artists // Semtam

Semtam

Semtam has fallen out from ideal nonexistence in Prague on the coordinates between Mala Strana, Vinohrady and Holesovice around the year 2000. The reason of this big bang was the presence of a thing called personal computer and some version of Fruity Loops... After the first fruity excitement had vanished, the real reason - which was to dig deeply in one's brain and soul and express oneself through music - came to life.

First steps in producing music, sounding like everybody else's, led to a variety of genres with no real ambition to be original and more or less explored the seas of music production, resulting in making a first demo called Every dog different village in February 2002, which was copied 60 times and from a point of view of the CD burner could be called a success.

The next step was the second demo called Star Ing. It was produced in April 2004 with the technical supervision of Mr. Touchwood from Prague. This time the form was more consistent although the name of this demo points out that the author was still staring at or was about to enter the real flow. For the first time Semtam used live vocals of the singer C-Lara and few friends from Portugal. This demo multiplied 200 times. It even received some warm reviews and thus it was decided that you, dear readers of this bio, have the chance to download it here and listen to it.

Sometime around the fall of 2005, 14 new songs were ready to be compiled on the third demo. But as the desire for a sound better than homemade lo-fi has grown stronger the release date of this demo has grown distant. (Now we are talking about the fall of 2007). With that in mind Semtam released a special Christmas edition called Present presence in the winter 2005. It contained 14 songs more or less pointing towards the dance floor and wrapping up the dead ends of production done in past few years. Present presence served mostly as a gift for friends - with about 70 copies made - now rests peacefully on a shelf among the other CDs.

Meanwhile the autumn of 2007 has seen another release of a full-length CD for free at www.kaktusrecordings.org called Cityzen. That one had been so far the most successful from all of them, although calling it success is an euphemism :o)

At this moment Semtam runs around - here and there - producing, waiting and trying not to end up where he doesn't belong. Because you have to know that Semtam is a dog. Who likes to rhyme sometimes and mostly do music. And who left the virtual space at the dawn of the year 2009 and hired few loosely floating artists to perform his music.

June 2010 makes Semtam ready for yet another free release at Kaktusrecordings.org.
CD will be called SET (Years of slow cryptomnesia) and it compiles some of the many songs which have been made within the last 4 years. This collection keeps the number to seven pieces, as they are joined more by certain ideas and mood,
slow and not much for dancing.

Semtam´s live appearances though are more lively lately and there can be more felt the influence of dubstep, dnb or breakbeat in the shows.

More info at www.semtam.eu or www.myspace.com/semtam. < Back