A: Both of them .) Those I bought online as my first batch. The first batch from Berlin were some records from Paul Kalkbrenner, Nathan Fake, Agoria, Trentemøller etc. I remember how I came back after a night-long run at Watergate (my first Berlin club experience... in 2011?) and went to play them at Óčko bar, hardly catching the beat – Martin behind the bar listening and suffering, but enjoying the atmosphere I brought with me – a party mood.

M: Definitely 😅. I remember that day very well. :))

You reference a lot of techno music, the sort of techno 'classics' actually, and its imprint is I think quite present in your music. Yet, there are much more influences and your sound goes beyond classic genre categorisation ('I Get Lit'). How would you describe your own sound?

A: I’m not sure if our music has an imprint of some techno classics. Honestly we don't give a fuck about how it sounds or how long it is. We don’t stick to any genre, we just experiment with our ideas and sounds and try to really exhaust them and push them to their limits. A sound exploration.

M: I think that Anna and I really have techno in our hearts. At least for me, it's very close to my heart. I've been following it for years, listening to different mixes, but since the beginnings of my creative output, I've never really needed the techno music I was making to sound like other peoples' techno. I don't know why, but I've always been fascinated by stories in music, like, let's say, film music, and I wasn't really listening to any film music at the time, not even classical, more the stuff from Warp Records, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Chris Clark, LFO. Then came Apparat, Amon Tobin, etc.. I could write novels here 🙂

I enjoyed the experiments, then I got really hit by classical music, industrial, ambient, post-punk, guitar stuff in general. Anna and I have it pretty much the same way, don't we, Anna? 🙂 So these years of exploration across musical genres are reflected in our music. In fact, it all crystallised itself into this form. There's no intent, we don't even really think about it in terms of genre. It's more like the music comes from our feelings and experiences. I don't think LOFN will just be labelled ‘ambient’, ‘industrial’, ‘techno’ in the future.

However, I guess it still comes down to the fact that techno is a fascinating musical style, like a pretty big sandbox you can play in – I'd rather compare it to a huge kitchen where you have a lot of ingredients to choose from. It's up to you how you combine them and what you cook from them. In this way, techno, I guess I'd call it post-techno, comes across as the most universal music genre.

A: There are definitely a lot of the same things we like in music but we also differ in some ways. Despite being an electronic girl from my teen age, I’ve never been a 100% party girl and I'm really not into some hard techno things or the ‘czechtek’ thing (sorry guys :)) ). Even though I grew up in the 80s and it absolutely had an impact on how I perceive music. I really love the 80s and the old pop thing.

I have a classical music education, I have been singing since my childhood and I almost studied opera in high school (at that time there was no other option). In the 90s, Björk's Debut was a big game changer for me. In the years around 2010 I consumed music more than food :)) Apparat, Telefon tel Aviv, Extrawelt, Piano Magic, The Knife, Moloko...it was a pure electronic boom.

Sometimes I think that with Martin we are like the left and the right hemisphere of a brain. One complements the other.

Congratulations on the Veyl release, it's very nice to see local artists getting recognition on such a label. Its title is Post-Apo Romance. Do you romanticise the post-apocalyptic future? 😈

A: Maybe 😀 We wanted to shoot a music video for the title track – I had an idea of an animation in a post-apo scenery in macro, where a broken doll would wake up, realizing that she and a wolf are the only living creatures in that world. So yes, probably yes.)

The idea behind the album is: What Post-Apo Romance means for us... Romance, as it is perceived nowadays, is not necessarilly a relationship of two people, two living beings of different sex polarity. To feel LOVE is also accessible to boneless creatures, to a dream, to a virtual reality or throughout the lucid. Virtual became the new real. LOVE between a human and a dream or AI is nevertheless real, urgent and burning as the common form of romantic love. Condition to love has moved from preservation of a genus to LOVE itself.

Or this one? It was a long time ago.

Oh, that was such a great record label. These tracks can easily be played in another 10 years and will still sound fresh and will definitely work on the dance floor.

A lot of great music came out on Dino Sabatini's now-defunct Prologue label. I dare to say that this label was one of the pioneers of hypno techno – which wasn't cool at the time yet. 🙂

This track was a big favourite, like hearing James Ruskin on Italian steroids. It worked great in sets.

A: Both of them .) Those I bought online as my first batch. The first batch from Berlin were some records from Paul Kalkbrenner, Nathan Fake, Agoria, Trentemøller etc. I remember how I came back after a night-long run at Watergate (my first Berlin club experience... in 2011?) and went to play them at Óčko bar, hardly catching the beat – Martin behind the bar listening and suffering, but enjoying the atmosphere I brought with me – a party mood.

M: Definitely 😅. I remember that day very well. :))

You reference a lot of techno music, the sort of techno 'classics' actually, and its imprint is I think quite present in your music. Yet, there are much more influences and your sound goes beyond classic genre categorisation ('I Get Lit'). How would you describe your own sound?

A: I’m not sure if our music has an imprint of some techno classics. Honestly we don't give a fuck about how it sounds or how long it is. We don’t stick to any genre, we just experiment with our ideas and sounds and try to really exhaust them and push them to their limits. A sound exploration.

M: I think that Anna and I really have techno in our hearts. At least for me, it's very close to my heart. I've been following it for years, listening to different mixes, but since the beginnings of my creative output, I've never really needed the techno music I was making to sound like other peoples' techno. I don't know why, but I've always been fascinated by stories in music, like, let's say, film music, and I wasn't really listening to any film music at the time, not even classical, more the stuff from Warp Records, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Chris Clark, LFO. Then came Apparat, Amon Tobin, etc.. I could write novels here 🙂

I enjoyed the experiments, then I got really hit by classical music, industrial, ambient, post-punk, guitar stuff in general. Anna and I have it pretty much the same way, don't we, Anna? 🙂 So these years of exploration across musical genres are reflected in our music. In fact, it all crystallised itself into this form. There's no intent, we don't even really think about it in terms of genre. It's more like the music comes from our feelings and experiences. I don't think LOFN will just be labelled ‘ambient’, ‘industrial’, ‘techno’ in the future.

However, I guess it still comes down to the fact that techno is a fascinating musical style, like a pretty big sandbox you can play in – I'd rather compare it to a huge kitchen where you have a lot of ingredients to choose from. It's up to you how you combine them and what you cook from them. In this way, techno, I guess I'd call it post-techno, comes across as the most universal music genre.

A: There are definitely a lot of the same things we like in music but we also differ in some ways. Despite being an electronic girl from my teen age, I’ve never been a 100% party girl and I'm really not into some hard techno things or the ‘czechtek’ thing (sorry guys :)) ). Even though I grew up in the 80s and it absolutely had an impact on how I perceive music. I really love the 80s and the old pop thing.

I have a classical music education, I have been singing since my childhood and I almost studied opera in high school (at that time there was no other option). In the 90s, Björk's Debut was a big game changer for me. In the years around 2010 I consumed music more than food :)) Apparat, Telefon tel Aviv, Extrawelt, Piano Magic, The Knife, Moloko...it was a pure electronic boom.

Sometimes I think that with Martin we are like the left and the right hemisphere of a brain. One complements the other.

Congratulations on the Veyl release, it's very nice to see local artists getting recognition on such a label. Its title is Post-Apo Romance. Do you romanticise the post-apocalyptic future? 😈

A: Maybe 😀 We wanted to shoot a music video for the title track – I had an idea of an animation in a post-apo scenery in macro, where a broken doll would wake up, realizing that she and a wolf are the only living creatures in that world. So yes, probably yes.)

The idea behind the album is: What Post-Apo Romance means for us... Romance, as it is perceived nowadays, is not necessarilly a relationship of two people, two living beings of different sex polarity. To feel LOVE is also accessible to boneless creatures, to a dream, to a virtual reality or throughout the lucid. Virtual became the new real. LOVE between a human and a dream or AI is nevertheless real, urgent and burning as the common form of romantic love. Condition to love has moved from preservation of a genus to LOVE itself.

M: Haha, I think this is going to be a big topic. :))

A: Wicked Game is primarily a track Martin composed a few years ago and I fell in love with it. We both have a very close relationship with the song. We used our very personal field recordings in it to express something intimate, something we are maybe not able to say in real life. Maybe, I don't know 😀

M: I did this cover a few years ago as a declaration of love for one girl. Anna and I love this piece and the lyrics are brilliant. There's hope and therinde's pain. So it served as a template for finishing this song. And even this version didn't do without a mission. Again, feelings and love played a part.

That's sort of the secret of LOFN, as the Norse goddess of wrong or forbidden love. Anna and I often laugh about it. 🙂

I saw you play live recently at this Shitlabel night at Fuchs2. How was it for you and how did it feel to perform in such a context? I found it a bit weird that you as a live act were opening the night for this bunch of techno DJs.

A: Yes, it was honestly not a comfortable setting for us. I like when the event is built as a performance/party concept, like Atonal or Lunchmeat festival. Here it didn’t work because we had no visuals, there was no concept behind at all. In the end I thought of it as a money making model of an event. Organisers weren’t letting people in so they were still waiting outside in the queue for many hours after we were already finished. We played for an almost empty space, trying not to go blue, because the organiser asked us to start to perform, so we had to. For me there were some sweet spots, when I saw anyone enjoying our music and for that I was happy. I always try to see the brighter side :)

M: Yeah, well, that wasn't exactly the best gig. We may have underestimated it from our side, we could have expected it. But somehow we didn't get it. The fact that we were about to start playing and they hadn't even started letting people in yet. An event that's set up for that kind of party mode – of course people are going to the bar first, to send in a few shots and beers and they want to talk. They certainly don’t run to listen to the set and enjoy the deeper music. It was pretty annoying. Not to mention that a totally drunk dude fell into my keyboard stand and knocked my stuff over, luckily nothing happened. But I kind of enjoyed it in the end.

​​I think it was the type of promoter who has good deals with some foreign DJs, brings them to a more peripheral scene, promotes it as 'Berghain in Prague' and builds the rest of the line-up just to tick the boxes – a local live act, some female DJs – and his work is done.

A: Exactly

Combining more challenging music with party music, while making a good fit with the venue, is a task worth taking, just not every promoter knows how to do it. Lunchmeat festival is definitely one of the good ones in this sense. Who here do you think is doing a good job? Which are your favourite events around?

M: I agree. Lunchmeat is definitely one of them. Another one is definitely the Alternativa festival. The guys from Jednota have got it covered, too. Stimul festival. Letmo Productions do great events. I really liked Polygon. It reminded me a lot of my childhood, when as a minor I was running off to Brno for Orion Hall events, they always had great techno. And this smells a bit like self promotion, but at Proces we've always tried to combine concert music with party music. 🙂 I'm sure there are more…

How was it for you to prepare a DJ mix together? How did you approach it?

A: I was really looking forward to doing it together. I always really loved mixtapes and podcasts, both doing them and the format itself, although it's very time consuming. I find this process very creative. I had an idea to do this LOFN mixtape as a bit more dancier/darkwave one, so that LOFN shows a different face. ‘If LOFN is dancing, how would it sound?’

M: It was a bit of a challenge because we used two separate Abletons synchronised through a link to record. We've only played like this once before and there was a latency problem, but in the end everything went smoothly. There was plenty of time to test it and Anna had a concept in her mind already, so it was easy and fun.

What are you currently working on as LOFN? What are your plans for the upcoming months as we are slowly being swooped into another lockdown? It seems like we won't be able to meet, listen to music together or perform in front of people for a while again.

A: Our plan is to work on the second album during the winter and try not to go mad if the lockdown happens again .) This third winter I feel it’s getting harder, even for the strong people who didn’t give up in the last two years. I also personally feel a deeper deprivation from lockdown and restrictions, but I want to say that we should keep on going, not give up and be creative. We should be alive, as social as possible, caring about ourselves and others. I'm a dreamer and I believe that nothing lasts forever, and this whole thing will end one day too.

M: For the moment we were just working on this mix for you. Otherwise we thought we'd take a little break. 🙂 We spent a year talking to the label about the release and towards the end it became pretty intense. On top of that, we were approached by Veyl to see if we had any tracks we wanted to release on their upcoming compilation. So we were finishing up two more tracks, preparing for the Jednota and Fuchs 2 gigs and generally thinking about the gig setup. Now we're going to enjoy the Christmas peace and from the new year onwards we're going to start working on a new record, which I'm really looking forward to.

* The conversation took place via facebook messenger between 13:33 on Wednesday, December 1st, and 15:45 on Sunday, December 5th, 2021.