18
The release marked an important personal and artistic debut in Budapest’s experimental music scene. Its material was shaped by a period of emotional suspension, self-reflection and transformation, using composition as a way of working through a charged personal moment. The music brings together several elements that later became characteristic in Bartha’s work: extreme contrasts of time and density, complex rhythmic structures placed against lush drones, sentimental melodic fragments confronted with noise, and the combination of found sounds, field recordings and purely electronic soundscapes.
The visual life of 18 developed in two distinct directions. For the album preview, photographer and filmmaker Máté Bartha created a video from footage recorded through train and metro windows in New York, Mumbai and Budapest. These moving urban images formed a continuous visual fabric, reflecting the music’s sense of inner movement, crisis and searching.
The live audiovisual version of 18 transformed the EP into an immersive spatial experience. Bartha performed live renditions of his electronic compositions while the lighting system, designed and operated by Mátyás Csiszár, was connected to the musical setup through OSC. Specific sonic events and parameters were sent from the performance system to the light design, allowing the cathedral-like space of Kiscelli to react to the music in real time.
Surrounded by high-performance sound and light, the performance redirected attention away from the performer and toward the space itself. Architecture, resonance and atmosphere became central elements of the work, turning the concert into an environment rather than a frontal live act. This experience became a formative moment in Bartha’s practice, opening a path toward audiovisual performance, spatial composition and installation-based thinking.