INTERVIEW WITH LAHVE/REASON+SCOOPEX

By Punisher/Gods


This is an interview with a Czech scener called Lahve, and he is a member
of Reason and Scoopex. Throughout the last two years, this man have proven 
to be a very good swapper and a creative person in general. Most of you 
should know him for his pack, Sabotage, and his group, Reason. Although 
you may have spoken to him, I'm sure that there are a lot of things you do 
not know about him. In this interview, I will give you a different aspect 
of Lahve, so that you will get to know him better.

Please welcome one of the most active sceners in 2001, Lahve of Reason..

Punisher: As always with these kinds of interviews, I would like to start with 
asking you to tell the readers some information about yourself as a 
person. I'm sure they all are wondering about your real name, in which 
country you live and maybe some words about your current work status?

Lahve: I'm respecting your text layout, am I doing that correctly? Heh, okay. Only 
a few words to bring this interview out of too serious spirit, you know. 
Okay, so my real name is Radek Hrdlicka. Hrdlicka means turtle-dove in 
english, just to let you know, there isn't so many people knowing that ;). 
So it cannot means "hard licka" as some people call me, heh.. I'm living in 
Czech Republic, the country in the center of Europe between.. oh, let's hope 
people have enough geography knowledge. There was an Amiga scene in the 
past too, but suddently, after Commodore bankrot people saw a future in PC 
machines. There aren't so many sceners left here, sad but true. About the 
work, now I'm an unemployed guy, I finished my civil service a few months 
ago, so now I'm looking for some job. Great time to make some letters for 
my friends, am I right? ;)

Punisher: As you wrote, you are currently living in the Czech Republic. How do you 
find it living in this country? What is your opinion about the European 
Union and politics in general?

Lahve: Heh, better to know first that I'm an anarchist, so my answer about 
politic should sound strange for some people but let's see.. living in 
Czech isn't as an eating a honey, we have very bad economic and bad politic 
caused by classic Czech behaviour "steal what you can do now, afterwards 
should be too late", our politicians are Czechs too, so you should imagine 
how they solve some problems. Anyway, I cannot say I'm not fine, but it's 
all because I still live with my parents and all problems will come later 
when I'll live alone. This time I'm fine enjoying the life... let's say, 
I'm morbidly optimistic, all problems are flowing through myself. I don't 
like to speak about politic because I don't care about that. Having some 
experiences with Czech politicians and being anarchist, you'd rather vomit 
when you see what happens here, but you're a small guy to change it all.. 
simply, I don't like politic at all so much. EU is a bit interesting idea, 
but today I think people cannot join together because of their different 
mentality, different history etc. In this case, I don't believe to this 
project, people should help each other whenever they want, no need to be a 
member of EU. Also, EU will push us to the limits they need. I'm afraid this 
project has been built to get a LOT of money to the man on the top, I don't 
believe people should work for this idea all their life without to get some 
money. Anyway, it's not so good feeling to enter the EU and then lost their 
currency, history of it, all price will be changed and people will be 
confused, I'm sure. In short, EU is good project thought up in the wrong 
time.

Punisher: What kind of music do you like listening to? Do you mostly enjoy straight 
forward modules on the Amiga or do you listen more to traditional music? 
I just have to mention that I've seen pictures of you wearing a "The 
Exploited" sweater. Are you dedicated to this kind of punk music?

Lahve: It's all the evolution. As the man grows up, his music taste is changing 
aswell. First time, when I was sixteen, I liked disco as many people did. 
Later I fell in love with punk style (when I was twenty I think), but later 
I started to like techno stuff, drum'n'bass, triphop, jazz... simply 
more electronic music. I don't know why I left the world of guitars, maybe 
because I like to hear some new sounds which computer should play without 
any problem. Doing electronic music mean to use new samples, you think up 
the new sounds, you make new styles without any names etc. Today I like 
this electronic stuff, it doesn't matter if I'm listening that on computer 
or live, all these electros are doing on computers. To be honest, I'm 
really exacting concerning the music and I always necessitate to hear pure 
originality, some ideas inside, evolution tendences... who cares about the 
same "tuc-tuc-like" music? When you saw me with Exploited sweater, I was 
very young, heh. Now I respect this kind of music, I visit some punk 
concerts sometimes etc, but I prefer the style I talked about before. 
Anyway, I always like a girls dressed in a punk style with piercing on 
their body... yummy yum! Delicious ;)
Punisher: Well Radek, now let us go over to some more scene related issues. Maybe 
you could write something about how you decided to become a part of the 
scene, and also what attracted you to it?

Lahve: Gee, it's really hard to answer. How should I describe the feeling, the 
function system of the scene, friends inside, all works for free, 
groups-system, changing the members... Scene is really great and useful 
game, but when all ends for them, there are many talented people prepared 
for their real job. Scene is a game prepares you for reality. Although scene 
has own rules and although I'm an anarchist, the rules are only etic. When 
you have an etic behaviour inside you, you don't need to know any scene 
rule. The system depends on a human behaviour, nobody should be enriched by 
this. It's real working anarchy. All these things fascinated me, still 
fascinates me and will always fascinate. Do you know about some similar 
great system like demoscene is? I don't. You work for it, you're a part of 
friendship and it's a fun. All what young man should have.

Punisher: When did you first join the scene?

Lahve: May, 1998. When I didn't know what scene is, I started to do my own 
diskmag. I really don't remember how I got this idea, maybe I've seen some 
diskmag somewhere. I gave it "Top Secret" name and I filled that by some 
articles written mainly by me. I spreaded that using floppies to some people 
I knew (gee, now I realized I swapped and I didn't know that! ;)). Later, 
some guy with strange handle Hologram wrote me back he liked my mag and he 
want more. In one of his letters he told me to attend some small Amiga 
party. It was my first meeting with a real scener. I always thought sceners 
are old men, computer maniac, wearing in black jackets and dark glasses, 
heheh... I never realized some sceners were younger than me! Hologram told 
me about the scene, about all fun you could have there etc. He was my 
teacher. A few days later, on different party, we met a famous Czech 
scenegroup named Vertical Syndicate and then Hologram, me and my friend 
Dizzy formed Horizontal Lamerz, as a friendly different side of Vertical 
Syndicate. From this moment, I entered the scene as an editor. When time 
passed, I became a webmaster, organizer, swapper, asciimaker and packer. 

Punisher: Please write something brief about your scene-career so far. Maybe 
something about your functions, previous groups and other interesting 
stuff?

Lahve: Ah, it's very long story. I started to be fascined by other scene 
functions, so I decided to swap a bit. I started to love it of course! Then 
Hologram gave me a leadering of Horizontal Lamerz, so I became an organizer. 
Then I tried to make some asciis (not so good idea to try it IMHO) and I 
also tried to form own group Reason with my friend Godjr I met on IRC 
in the begin of 2000. Later I've been joined in Madwizards but I had to left 
HLA, so I gave leadering to Bolda/HLA. Now I've left Madwizards for
Scoopex. During all my scene career I always did 
webpages for HLA or Reason because I hate old pages without regular 
uploadings or unactual stuff. I think it's enough, I think I did many things 
during three years, didn't I? ;) 

Punisher: You are famous for a pack, namely Sabotage. How did you get the idea of 
starting such a project?

Lahve: Jonas, don't call it famous. Sabotage is known for swappers only, the rest 
should heard about that at least, but never seen it. Main idea to do some 
pack came when I reminded the videoclip Sabotage by Beastie Boys and I 
decided to use this name and make some dark atmospheric pack for swappers, 
it could be a work I should really love. I was tired to be dependent on 
someone else, I wanted to make my own pack I will care about. I also formed 
some rules for me: pure quality music originally made for Sabotage, 
different tunes in every issue, originally introscreens, a bit more regular 
releasing and mainly: spreading by snail-way only. I knew one thing: people 
will love it or hate it, nothing between that. Rules are really hard for 
someone, but it's only way how to do really quality and respected pack. If 
I'm successed or not, it's upto our readers. It's always easy to ask some 
really famous musician and use some unreleased tune from him, but more 
harder is to persuade him to make original tune for me! Then, Sabotage is 
more valuable for me. Sabotage is also a bit elite pack, I choose quality 
musicians only, but not elite as we know: arrogant behaviour. Elite pack in 
the sense of quality! Sabotage is only something different, but it's really 
risky to do something like that. People should be raging on you because of 
the spreading way, because of you don't want to use their tunes because you 
want something better etc. Sabotage is giving me new experiences with 
collecting and kind of stuff, also with communication with supporters and 
my own success. It is really great feeling to get some support from my 
scene gods like xhale/dcs, dipswitch/dcs, zaac/mankind or mrk/limited 
edition, all originally made for our pack.

Punisher: In a short time, you've become a well known swapper. What do you think 
about this way of communicating, and what do you see happening to this 
scene-job in the future? 

Lahve: Ah.. again.. Very known.. okay, some people know me, but there are better 
swappers in the scene, do you know, Punisher? ;)) It's not so hard to be 
good in swap, all you need is to be friendly and work, work, work, work, 
without any delays. It's not hard, I'm always friendly and peaceful man and 
I hate lazyness. That's all. What am I thinking about the swap? It's 
old-school thing as pixeling is, but in the best sense of word. Swap is a 
tradition of the scene but it's pushed away by modern communicating ways 
just like e-mail is. Some people want to use more modern ways without some 
stupid damaged floppies, some people want to keep tradition with all these 
things around, with all damaged disks, signatures on the disks and covers, 
envelopes, stamps cheating.. It's only a question of time when people 
recover totally unpersonal letters sent as e-mails. E-mails are fast, it 
means you'll send them often, it means you'll never write some long letters 
inside, it means you'll bore yourself etc. When you add that magic of 
envelopes arriving into your postbox... we all know it, swappers :). Hm, 
maybe I'm a bit old-school, but it's just good for swapping ;). 

Punisher: Name a few people that has meant a lot to you in your scene-career, and 
why.

Lahve: Hologram who bring me in the scene, Horizontal Lamerz because of my scene  
beginning and friendship, Vertical Syndicate was always the sign of 
friendship and I always respected them all, Reason gave me real scene 
feeling, Zito/RSN+DKG brought me in the swap scene, you and Zerox for real 
friendship I never know before, Madwizards members and Azzaro for showing 
me real scening and quality of demos and many, many people I would like to 
thank for, but it will be really long list. Please don't hate me if I 
forget you, reader, there were a lot of groups and people inspired me and 
still inspires. Respect you all and the whole scene! 

Punisher: When you are playing games on your Amiga (if you play), which games are 
most often loaded?

Lahve: These days I like all games which fully use 060, but I always love classic 
Amiga games from Bitmap brothers (Chaos engine I., Ruff'n'Tumble), Team17 
(Body Blows, all Aliens, Superfrog), Microprose and their Civilization, 
LucasArts with Monkey Islands, Adventure soft's Simon the Sorcerer etc etc. 
To be honest, I don't play so much nowadays, but if I have some games, I 
play those ones I've described here now. 

Punisher: Do you think Amiga is a great machine for games? 

Lahve: I think Amiga is great machine for the games I prefer, adventures with 
hand-drawn graphic, 2D beat'em up, logic and strategic games. 3D games are 
cool to play sometimes, but I have more fun with old Superfrog than with 
Quake for example. I wish to have more 2D games, I'm boring to see 
everything remade to 3D (Simon the Sorcerer 3D, Monkey Island 3D, Lemmings 
3D... damn, people, fun is more interesting than third dimension!). Let's 
write truth here: is better to look at some beautiful hand-drawn and smooth 
graphic or do you prefer to look at 3D cubic figures without any plastic 
surfaces? Looks ugly, I think. 

Punisher: Name your favourite scene-country, and please tell me why you choose these 
countries! 

Lahve: I like Norway for many friends being there, I like behaviour of these 
people and the nature they all take care about. Also I like Poland for so 
active and talented demosceners, I think polish people will never leave 
Amiga. I also like Denmark for Loonies, Scoopex and Iris, Germany for  
Mekka&Symposium etc. Hard to say. 

Punisher: If you went out with a girl, and she was very beautiful, and she told you 
to stop scening. Would you do it or not? (I know this is a lame question)

Lahve: Heh, nope. It's interesting problem. I think I would never love the girl 
who will make me limited. But when I'll really love her, I will promise her 
to stop scening and continue with my works in secret ;). I'm sure I will 
never totally stop scening, I'll be always interested in new demos or new 
arts although I'll be old guy. Scene is the thing you can never forget. I'm 
happy to live with the century of computers, when you can always tell your 
child: "look at this, boy! This is demo has been made by group under 
organizing of your father!" ;) Still better job than to watch bloody movies 
in TV and kill other people. 
Punisher: Then, I will thank you for answering my questions! Take care my friend, 
and good luck! 

Lahve: I thank you too for this opportunity! It's my first released interview. 
Keep scening!!