"Kamila Csenge: Not Surrender, Just Decision"

Kamila Csenge’s “Against the Wall” features an instance where there is an absence of sound, yet the silence feels as if it had greater weight than sound itself; It's as if the tension and compression of static moved up against a solid physical item (like concrete) and the inability to release the breath that has been held too long in a closed environment, so there has not been any movement in it (the air). Then, however, her guitar speaks.

Csenge graduated from the Berklee College of Music summa cum laude with the John LaPorta Award after completing her formal training at Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory, leading to both the technicality of her playing ability and also her general style of creation; Csenge’s compositions are based on creating tension and on the way things go up rather than being soothing.

In venues ranging from basements in New York to stages in Berlin to concert halls in Prague, she has brought that language of resistance to spaces that were not always welcoming. The ShapeShifter Lab, the Ryles Jazz Club, the Prague Congress Center—each stop on the tour, another point of friction, another wall to be pushed against.

“Against the Wall” embodies that exact pressure. Odd time signatures create the sensation of unstable ground, harmonies sparkle and break apart, guitars overlap one another as if they are in conflict with each other and unable to find any resolution. On the second guitar, Yamirah Gercke mirrors and challenges, while Kateřina Vacková and Ivo Hermanovský lay down the pulse in a stubbornly alive way. The rhythm has the smell of ash and the taste of beer-stained neon memory, and leaves behind a kind of human residue that can't be cleaned up easily.

This is not music of surrender. It is music of decision.

The track serves as a prelude to Behind the Universe (May 22, Fat Banshee Records), where Csenge takes the concept further — beyond fear, beyond boundaries, beyond what can be seen with the naked eye. But in “Against the Wall,” the idea is much more straightforward.

You can feel the resistance.

And yet, you keep pushing through.