Who are SZÉKI KURVA? Hungary's best exiled band.. period! Their own label: Fekete Galamb Zene (FGZ), their "proper distributed" label: Iris Light, their pirate radio station: Kicsi Róka Rádió, their motto: Széki Kurva- The Real Thing. This interview is the longest we've ever done with anybody, so get ready to sit back and enjoy. You have to read their manifesto as well, check it on http://www.szeki-kurva.demon.co.uk. No truer words have been said. But, here you go:.

Conducted by John Entox with main man MC Ludas Matyi via E-mail.

J: OK, so, explain a bit of how you started in Budapest "back in the day". None of you are actually pure Hungarian apparently..??

M: There are two stories as to how we got started back in the day in Budapest. The first one goes that two of us used to run stalls at Esceri flea market quite near each other. Both of us had ghetto blasters, one of which was playing folk music from Szék region in Transylvania, the other of which was playing Ice Cube. I think the track was We Had To Tear This Motherfucker Up (not the Széki folk music, the Ice Cube tape. Széki region songs have titles like "Get Up, Whore!" and "Uncle Vendel's Got No Nose). Anyway, if you stood between these two ghetto blasters, you had a whole new sound! Sort of bouncy orchestral hip hop. So, we started to make tunes out of tape loops run together.
The second story, which is equally true and non-true, is that two of us were driving along one moonlit night to a town called Szekesfehervar, and listening to a rave compilation tape, something like DJs Take Control with Carl Cox and Altern-8 on it. And we were both remarking how funny it was that the chords they used on those ravey tracks were so much like the Hungarian folk music we knew... Anyway, pick what you like. I think the moonlit night one is a bit too gothic. Apparently none of us are pure Hungarian actually, at least not now! When we started we had accumulated one Hungarian, two English part-gypsies, one Serb, and one Italian, and some other suspects. We're now two English part-gypsies, some London geezer, a girl from Gujurat and a girl from the Yemen. And some other suspects. The Serb got deported and the Hungarian is missing and presumed dead. Bear in mind, John, that Szki Kurva has never been a proper band, but a gang with musical instruments. When we used to play gigs it was always like the audience getting up on stage to muck about. We've never published our real names or our photographs. In fact we don't actually exist, except in your imagination!

J: Your move to London seems shrouded in mystery.. are you still on the run from various Hungarian authorities?

M: The move to London had to be done because of pressure. Basically headz in Hungary weren't ready for what we were doing; and there were other...criminal-political factors. Also I couldn't stay for any particular length of time in Hungary at any one time, so I brought my work back to London. This was OK 'cause London is THE place to gather like-minded people round yourself to be involved in this band thing. No, we're not on the run from any Hungarian authorities because they never got a good enough handle on us (see the no names, no photos bit above). Although the last time we were out there, there was a hairy moment when I was walking through the city centre and I bought a copy of the Budapest Sun, turned to the music section and... there's only a photo of nearly everyone in the band (from a gig), and a review, and the bit that's next to my photo says something like "MC Ludas Matyi is rumoured to have Essex gangland connections". Boy did I get para. I met the journalist responsible a few days later and we had words, I can tell you.

J: How many Hungarians have you met while in London? Have you played your music to them? Do they say "Oh no! YOU'RE Szeki Kurva!" and run away, or do they say "Why aren't you signed to a major label? This stuff could sell!" ??

M: Loads. Half my friends are expatriate Hungarians or Yugoslavs. There's two disparate communities of Hungarians over here- the first lot are the "56ers" who came over as refugees in 1956. So they're all mums and dads. The second lot are all Hungarian au pair girls over here on 6-month permits, or refugees from the Yugoslavian wars. Of the second lot, I reckon half of them have probably got tapes of our stuff by now. They never run away. Well, hardly ever. They giggle and say things like "Ludas Matyi, when are you going to get married?"

J: Do you perform naughty tricks for the au pair girls?

M: Are you taking the piss, chavi?

J: Do you still go back to visit the Esceri market in Budapest? You told us before that all of you DJ'd recently in Buda.. how did it go, are people really into your stuff now? How do you manage to get back into Hungary?

M: I almost never go back to Esceri market. As for the DJing, it was OK. Not to boast too much, but we showed them how it was done. Before we came back with our full lineup, no-one knew how to DJ jungle or mix, and no-one knew the Székimuffin style was possible. Now they do. We do have a cult following now in Hungary, although how big it really is I don't know. At this point, I've got to big up the people in Hungary who've always supported us and made that possible- all crew at Tilos Radio, DJs and Tilos Party crew; Radio Szeged; Budapest World Service; Civil Radio; all the junglist posse; all the Folk bands who've spread the word; and all dem Serb gangstas up in Szentendre. Cheers! As for how we manage to get back into Hungary- simple: no-one knows our real names or faces, we can all pretend to be each other, there's so many people in the outfit it makes the Wu-Tang Clan look organised, and we don't exist. Also, we always go back with a new car. And finally, we go to Angel's stage costumiers of Shaftesbury Avenue and get disguises. (Actually, we were so off our faces on Powerful the last time, we didn't even notice the border!)

J: So will there be a collaboration between Szeki & the Wu? Who would you most like to collaborate with on a song (or songs)?

M: You must be joking. The Wu-Tang Clan are the biggest shower of spoonfed, major-label-coddled, racist Nation of Islam tossers that ever walked the earth. They can't even wipe their own arses without a PR person to show them where to put the paper. And their albums are, frankly, overrated. There's a fucking pizza delivery boy up the road from us whose rhymes and beats piss all over them from a great height, youknowwhatimean? If any Wu twat even tried to bite one of our beats, he'd be met at the fucking airport.

J: Who would you most like to collaborate with on a song (or songs)?

M: DJ Assassin says he wants to do stuff with KRS-1 'cause we've sampled him so much. Although he's a bit of a loony these days, innee? Matt Farkasember wants to work with Lemmy and Wurzel out of Motorhead.But for me there's only ever been one person I'd drop everything to collaborate with on a song, and that's Taja Sevelle. I've been trying to better her song Take Me For A Ride for ages! even thought about covering it, but it wouldn't work..

J: Are you celebrities in the Hungarian press?

M: Hungary's Most Wanted! ... I dunno about the press. None of that lot know what to make of us. The music magazines are OK sometimes. Radio is different, we're definitely celebs there. I practically lived in radio stations the last time we were there. Matt, our guitarist, started plastering the walls at Tilos Radio, we were there so long!

J: What's been the dumbest thing you've read in the music press recently?

M: Everything between the front and back covers, generally! The UK music press is the biggest pile of fucking CACK ever put to print. All of it, without exception. In fact, when you consider that there are angling magazines that have a bigger circulation than mags like the Malady Maker, why does the UK music press have such a big (perceived) influence? After the major labels and softcore pussyass radio stations, the UK music press is the biggest obstacle to music getting ahead there is. My favourite bit about them is the way they ignore major movements like Jungle for years 'cause it's too proletariat and dangerous for them, and then at the last minute turn around and say they bigged it up all along. THEY'RE LYING, KIDS! Music journalists are all middle class sociology students who only ever meet people like us- junglists, hip hop headz, the people in my band- in the queue at the kebab shop after the pub, and then we stab them. Which is probably why they don't write about us! (Actually, a couple of weeks ago, Melody Maker wanted to run an article (with a photo!) about us, but they kept fucking it up and losing the copy, artwork, forgetting stuff... I lost my temper after a bit and rang them up and told them to spike it all and never write about us again. They're really not worth it.)

J: Do you buy into the whole "Riot Sounds Produce Riots" thing? What's you're view on Mr. Alec & his Rioters?

M: Riot sounds do not produce riots. Rioters produce riots. The last one I was in, it was five people with scaffolding poles. I dunno... does ATR really believe that their gigs/music are gonna make people suddenly go "Of course! they want us to Smash the State!" and run into the streets and start turning cars over? (I've got a lot to get off my chest with this one!)
1. In the band, we debate their slogan a lot, so one night we decided, as a bit of social experimentation, to go to Harder Faster Louder (A Digital Hardcore playing club) and try to get it to kick off on the dancefloor. So the DJ drops "Deutschland has gotta die" and we're all steaming round the floor flying into people, trying to start a riot. But you know what? Everyone thought we were slamdancing. All I succeeded in doing was breaking the promoter's air horn.
2. If, like Public Enemy, your music can make you go home and THINK, then act positively, that's a much more powerful thing. The Message must be beamed into people's heads and have a built in time-delay, so that, the next day...POW!
3. Have you noticed that at gigs, it's when bands suddenly STOP playing, the riot starts? i.e. PIL, early JAMC, even Oasis the other week. Like it says in our manifesto, brother, Riots are an audience reaction to bad life theatre.
4. The KLF tried to engineer a riot in the Barbican a couple of months back by bringing in the music press, an audience, and a choir of striking dockers. Then Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty whizzed round in wheelchairs for 23 minutes while everyone shouted "Fuck The Millenium!" Apparently they wanted just one docker to throw a punch. Nothing happened.
5. With regard to all this "Riot Beats" stuff... sometime in the future, we might try to start to work on a tune, call it "It Goes Off" or "Rumble" or something, and then get it played every time there's crowd violence, i.e at a match; the idea being that after a short while, the music gets subliminally associated in the population's mind with violence, rioting. Then, you could conceivably take a ghetto blaster into a crowd or a theatre, a cinema, crank it up and watch people start to kick off. What if you could release a pheremone that triggers violence at the same time? (In the Fifties, Rock Around The Clock was banned in the UK because they thought it was inciting rockers to slash the cinema seats, etc. And that's all I have to say on the matter)
(on ATR): We've all been right into them from way back, right from "Midi Junkies" etc. when their label was trying to sell them as the next 2 Unlimited. Alec Empire himself is a musical genius. Have you heard Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5? As for them as people/politically- In interviews, so much of what they say is bang on, but they sometimes come across as being a bit doctrinaire Communist. All I'd like to say to that is- mate, there are people in Széki Kurva, i.e. me, who've actually lived under communism, and it ain't the answer. There are also people in Széki Kurva who've lived with Baader Meinhof and that whole Berlin radical scene, and that didn't do a hell of a lot of good either. All Baader Meinhof succeeded in doing was allowing the German police to introduce a national police computer, tougher ID controls... and BMW sold more cars because they were associated with the terrorists (it's what they used to nick, so much so that BMW became slang for "Baader Meinhof Wagen". Another example of the Society of the Spectacle turning rebellion into mass consumption. Here endeth the Situationism Lecture) Also; I've noticed that Alec wears leather trousers. Alec! Listen up bwoy! Leather trousers are for people like Michael Hutchence, and look what happened to him! And also also- why does he always get photographed from below, standing there with his arms folded? BTW- If they're so Communist, how come they're signed to Capitol ('cos Grand Royal now =Capitol) in the States? Don't they care? They should be using the label, not the other way round.

J: What do your live shows usually consist of? What should people prepare themselves for?M

M: They can prepare themselves to sit home and watch the TV 'cause we ain't doing live gigs any more. We did our last one on New Year's Eve in London, and then burnt our DAT backing tape on the dancefloor. From now on, it's radio, TV show, MTV video. At the moment we're filming the video to Ramraid. (which is a long process 'cause we're going out and trying to get the cops to chase us in their cars. They're never around when you need them!) The reasons we stopped are:
1.) Live gigs are bollocks, you might as well DJ a sound system.
2.) In Hungary, we all came close to killing one another. Four prima donnas touring, living in the same flats and gigging is a dangerous thing. You know, these people are my friends, and it's not worth falling out over. I've already had to throw our old singer out 'cause she'd forgotten our principle of no selling out. And getting a new singer in was a painful business because we insist that people in the band are friends or family. Luckily we've got that sorted.

J: What's been your worst live show?

M: I think we played about thirty times in our live career and they were all equally bad. Just complete chaos, clowning about, under-rehearsal, bad drugs and no professionalism. So, they were brilliant really! If you mean worst for us, I'm very self-critical, especially about live gig sound. It never comes up to scratch really, and our sound is extremely difficult to get right live. If you mean worst for the audience... there was one famous one where we had a dead baby chick fight. They were finding them for days afterwards, trodden into the carpet. And there was one where we had a Greek plate-smashing competition, into the audience, and then one of our security blokes threw a twelve-foot inflatable shark into the dancefloor and we all started kicking it about. Unfortunately a lot of the audience were on E and they couldn't really handle it. Thinking back, most of our gigs were pretty much like that. We used to show guns to the sound people to get them to behave, stuff like that. "Oh, look, my pistol has accidentally dropped out of my kit bag."

J: You must tell us about the "biting the head off of a chicken" rumour we've heard.

M: Apparently there was an outside broadcast by Duna TV or Magyar TV at some party and I got a chicken (live or dead) and bit its head off to steal the scene from whichever muppet they were interviewing. Which is suprisingly easy to do- you should try it some time John. Anyway, it's not true. And even if it was, I'd deny it.

J: Are you going to keep the releases on your FGZ label strictly for Szeki stuff?

M: Yep, strickly. FGZ looks after the interests of Szeki Kurva and only Szeki Kurva.

J: What are some of your upcoming plans for '98?

M: -Get our new singer girl up to speed. She's from Gujurat, so I'll have to handle the Hungarian from now on.
-Finish the video for Ramraid and get it out to TV in Europe and America.
-We've got THREE! releases coming out on CD this year- The Sound Of Dead Goats around now, The Fearless Vampire Killers around May/June, and; "The original music from the motion picture!"- the album Come And See, which is what we're working on now, so it'll be out on tape (FGZ) in February, online on Cerberus Digital Jukebox a little later, and on CD (Iris Light) at the year's end.
-Spread the message, the manifesto, the way we're livin'. Try to inspire people in other bands, you know? Don't sign to a major, sign to a true indie and then license your stuff out instead and make the bastards work for YOU. Write your own contract! Take care of your own business! Follow our example! We've got loads of ideas.
-We also plan to do a Situationist Stunt a month, most of which involve stink bombs, blowing up other bands' vans, or flying inflatable sheep.

J: So how are you the "Real Thing"?

M: 'Cause, even though we don't exist, in our music and the way we live our lives, we are the 4-Realest Muthafuckaz you will ever meet. We will never compromise, conform to anyone's expectations, sell out or bow down. Our music is the story of the way we're living. We will die standing up.

Széki Kurva Are:
MC LUDAS MATYI (Vocals, Guitar, Conducatore)
BEÁTA GÖMÖRI-BURNSKA (Voice)
DJ ASSASSIN (Turntables)
MATT FARKASEMBER IV (Guitar)

and are aided and abetted by:
THE MAN LIKE GRANT (Production and Engineering)
MC HARLEY D (Sound System Mike Chatter)
MIRIAM THE SOUNDGIRL (Live Sound Engineering)
THE LITTLE GOATS SECURITY TEAM (Live Gig Security)