Various Artists - Daisies (Sedmikrásky) (2020)

Tracklist:
01. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Sedmikrásky (Main Theme) (1:54)
02. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Peach Tree Thieves (1:01)
03. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Red Carpet (0:38)
04. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Three's a Crowd (2:05)
05. Eva Pilerova - Drunken Disorderlies (2:03)
06. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Dead Men Tell No Tales (3:05)
07. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - The Juggler (2:00)
08. Jan Klusak - The Butterfly Cabinet (0:40)
09. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Sugar Stealers (1:13)
10. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Burning Ribbons (Phone Call 1) (2:31)
11. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Girlies Girlies (1:27)
12. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Man With a Typewriter (Phone Call 2) (2:24)
13. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Bath of Milk (2:40)
14. Marie Ceskova - Roses Red Roses Red (0:52)
15. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Cuckoos (2:04)
16. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Scissors (1:47)
17. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Beggars Banquet (2:15)
18. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Food Fight (1:27)
19. Jiří Šlitr, Jiri Sust - Strip-Teas (2:04)

You've got to admire Andy Votel, a man who has an almost unparalleled knowledge and passion to go hunting for soundtracks that have never before seen the light of day. This time he's back on the Czech new wave with the soundtrack to "Daisies", a film which was considered so subversive at the time it was banned by the Communist government.

Sadly I haven't seen the film itself so I can't comment on director Vera Chytilova's apparently rich surrealist visuals and the arresting storyline revolving around two teenage girls, but what I can comment on is the music itself. A heady mix of brash orchestral flourishes, odd percussion, jaunty harpsichord, flutes and peculiarly processed sound that makes for a collection of themes that are full of life and vigour. I suppose that like Lubos Fiser's score to the incredible Valerie and her Week of Wonder there is an almost carnivalesque quality to the soundtrack which defies classification as it hiccups from one style to the next, and that is at the end what stands out about this record as a whole.

Like all Finders Keepers releases it feels like a long lost part of your life and yet sounds just slightly removed from reality with the surrealism of the film embedded within the sounds themselves. Whether it's jaunty breaks or Benjamin Britten-styled suggestive woodwind everything seems to mesh together into a cloud of strangeness which - for a fan of all things weird - makes for a pretty darned indispensable purchase.