In Hungary we have a television channel called Filmmúzeum, broadcasting old classic movies. After the last movie a nice program starts every night where we can watch private archive films recorded by average people in past years. The accompanying music is some chill and progressive sound mixed by for example Lank, Forteba, ZoltánfromP60, Yvel&Tristan or Andro.

This program motivated me to introduce the guy who creates the whole show. He is István Juhancsik.

Tell us how this program started Whose idea was to conjoin modern electronic music to old sequences?   

It started with music around in 1995 when I became fond of underground music and started to go parties like many other people. But Slam Jr’s music exerted the biggest influence on me. 

Years went by and thanks to my friend I got into Filmmúzeum channel in 2000.

To tell the truth, I was always interested in visual motions and the music, tacking them into a special story. But before the television I hadn’t got a chance to do it, so I hadn’t realized that I need to deal with these things.

When I started my job I had to learn everything from the basics: how to cut, digitalise, edit motion pictures, etc.... This procedure lasted for about a half year.

Slam Jr’s ’Tûz’ (Fire) album came out in those days, and I ordered it online. I liked it so much that I made a whole visual performance for the album, with blaze, flying angels, and it became a quite serious audiovisual theme. When I finished it, I asked Zsazsa (Slam Jr) to check my work and tell me his opinion. I didn’t know him before, so I just looked him up as a stranger.

Did he get into television then? Because I’m sure you didn’t just hook up randomly around the corner...

Of course, he came in and it was a mutual sympathy and good relation at first sight. The result of this meeting was that Zsazsa used this visual theme on his ’Tûz’ album launch party with some fire show. This production  was after a Faithless concert, watched and listened to by 6000-8000  people. So we had a very good audience. That was the first push, when I felt I was on the right path.

After this success many artists and writers requested me to make visual themes for their works and books. In the meantime I went ahead with my tasks at Filmmúzeum, and didn’t care how much I had to work, because I enjoyed it.

And how did the idea of this private archive program come?   

This television channel owned the biggest private film archives in Europe. People send us their old videos made with Super8 or 16 camera, we digitalise them and edit music. It’s like a BigBrother in 1960, we can get an insight into people’s everyday life in those years.

When lots of private video was collected, we were thinking about what to do with them. There was an idea to synchronize them, but we rejected that because it couldn’t be worked out. Then we decided to add music to it. First we tried with some jazz line, but it didn’t coincide with the pictures. Then my bosses gave me a free hand to realize my concepts. They accepted a music genre which is not their style, so thanks to them we got to this music.

So our show was started in this style in the beginning of 2005, but since then of course it’s gone through some changes.

First I used some movie tracks, then put some chill and ambient theme in it. Later a soft, deep house sound came. I searched and collected music that fit together with the show. At this point we were joined by Forteba and Lank Peti, who brought harmonius, easy and melting tunes. After a half year the music changed, electronic music displaced rock tunes.

I started to write comments to the channel’s forum, where people made inquiries about this music, and with time a very nice and friendly team evolved on the site.

Finally we got to that level, where more hungarian DJs/producers make the music with me. Here I’d like to mention besides Lank Peti and Forteba also Andro, Yvel&Tristan and ZoltánfromP60.

Well, that’s all, I hope after this report more people will watch this program on Filmmúzeum to relax. Here is a mix by Lank and Six (Juhancsik István) as a taste of this music style.

Enjoy it!

MySpace Lank:  www.myspace.com/lankmuzik

MySpace Private Sounds: www.myspace.com/private_sounds

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