Heavenly “X” – A Brilliant Art Gem That Urgently Needs Its First Studio Monument (2013)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Jerneja Jerak

Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 04/19/2013
Attendance: 50
Ticket price: €5.00

HeaveniX are Boštjan Andrejc »Booshee« (guitar, vocals), Rok Golob (keyboards, guitar), Patrick Vlačič (bass guitar) and David Morgan (drums). Two thirds of the current lineup of Slovenian art rock legends Avtomobili, experience in Night Jump, collaboration with Jan Plestenjak, in short, let’s not waste time on a rundown. This is a combo of four top-notch Slovenian musicians.

With the song »Luna na licu« they jumped into the Slovenska popevka festival in 2006, two years later they »scared« people with the video for their second original, »H20«, then a year after that the single »1 Problem« came out (»One probleeeem«), and a year later the single »Adrenalin«,… So the HeaveniX story is not exactly »since yesterday«, yet the studio debut is still nowhere to be seen. What’s more, in this corner of Slovenia, meaning Ljubljana, HeaveniX only rarely show up on stage, so it was honestly a small miracle that at least fifty heads gathered in Orto bar that evening. Sadly, the band has been doing little for its own promotion lately. Good thing the lineup is made up of »high-profile« names in music!

Doesn’t matter. Only the music counts. And HeaveniX are a great crew serving up a pure gem of a musical experience. Four entities. Polished, refined. You don’t even know where to begin describing the live show. It’s a real shame there weren’t more people in the club. They missed out on a whole lot of tangible musical substance. »Biiiig«. The HeaveniX style? Hard to pin down in two or three words. The mystery would best be solved the Solomonic way. You add the prefix »art« to the word rock. When you hear the song Adrenalin, the mold of the composition may be a classic offshoot of Avtomobili’s arranging, but with the difference that here HeaveniX offer a distinctly kick-ass, modernized sound, built on putting guitar phrases front and center while also keeping the melodic catchiness fully tangible. If you’re after sophistication, it goes through Golob’s excellent original Nov Nor Čas (with a One Repuvlic chorus, and you probably know the symphonic version well too) to Luna na licu, even closer to Avtomobili. HeaveniX can play anything. The first part of the show was distinctly funky and groove-soaked, and then the picture started coming together into a vivid mosaic of many genre ideas, all gravitating toward the unique original whole of HeaveniX’s musical sermon. Yet another excellent original called DNK only confirms the quartet’s exceptional songwriting talent for building a catchy art composition that listeners on any radio frequency and the more demanding music gourmets can both enjoy!

Since there are, I don’t know, no more than six original songs, HeaveniX naturally filled two thirds of the set with covers of foreign acts. Those are a piece of cake for them. Booshee is a real vocal chameleon – just remember his creative contribution in Night Jump, and if you add his superior, refined guitar virtuosity, with which he vehemently commands a broad musical range spanning everything between Pink Floyd and Toto at the extreme ends, it’s clear that the actual authors of some of the covers performed, like Billy Gibbons, Keith Richards, the late Kurt Cobain, Robby Krueger or Angus Young, could well have found themselves in Orto bar for a little lesson in learning the truth. Booshee could be their guitar mentor. On top of that come the more demanding covers of acts like The Police, Jamiroquai, Bill Whiters,…. That takes precision, elasticity and a harmonious wave between the “explosiveness” and “sophistication” of the rhythm section. And HeaveniX deliver that with no trouble in the Morgan-Vlačič tandem.

Just under two hours of full-blooded enjoyment of HeaveniX’s brilliant stage work. No less, no more. Let’s just hope the guys finally get »serious«, find the time to unhitch for a moment from their music projects and band commitments, get into the studio and record a studio debut. Whether that pays off or not, in times when only a minority gets to the core of the message of the universe of music, is not the question. It’s simply that the brilliance of HeaveniX’s original compositions has to get proper recognition, and for that reason a proper official studio document. That’s the least they deserve. The original songs work in a self-grown, artistically challenging way. With them, HeaveniX walk right in the central spot between radio-friendly vibes and demanding, filigree mosaic-structured composing (perfect sonic symbiosis of its building blocks), inviting to the most demanding listeners. Let’s put it loosely: with their multilayered genre character, HeaveniX are a modern, kick-ass take on Avtomobili for today, with an even bigger dose of silky groove and a charming funk vibe that can, at any moment, spice up its structures with touches of jazz!

It’s wild watching all the finesse and calibration of the musicians on stage. A detail like the shaping of the mic work in the transition by Rok Golob on the Gibson Les Paul guitar in Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana) – Booshee is simply too busy with other details of the performance at that point – or the laying down of an electric solo on the keyboards, again by Rok Golob, relieving Booshee in one of the other covers (the title slipped my mind), are those little secrets of great masters. The essential generator for being able to talk about musical mastery. Guys! We’re waiting for the first studio document. It’s about time.