On the outskirts of Bratislava, in the pulsating shadows of a refinery’s burning chimneys, on the plot of a family house, there stood a small shack. Initially, it housed trials in domestic mushroom growing. Later, after a makeshift acoustic touch-up - lining the walls with old cardboard egg cartons - it became a shelter for music. Sensitive, evocative, nostalgic, lo-fi music by a man named Cadillac Face.

Today we would probably use the term ‘safe space’, but back then it was (in Cadillac's words) kutica, a cubbyhole. He hid there from a world that ached. Here, Cadillac secretly smoked, sang, and composed. And tried not to go crazy from anxiety. He wrote music unlike anything during his time.

Here, he struggled. With sound (unable to adjust it to his liking), with instruments (which he couldn't bring himself to play), with the world (with which, understandably, he was at odds).

Cadillac Face was a man who didn't belong here.

He wrote and sang in English (in a post-socialist and early-capitalist Slovakia, when command of English was no matter of course); he also wrote in Slovak (blogs and diaries, which, due to a stream-of-consciousness and surrealist style, were as incomprehensible as they were immersive and intimate); gave advice to teenagers (to their quasi-banal questions on talking forums [about relationships, life and adolescence], where they were often met with ridicule and mockery); he composed electronic and noise music (at a time when no one had a clue what the abbreviation DAW meant).

When I was asked by Weltschmerzen to put together Cadillac's compilation album, I decided not to compete with/replicate Noizy Days - a compilation of Cadillac's contributions to the project Noize Konspiracy. Underground compilations circulated through a local proto-social network. Borderline music without rules - open but often inaccessible. There, Cadillac contributed mostly with experimental-electronic compositions.

Noizy Days was compiled by Ďuro Ďurček, one of the initiators of Noize Konspiracy. Both Ďuro and Cadillac have been dead for years.

Songs For The Trees is my selection from Cadillac's songwriting. The most intimate of his intimate recordings. Cadillac at his most fragile, brittle, and quiet. The most romantic, the most tormented, the most painful and direct of his songs I know.

To create the cover, I put myself in my shoes as I was when we knew each other, when he inspired me and opened my cultural horizons, when I drew and painted a lot on the walls of abandoned houses and he liked it. As if I were to draw it then, for him...

Cadillac became an anthropomorphic grotesque tree. Neither broadleaf nor conifer. Or perhaps it's a candle slowly incinerating – bored, sad, playing the guitar. A tragicomedy. Sometimes it kindles what it doesn't mean to, and it can't put itself out. Or can it?

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Na periférii Bratislavy, v pulzujúcich tieňoch z horiacich komínov rafinérie, na pozemku rodinného domu, stál malý domček. Pôvodne slúžil na experimenty s domácim pestovaním šampiňónov. Neskôr, po provizórnej akustickej úprave - oblepením stien kartónovými obalmi na vajíčka - sa stal skrýšou pre hudbu. Citlivú, clivú, zašumenú hudbu človeka menom Cadillac Face.

Dnes by sme asi použili slovo “safespace”, vtedy to však bola (Kedilekovými slovami) “kutica”. Skrýval sa tu pred svetom, ktorý bolel. Kedilek tu tajne fajčil, spieval, komponoval. A snažil sa nezblázniť z úzkostí. Skladal hudbu, ktorá sa vymyká všetkému dobovému.

Trápil sa tu. So zvukom (ktorý nevedel vykrútiť podľa svojich predstáv), s nástrojmi (na ktoré sa nevedel prinútiť hrať), so svetom (s ktorým si, pochopiteľne, nerozumel).

Cadillac Face bol človekom, ktorý sem nepatril.

Písal a spieval v angličtine (v post-socialistickom a rano-kapitalistickom Slovensku, kedy vedieť po anglicky nebola samozrejmosť); písal aj po slovensky (blogy a denníky, ktoré boli vďaka automatizovanému a surreálnemu spôsobu písania rovnako nezrozumiteľné ako imerzívne a intímne); odpovedal teenagerom (na ich kvázi-banálne otázky v poradniach [o vzťahoch, živote a dospievaní], kde sa často stretávali s výsmechom a zosmiešňovaním); skladal elektronickú a noise-ovú hudbu (v dobe kedy sme nevedeli, čo asi tak môže znamenať skratka DAW).

Keď som dostal ponuku pre Weltschmerzen pripraviť Kedilekov kompilačný album, rozhodol som sa nekonkurovať/nezdvojovať Noizy Days - to bola kompilácia z Kedilekových príspevkov na Noize Konspiracy. Podzemné kompilácie, šíriace sa cez lokálnu proto-sociálnu sieť. Hraničná hudba bez pravidiel - otvorená, ale neprístupná. Kedilek tam prisipeval skladbami prevažne experimentálne-elektronickými.

Noizy Days pripravil Ďuro Ďurček, jeden z iniciátorov projektu Noize Konspiracy. Obaja, Ďuro aj Kedilek, sú už roky po smrti.

Songs For The Trees je mojim výberom z Kedilekovej pesničkárskej tvorby. Najkomornejšej z jeho komorných nahrávok. Z jeho najzašumenejšej, najintímnejšej, najtichšej polohy. Najromantickejšie, najutrápenejšie, najbolestivejšie, najpriamejšie piesne, ktoré od neho poznám.

Kvôli obalu som sa prevtelil do svojho ja z dôb, keď sme sa poznali, keď ma inšpiroval a roztváral kultúrne obzory, keď som si veľa kreslil a maľoval po stenách opustených domov a jemu sa to páčilo. Ako keby som mu to mal nakresliť vtedy…

Z Kedileka sa stal antropomorfný groteskný strom. Ani listnáč, ani ihličnan. Alebo je to sviečka, ktorá sa sama spaľuje. Kým sa nudí, smúti, hrá na gitaru. Tragikomédia. Občas zapáli, aj čo nechce a sama sa nevie zahasiť. Alebo vie?