GAMe is the latest evidence of Alex Švamberk and company's genius, a musical result that lands squarely on urban 21st-century jazz while also hinting at a genre lately being referred to as Postclassical. GAMe combines the poetic and charged contra-bass work of Harlem-trained George Cremaschi, the Czech classically trained melodic sensibility of Miroslav Posejpal and Švamberk's own decidedly eccentric and artful approach to music.

"Try to go into the wild sea where you have never swam before" is how percussionist and electronic music wizard Alex Švamberk describes his recent forays into the world of composing for Butoh dance. Švamberk's career since the mid-80s has leapt between the wild seas of tape-loop and string-section-driven minimalism, Japanese Butoh dance and Central European industrial electronica. Švamberk's collaborations with jazz maestros (Cremaschi, Emil Viklický) and 20th-century divas (Laurie Amat, Lucie Bílá, Nina Vangeli) further proves Švamberk's penchant for growing new fins for any wild sea he chooses to swim in.

Although a legend in Prague avant-garde music circles, Švamberk is one Czech musician who would have a hard time recalling a Bohemian folksong if you put a gun to his head. "I was born in Prague but then flown off to France," he remarks about the difference between his childhood and that of most other Czechs. While his generation of peers was learning the folk tales and songs of their region, Švamberk's spent his most formative years in Mexico City. A return to Prague during Alex's preteen years spawned his interest in music.

Unlike many artistically inclined European youth of the late '70s, progressive bands like Genesis were far too predictable for Alex's forward-reaching taste. The artists that caught his early attention the likes of Steve Hillage, Gong, Magma and Can — acts that Švamberk describes as 'Space Rock.'

"My way to electronic music was very weird," Švamberk says, affirming his allegiance to an original electronic approach that transcends the obvious knob-spinning exhausted by disco's checkered legacy. Part of Švamberk's unusual approach to music was to register his first group, P.R.S., as a theatrical troupe, in order to avoid the official scrutiny a rock group may have attracted before the Velvet Revolution. Oddly enough, a prepared work that was to be P.R.S.'s masterpiece was upstaged and canceled due to being scheduled for performance Nov. 20, 1989, one of the important days of the revolution.

After 1989 Švamberk widened his stride to include work with the industrial group Suicidal Meditations, a group that also claims Prague rocker Hank J. Manchini of the Nihilists and the late Czech industrial music pioneer Jaroslav Palát as members. This now historic Czech industrial band still operates as "S/M" with Švamberk and Silvia Hromádková at the helm. In the early '90s Švamberk also formed Tonton Macoutes to explore minimalism, theater and a quieter side of his musical vision. Švamberk met Japanese Butoh master Min Tanaka. Tanaka, in Prague to collaborate with John Cale in an opening performance for the Archa Theater, took an interest in Švamberk, inviting him to Japan. There, Švamberk found both challenges and common ground with Butoh's atomic animism fulfilled a desire to break from the European auteur approach he had taken with Tonton Macoutes, and "to do something unpredictable."