According to Indian myth, if your kitchenware bangs against each other and makes a sound, it’s a sign that there’s gonna be a quarrel in the house.

On the other hand have you ever been intrigued by the sound of a mixer – grinder, the sound of a microwave oven heating your food or for that matter the automatic coffee maker and ever wondered if such sounds can make a part of a song or can be a whole song? 

Meet Noisy Pots, a band based out of Prague, Czech Republic, once originally three members, who came into the music scene in 2014 with their so called “DIY kitchen electro” style of music. They used an acoustic sound of pots, buckets, cans and other stuff from the kitchen and garage combined with live synths, samples, vibraphone and vocals, which when put together deliver a unique and unusual sonic timbre.

Noisy Pots now consists of two members namely Jakub Tengler who plays drums and percussion made out of different kinds of household instruments and Michal Supak who plays synthesiser and handles techno and electronic beats. If you pick any track from their album, it feels they got the vibe of how ‘Pushpa’ (from the film ‘Pushpa - The Rise Part 01’) pushed the barriers up by all that raw cultural earthy sounds. Infact if you were to watch one of their videos ‘Rebeko’, you will find how they fuse the whirring sound of a washing machine motor, the beating of the inner washing machine tub, to how striking a wash basin, or even starting a mixer – grinder, can produce ethereal sounds.

Noisy Pots the name itself spells the energy of the earthy sound from different household kitchenware. When you hear it, you realise you actually like the feeling of the sound and that these very sounds on the pans are electrifying. The duo was in Mumbai at the All About Music conference in September where they performed a 20 minute set of their brand of music.

Kiran Holkar met up with the duo who also performed in Pune to know more about their music.

Kiran Holkar: Is this your first visit to India?

Jakub Tengler: Yes, this is our first visit to India, and it is a big adventure for us. We like this country, it's way different from Europe. We want to travel here much more, to different villages and cities and especially mountains. We would love to come back and do more shows if we get a chance.

KH: Have you heard Indian music?

JT: Speaking of Indian music, we love the traditional and more folk music, we are searching for new inspiration and tips on what to listen to. We came across a little bit about how Indian rhythmic patterns and ragas work and got to know that this is a really deep topic to talk on and wanna explore more. We would definitely like to learn more about percussion artists from India who are inspired by what we were back then.

KH: How did the performance in India happen?

JT: Five years ago we played in Hamburg and it was a showcase called 'Reprabran'. There we met people from All About Music. They got in contact with our manager Michaela Zelkova and planned on having us for the All About Music conference. But then the pandemic hit us all and everything was postponed. It was scheduled to happen in 2020, but got rescheduled again because of travelling restrictions and as things got more complicated it got cancelled. That was a phase that happened, but we are happy that it happened now in 2022. This is a good time to tour as people want to attain more live events than virtual events.

KH: How did the concept of creating music from kitchenware or household things come to you?

JT: 10 years back I was looking for new sounds and while I was in New York I saw these street drum players using buckets as drums, so I thought to work on these sounds in a solo project, I wanted to add more sounds, so I experimented with pans and pots in my house and it made out to be a really good melody. I loved the way it was coming to me, it was like I hit a jackpot of sounds. Then I asked a friend of mine Emil Machain to collaborate with me and we started playing as a duo. We got an invitation to play at the biggest festival in the Czech Republic. It was a huge opportunity for us and then we wanted to sound good as this was the biggest concert of our life so we decided to work with synthesizer, and this is where Michal Supak came on board. So the band was formed in 2011 by Emil and myself, with Šupák joining us in 2013. This all happened when we were learning in music school. We were around 15 years then jamming on drums and bass making music.

KH: So now it’s just you and Mikal.

JT: Yes, it’s just the two of us now. My friend Emil was from another part of the country, from Brno which is in the south region of the Czech Republic. We were in Prague. So he used to also play in a different band too and then he got married, had a kid and then family life to look after so yeah… so he decided to leave the band and now it’s just Mikal and myself.

KH: Do you play any other musical instruments?

JT: I also play the clarinet and a bit of saxophone and piano too. MS: We are classically trained musicians, so we also sometimes play in an orchestra or classical or jazz music. We play different instruments, but I also play piano, synthesizers, church organs, bass and drums. We play kitchenware which we use as drums or melodies with sticks because that’s the requirement of this project, but other than that we play djembe and congo like Latin music rhythms.

KH: Where did the name Noisy Pots come from?  

MS: We don’t know. We tried to somehow reflect what we do in the name, we are not that good at naming, we are not that happy with what we call ourselves, but that’s what we are, it is simple and sweet to the ears, it is catchy. But in Europe, it's not so cool to have such a catchy name. We hope it is good for the Indian market. We use anything to make noise. (laughs)

KH: What genre do Noisy Pots drop into?

JT: It is more likely an alternative kind of house - techno-ish little bit flavoured with EDM, but anyways we play it all live, sometimes we use backing tracks because we are only two people with 4 limbs, it could have been great if we had 5 hands.

KH: Coming from a classical background, how did you choose this as your band's genre mixture? JT: We like technology, we got into Ableton live and always wanted to learn new stuff and explore more. But because we were learning both classical and jazz music we wanted to discover all the possibilities, somehow used our classical skills in different fields which came out with a fresh sound palette of electronic music which gave a different shade to it.

KH: We would like to know about the published songs?

JT: We have one album “Home Alone” (2015) and also some singles like ‘Runner’, ‘Gastronomy’ and ‘Flowers’. Last year we published singles and shot music videos, we collaborated on the song ‘Khan’ with a female rapper Tanita, whose feisty vocals are influenced by Grime and her Bulgarian roots. We are almost done with our new material so next year we will probably release an EP or a whole new album. This year we are looking forward to coming up with one single.

KH: What would you say about India?

JT: We love it here. We visited some temples, it has a different groove and trance to these places because of all the bells and sounds and chants and prayers. MS: We recorded some samples and we have 2 ideas to work on here. We came to know about a percussion instrument named ghatam. We tried to play dholak, I played it for about 20 minutes, so I’m thinking of buying some instruments and taking them with us. I also have heard of the tabla, but haven’t got it yet. We already met you (laughs) and we also met a singer Goldie Sohel and a guy named Gagan who plays dholak so we are collaborating with him recording here in India. In electronic music we just need small samples, so we will record those in here and will produce it as an online collaboration in Czech to finish the song as we are heading back home after the show in Pune.

KH: What memories are you going to take back from India?

JT: We like the way people are here, love the Indian railways, we also love the Indian food we will take home some spices and try to cook back home by watching Indian recipes YouTube channel. We also cook Indian food back in Czech, but the taste is totally different considering maybe it’s what is available there. So the taste is very different from what we make and so we love it.

Interviewed by Kiran Holkar