This album is put together for the purpose of documenting and promoting the alternative jazz scene in Budapest, which is arguably the most creative, impassioned and distinctive niche in the musical life of the Hungarian capital. The tracks included in the collection, five of which were remastered for this release, were originally published between 2013 and 2022, most of them without the support of a label. Even though the album is framed as “jazz”, focusing on the common musical background of most of the artists represented here, it should be of interest also to the aficionados of prog, psychedelia, ethnic fusion, and contemporary experimental music; the works included herein abolish the boundaries between these styles and often display a means of expression that is harsher, darker or weirder than customary jazz. Perhaps the peculiarity of the Hungarian alternative jazz scene is owed to a rich local history of jazz, both conventional and experimental, joint by a confrontational, deconstructivist attitude rooted in the Hungarian avant-rock and post-punk of the 1980s, and a curiosity towards non-Western musical elements that go all the way back to Béla Bartók and to the cosmopolitan characteristic of the country’s traditional music which is made up of Magyar, Jewish and Roma ingredients; or perhaps it doesn’t have much to do with all these and more with the idiosyncratic character and musical genius of the individual musicians. The listener should keep in mind that what is presented here is only a fragment of what is going on in the underground jazz world of Budapest: many important performers had to be excluded from the collection in order to delineate the scope, including most of the free improvisation formations and the older generation of musicians who are still active in the scene.

There will be an album release party on 7 October 2023 in Gólya, Budapest, featuring Gentry Sultan, Sauropoda, Inverted Spectrum Records DJ Set, and an improvisational quartet curated specifically for the event, composed of Péter Ajtai (bass), János Bujdosó (guitar), Ádám Czitrom (guitar), and Attila Gyárfás (drums).

The background story of the album and interviews with six of the participating bands can be found in It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine:
psychedelicbabymag.com/2024/01/the-underground-jazz-scene-in-hungary.html