Xanax

Xanax is a name used by more than one act, including a Belgrade-based band active since 2009, a Polish duo, and a Czech metal-rock band.

Belgrade band

The Belgrade group plays a mix of electronic and guitar-based music with elements of dubstep and trip-hop. It performs in Belgrade, elsewhere in Serbia, and abroad. Its debut album, Under the Surface (Ispod Površine), is released through Ammonite Records in cooperation with IceCreamDisco and Live Nation Fusion Records from Moscow. The record is produced with Boris Mladenović of Jarboli and Veliki prezir, Nebojša Simeunović Sabljar of Dza ili Bu, and Dejan Stanisavljević of Beograd.

The album contains 10 tracks and 4 remixes. The single “Bright Day” (Svetli dan) is named one of the five best singles of 2010 by readers of the online magazine POPBOKS. It also spends several weeks on MTV Adria’s charts, receives repeated play on Zagreb Radio 101 and Radio 8080 online, and its video appears on Russia’s A1 television. The band supports the release with shows in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and at Sabac Summer Festival, as well as in Zagreb, Rijeka, Banja Luka, Doboj, Hungary, Poland, and at the Avant music festival in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In 2011 the band contributes “Beneath the Surface” (Ispod Površine) to the compilation Femixeta, linked to a network of female creativity that gathers more than 16 bands and artists. It also appears on Re Start II in Bosnia and Herzegovina with “Perfect Grid” (Savršena rešetka) and performs at FAIR SHARE fest at Belgrade’s Dom Omladine, organised by regional MTV. The song “Mašinerija” (Machinery – Remix) spends four weeks at number one on the Studio B radio programme Diskomer in 2012. A video is made for the track in cooperation with Dejan Stanisavljević, with whom the band works for over a year while preparing songs for its next album.

Polish duo

The Polish group consists of Sambor Kostrzewa on vocals and producer Abandon All Hope, whose real name is Sebastian Kutarba. Kostrzewa is from Tychy in southern Poland. He begins performing in kindergarten, later discovers The Beatles’ Help!, then moves through britpop, with Blur, Radiohead and Oasis prompting him to play guitar and write songs. He later turns towards jazz and electronic music and studies economics in Katowice. His current inspirations include Erik Truffaz, John Scofield and Keith Jarrett.

Kutarba grows up in a small town in southern Poland, where his father, a musician in a big beat band, passes on his interest in music. He is drawn to electronic music from Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and Yello, and starts producing after getting his first computer in 1990. His first demo, recorded in 2000, receives a positive review in the Polish techno magazine Techno Party. Two tracks from a second demo are broadcast by the specialist non-commercial station Radiostacja, and one wins the station’s weekly Pepsi-Faza contest in 2001. In 2002 he takes second place in a nationwide electronic music festival in Bydgoszcz. In 2004 he places third in a remix contest for “Supersonic” by Machineries of Heaven and signs with the British label strictly-digital.com, owned by DJ and producer Nookie.

Czech metal-rock band

A third act with the same name is a metal-rock band from the Czech Republic.