Excursin Animato

The album Excursin Animato is a live recording of a unique project that Irena and Vojtěch Havel and the experimental-ambient duo Kora et le Mechanix performed at the Alternativa Festival in 2006, created specifically for this festival. Here, the Havels couple for the first time combined their fragile meditative music with electronics, which they had purposefully avoided until then (and even after).

The album Excursin Animato is dedicated to the memory of the exceptional musician Vojtěch Havel, who died a year ago. He and his wife Irena have been working together since the 1970s, recording a number of albums that mixed elements of European minimalism with Baroque and Eastern traditions. The depth and unpretentiousness of their expression have won them loyal fans at home and abroad and inspired many artists across genres. For their latest album Four Hands (Animal Music, 2024), they received the Czech Music Academy Award.

The duo Kora et le Mechanix, formed by Michal Kořán and Filip Homola, is celebrating 20 years of existence this year. They have established themselves as one of the most interesting electronic ambient projects in our country. The starting point of the collaboration with the Havel couple was their debut album Excursin (2006). The electronic compositions of Kora et le Mechanix (electronics, sampler, synthesizer, vocoder) are combined with the fragile world of acoustic music of Irena and Vojtěch Havel (viola da gamba, cello, piano and Tibetan bowls).

The album Excursin also has a remix version, Excursin Forte (2007), featuring some of the most remarkable artists of the Czech and Slovak electronic scene. Excursin Animato thus concludes this trilogy.