September 26, 2019
8PM in the Gallery

Zagami Jericho is one of the most promising talents of the Czech Republic at the tender age of 20. Her music is described as retro-futuristic with synth-wave, ambient, and drum and bass influences.

Zagami Jericho on Czeching 2017: HERE

Official video: HERE

Zagami Jericho emerged from the depths of internet in 2016 to manifest her cyber mind on her seven-piece EP City Is My Church. Her retro-futuristic universe might be highly personal on one hand, on the other creepingly familiar to everyone who came of age with their eyes fixed on a screen – and at the same time disturbingly beautiful. Recorded at the home studio of a Prague teenager, the EP caused a stir on the Czech music scene. She’s been hailed as the hope of the scene and dubbed “Czech Grimes”. But she didn’t bow under the pressure and went on to release even more brilliant full length album Toxikomania. “My kingdom would fall if you would rule it for me,” she sings declares decidedly on I said no (to myself).

Zagami belongs to the generation that to whom creating a stray of virtual identities is a means to form identity of one’s own. In the commentary to City Is My Church, she says she speaks with other entities in the search of who she really is. The premise of the album is that beautiful things are violent on the inside. The 21st century Western culture is very much obsessed with the looks of everything – from our bodies to our meals – and desperate to shun everything that doesn’t look appealing. But the harder we try to unsee them the uglier things get.

- Words by Nathan Lova, published 24.7.2018 on VISIONS OF ZHIVA (Full article here)

Organized in collaboration with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Washington, D.C. and VHLF.