Sweeper

The beginnings of Sweeper date back to 2003 when two founding members of Southpaw, Rodriguez F (guitar) and Dave Karpoff (drums), left their mother ship and headed their own way. A long period followed of searching for rehearsal facilities and musicians to join the band. “This was probably the hardest time in the band’s history,” Rodriguez comments. “We had to start over from the scratch. The important thing, however, was that we had a clear vision of what we wanted to create and accomplish. It was not easy to find facilities for our new band as there are few rehearsal rooms available in Prague. We were homeless as musicians for six months. Then we started creating new repertoire and in about a year the essence of Sweeper’s current repertoire was put together.” At the beginning of 2005, Rodriguez and Dave Karpoff started to advertise and search for musicians to join their band. Players’ empathy and ability to work as a team was just as important as their musical qualities. “A band is a bit like a football team,” Dave Karpoff says. “It is a group of people that need to pull together as a team. This is often far more important than musical qualities.” The first member to join in was Bootch, the leader of a pop-rock band Sextet Orange at the time. “I had an ambition to make it big with my music. Other members of Sextet Orange did not seem to feel the same way. That was probably the main reason why I answered this ad and changed for Sweeper,” Bootch says about his beginnings in the band. A month later, the threesome found their new lead singer. Mike F had collected his musical experience during his long-time stay on British Isles and later on in Prague he became the lead singer of an electro-pop band Yellfish. It took a long time, however, to find a suitable bass guitarist. Luckily, the band’s friend Tom Key helped the band in their beginnings and performed at Sweeper’s first concerts: at the festival in Hustopeče u Brna, where the band supported the non-profit organization Podané ruce, and at the Coca Cola Popstar contest, where the band ended up 5th in e-voting. In the beginning of 2006, a new bass guitarist was finally found: Pete Clementis with a rich musical history. At that time, the band’s first EP “Total Loss of Ego” came out recorded in autumn 2005. Dusan Lipert from Ohm Square spent laborious hours of cutting and selecting the best takes and gave the CD its final and unforgettable sound. This EP shaped the band’s image and ranked them among indie-pop groups. Even today the songs from Total Loss of Ego are aired by several Czech radio stations. Thanks to radio interviews, Sweeper became better known by the public. In August 2006, the band won the Wave Chart hit parade of the Wave radio station with their song Ecstasy. In the second half of 2006, Rodriguez met Mário Tachecí who took the role of the band’s manager. He conceived an idea of a multisensory project that the band would accompany with their musical collage. Sweeper opened new files in their favourite Logic Pro and prepared material for this project. Their musical vision gradually took shape of new material that was subsequently confronted with the author of the visual part of the project, the well-known ‘comic guru’ Dario Gulli. In autumn, Sweeper traveled to London to shoot a video for the song Ecstasy together with Karolína Žalabáková and Lukáš Gargulák. The shots of this video combined images from London boroughs with colour calculations created by an animation programme developed exclusively for this purpose. The programme was designed by students at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno. The final calculation of the whole video took the powerful machines several days. Following that, every shot was coloured by hand. By the end of 2006, the band launched the EuphoryTour project which offered the opportunity to both Czech and foreign bands to take part in concerts and festivals held or sponsored within this project. After finishing the video, the band resumed their work and gradually finalized individual songs. Shortly after that, in December 2006, Bootch (keyboards) left the band to work on his own projects. Early in 2007 Sweeper chose six tracks that later formed a soundtrack to Dario Gulli’s comic book called Wall after Wall. After the material had been sent to Italy, the band performed at several concerts and started preparing their first LP. The LP featured songs from their first demo as well as from the Wall after Wall soundtrack, supplemented by new material. A short break involved recording a separate single of the same name as the soundtrack’s title, Wall after Wall. After finalizing the studio work, arrangements and recording the string parts (Filip Jelínek of J.A.R.), the single was produced by Jan P. Muchow. It was mixed in the Prague Soundsquare studio and English engineers kept an eye on the mastering. The single was accompanied by a video shot by the American “Pickle” team led by the Swiss-born director Cedric Larvoir. The video is now broadcasted daily on Óčko music TV. At the time of shooting the video, the singer Mike F left Sweeper and was replaced three months later by the young and talented Pavel Calta. The three gigs at the beginning of 2009 shaped the band even further. The bass guitarist Pete was replaced by Vojta Probošt (ex-Moving Holidays, Ultraphonics, Exit Orchestra) and the experienced pianist Andrea Sejáková joined the band ..boards. Presently, the band is making up new material with their new members and arranging gigs for 2009.