Koonda Holaa

Czech-born Kamil Kruta has several names: Kamilsky, Koonda Holaa—even, more recently, the Shitman. After playing in the Czech punk scene during the communist '80s, Kamil, as he prefers to be called, migrated to America. In the ensuing two decades, he performed in a guitar-drums duo (before that setup was fashionable) called Pseudo Pseudo and collaborated with experimental legends The Residents and U.S. noiseniks Amps for Christ, among countless other ventures.

Enigmatic, unkempt and soft-spoken, Kamil seems to drift around the globe with the winds, living and creating wherever he sees fit. "I spend a lot of time on the road, but I feel that's the natural way to live," he says. "The long, sedentary kind of life, where people move into a house [for] 40 years—that's kind of weird to me… I like to travel around and meet people."

As Kamil's surroundings have changed, so has his art; though his worldview and lifestyle seems in line with an anarcho-punk mentality, his music has become slow and psychedelic, with snaking solo guitar and self-consciously gloomy lyrics that carry a sly knowingness. The unsubtle title of Koonda Holaa's recent album, Shitman, seems as much a sly self-designation as a response to what Kamil perceives as mankind's collective regression.

"We should be having all these jetpacks and all that shit. [But] none of it is happening… We're being cheated out of evolution, basically. And the Shitman is about the people who keep filling the space with things that are just like shit, you know? It's material that's just kind of disgusting and hard to ignore… [If] you're having a party and somebody takes a dump in the middle of the living room, you cannot go on with the party as [before]. It's never the same afterwards."

Monday's show will be a homecoming of sorts for Kamil, who lived in Athens for a spell, circa 2000. This rambler's weird, wandering tunes are as captivating as ever.