“No sponsors, No thanks to anyone…”
The album counts eight studio tracks “White hot steel”, Laboratory”, “A day”, “Why?”, “Tempest”, Ooo-Aaa, ooo-aaa”, “Storm in the bathroom” and title track “Our past is our present” recorded in 1987 and four live tracks “Headache”, “Freedom”, “It’s easy for you, Hungary” and “Sudden Voices” recorded at Sote University in Budapest in 1991. The music is a mixture of blues and jazz-rock and is experimental with a lot of industrial percussion and trumpet. With industrial percussion I mean the sounds of pneumatic hammers and drill-sounds. The live tracks are longer and even more experimental. They are close to avant-garde and experimental jazz-rock. You can’t compare it to János Varga’s band East or his János Varga Project (earlier reviewed in progVisions). So please listen first to it at your local record shop.
The ambitious project would have been a big multi-media spectacle if it were held in the west. Luckily the studio tracks were found back on a cassette tape; otherwise this music was lost forever. It’s a good album but it will not be everybody’s cup of tea. Together with the live tracks this recording is a historical document of that period in communist Hungary.

Douwe Fledderus