abraxas returns with full energy and ambitious plans, and these eleven songs are unlikely to leave listeners calm.