Iva Bittová, Pavel Fajt

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Green labels.

Recorded in May 1987 at the Budíkov studio outside Prague, Bittová & Fajt is the document that introduced the Moravian singer-violinist Iva Bittová and the drummer Pavel Fajt to the wider European avant-garde. Both came from the late-Communist Czechoslovak underground; both would soon be absorbed into the Brno collective Dunaj; neither would ever sound quite this exposed again. The album was issued by the state label Panton, in a gatefold sleeve typeset and printed at Panton's own works on Strážní 14.

Bittová sings in Moravian, in French ("Francouzská"), in invented onomatopoeia, and she plays violin while singing, which on songs like "Strom" (Tree) or "Na Těle Plášť" produces something like one instrument with two voices. Fajt's drumming is the opposite of metric: he plays the song's emotional weather, not its bars. "Smích" (Laughter) opens with a single bowed string and a laugh that sounds tentative, then defiant. "Svatba" (Wedding) is the longest piece and the one most likely to recall Meredith Monk, although the resemblance is incidental: Bittová's source material is folk, Leoš Janáček and Brno theatre rather than New York minimalism.

This is the original vintage Panton pressing, issued only in Czechoslovakia, the version Chris Cutler picked up and championed in the West (it would later be reissued through ReR and Rachot). A pivotal post-1968 Central European duo recording.