Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: November 20, 2013
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €10.00
Feedback are a musical oddity of such quality that they don’t need any special fanfare (of potentially irritating proportions) to announce their existence. They say good news travels fast. And in Feedback’s case, that’s absolutely spot on! Between 2008 and 2009 the band showed incredible productivity, putting out four releases back to back, three of them studio albums. A new star with a vibe of »experimentally savvy musical comedy« made for anointing the ears has shone so brightly in Slovenia that none of us can overlook it anymore. The band from Tolmin, Poljubinj and the surrounding area has landed among the most respected experimental rock acts on the Slovenian scene, ones that also possess a rare but hugely rewarding quality. They’ve mastered a refined sense of keeping things listenable and, as a result, accessible. That means the signature moment of improvisation is craftily tamed by a constant dose of melody. Feedback are a band that loosens up the room and generates a ton of energy in it. Energy created that way is always positive and, all in all, has an almost soothing effect on any consumer.
Slovenian bands devoted to free-spirited flirting with »trying the untried« have always been known for a wonderfully natural knack for blending jazz and rock figures. That of course goes for Feedback too, with the important observation that their new album »Skrivnost«, which the band premiered this evening in the Slovenian capital at the club Orto bar, ties them especially to the tradition of seventies progressive rock. That’s a very important observation. When Moonlight Sky, for instance, turned into a trio and dropped the progressive arrangements that still sounded so ambitious on the band’s debut, gradually sliding into strict jazz fusion heavily infused with ethno and world music, there were no bands left on the Slovenian scene whose musical character would stir even the slightest breeze of anything breathing the progressive rock mastery that the British rock bands of the seventies built from the ground up.
All the more fascinating was the realization we enjoyed this evening at Orto bar: the new album »Skrivnost« more than once conjured up the character of Caravan, the band that formed a big chunk of the former Canterbury progressive rock scene in England. In the new material, thanks above all to the warmly shimmering sound of Miloš’s Hammond organ, you could draw parallels with the Dutch Focus and Britain’s Camel, while of course enjoying hefty shots of jazz and blues elements that keep following the tradition of the ever more distant legacy of Yugoslav jazz rock fusion. But with all these comparisons, Feedback are a story of originality and homegrown self-reliance that’s one of a kind. They deepen that uniqueness, and with the new album their character ripens further artistically and grows evolutionarily!
The gig was over in a flash! Far from it being short. Simply. It was that good. And all good things go by damn fast. Feedback are artistically tantalizing, and in everything they do they keep challenging the listener not to let their focus wander anywhere but the euphony spreading from the stage. In all that dimensionality, that multifaceted sailing through colorful soundscapes, and on top of that the exceptional dialogue between four building blocks showing top-level tightness and perfect communication, a chemical sensing, once they’re on stage. Feedback are a band that lives on stage. The new album too was recorded »in one go«, on the »first take«, in the style of a concert played in the studio with no technical touch-ups afterward. So the new studio album can be counted as, all in all, the fourth “live studio” album by the band. Few bands of a younger vintage these days dare to record albums like that. The masters did that in the seventies and sixties. You weren’t allowed to fuck up! Recording tape was expensive. So you had to be extremely, extremely good musicians. Talented musicians. And all of that goes for Feedback too. And on that front they of course managed to fully enchant us once again.
Shame the Orto bar »lighting guy« didn’t provide slightly better illumination. With the spotlights flickering, it would have made no difference had he put a couple of candles on stage. Sadly, the watercolors placed in the back, original paintings by the members of Feedback that adorn the cover of the new album »Skrivnost«, didn’t come through at all.
Otherwise, Feedback are refined sonic perfectionists. They bet on organic authenticity. It’s a joy to spot a »Leslie speaker« amp on stage (a sort of sonic extension of the Hammond organ that gives it an echo effect), plus the first electric keyboards ever to appear on the planet (the Rhodes brand), and so on. Authenticity, genuineness and originality? Would a listener and concert-goer at a Feedback show even want more? No. And in thanks for their effort and defiant faith in »their thing«, Feedback got a very good turnout of some 100 heads, who gave themselves freely this evening to Feedback’s one-of-a-kind musical identity. Let’s close by giving Feedback big props for an excellent new studio achievement and a gorgeous concert at Orto bar, and wishing them plenty of joy and happy moments on their musical road ahead! And if Feedback are playing anywhere near you, don’t even think about missing their show!
Setlist
1. Sara
2. Wagha-chicu
3. Otroci se igrajo
4. Faza umiritve
5. I’ve Lost My Hair
6. Winter Time (part 2.)
7. Ne vem kaj je to skrivnost
8. Temnik
9. Stric Goran
10. Diagnoza F
11. 7/8
12. G točka
Photo gallery
