Also this year, a cycle of alternative music concerts will be held in Kokaru Hall

Last year, the concerts organized in the Kokaru Hall of Mežaparka’s Great Stage in the cycle “Ceļabiedri” attracted a lot of interest from fans of alternative music, so it is a pleasure that the North Riga Cultural Association of the municipality has decided to continue this project in 2023 as well.

The opening of this year’s season of the “Cełabiedru” cycle will take place on February 25 in the Kokaru Hall of the Mežaparka Grand Stage with the concert “Moral Investigations”, and this time “the groups “Amoral psihōze” and “DJ Krankenwagen” will go on an avant-garde musical journey”, while “a special analog light show will be provided by “Pushkin Street Lights” artists’ unit.

The group “Amoral psihōze” manifests itself in various experimental genres – “new wave”, jazz intonations, avant-garde moods and other influences are felt in the music.

The core of the group, along with the leader of “Innokentija Marple”, Dambi, is made up of musicians who have played or are still playing in the mentioned “underground” brigade at different times, and the composition of the musicians has not been determined – it varies from four to seven participants. Recently, Raimonds Lagimovs or Dambis, Kaspars Putriņš, Sniedze Prauliņa, Jānis Burmeisters and Jānis Rungis play in the group, sometimes Gunita Puciriusa also joins (when staying in Latvia). “Each “Amoral Psychosis” concert is unique and full of surprises, because often the composition of the participants is completed at the last minute, just like the concert program, which lends itself to improvisation. There are few rules in the band, it’s free music. Very often, compositions are created by making music on the spot, breaking free from the canons,” this is how the organizers of the concert announce this peculiar project.

“DJ Krankenwagen” is also a unique group that “feels special respect for the cultural heritage of Latvia, German industrial music, as well as for the employees of the health system all over the world” – in reality it looks like a compilation of very interesting music, an impressive stage image and an interesting show. Members of the group “DJ Krankenwagen”: Mārtiņš Ennītis (guitar and voice), Linards Kalniņš (piano and voice), Renāte Kalniņa (metal phone, synthesizer and voice), Toms Galinauskis (bass) and Rinalds Maksimovs (drums).

We should also mention “Pushkin street lights” – “an analog light show that warms the atmosphere and fascinates with unrepeatable spontaneous movements of dynamic abstraction”. This association of artists was born from the meeting of a deeper interest in the psychedelic culture of the 60s and 70s and…a randomly found overhead projector. The technologies used in light shows are completely analog – overhead projectors and slide projectors, prisms, mirrors and color filters are used for presentations. “Using a variety of materials (often liquids) an epoch-defining dynamic visual art was created. In its shows, “Pushkin Street Lights” returns to these analog technologies, almost forgotten in the digital age, to create an authentic psychedelic light show. The equipment and techniques used are from the 1950s – 1970s and are exactly the same as those used by famous bands such as The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience” and other light shows.”