Location: Ljubljana / Gala hala / Slovenia
Date: Thursday, 01/14/2016
Koromač, a Slovenian all-instrumental, experimental outfit from Vrtojba, lately a sextet with no fewer than two drummers on the roster, with their debut »Punk Enough?« and a slot at the Domorodni četrtki series in their pocket. At the “eternal” Metelkova.
No creative brakes and a hefty dose of unabashedly provocative eclecticism, with a tight premise of homegrown originality and experimental audacity. On this night, January 14, 2016, Metelkova was buzzing again. Over at the club Gromka, the Prismojeni profesorji bluesa sold out their show, and a pile of people stood outside the club, glumly shuffling around in the freezing cold, while the smart ones went looking for the other open spaces on Metelkova that night. One of them was, of course, Gala hala, where these Thursday nights are dedicated to showcasing up-and-coming young bands with their own original music, naturally, the kind of bands fighting to break through on the scene.
Koromač are no “born yesterday” band. Its members have mileage and experience behind them. The group carries a vision and a musical focus. Koromač are an example of a band that, by expanding its lineup (I’m thinking mainly of the two drummers and the saxophone), has flung the doors wide open to exploring new and ever newer musical territories. We can loosely call them “jazzcore”, which neatly ties together the band’s musical past with its present state. In their sonic landscapes, Koromač are merciless nihilists, sound terrorists, totally unsuited to those “softer souls” who “inherited” fragile mechanoreceptor organs.
That’s how the band’s gig at Gala hala went down, too. Around 20 minutes to eleven at night they climbed on stage and started the “thunder”. The two guitars hold down solid phrases, and the saxophone cuts into them, refusing to stay inside the guitar lines and often drifting off, free-spirited, into atonal dimensions, frequently tipping things into chaos. The guitar sound is rasping, fat, garage-y, and in shades still hardcore enough, even though the riffs are built in a metal way. All in all, we witnessed a seriously interesting show, delivered by a musical derivative of absolute oddities in musical expression. Over time the band won over a good 100 people in the crowd completely. Especially up front, individual clusters of fans quickly identified with the energy coming off the stage and gave themselves over to it fully. Generally speaking, it was an extremely successful live performance, and let’s hope it widened the band’s base of music connoisseurs as a result.
Koromač are evolving, though. They’re going through a stylistic transition. There’s a huge amount of room left in their expression, which they can exploit without restraint with their pledge to the free-spirited jam experiment. It would be great if the band dug in going forward, deepening into the experimental-jazz to progressive sphere. Especially when it comes to further optimizing the payoff of having two drum kits in the lineup. All in all: a splendid new musical provocation on the horizon. Worth a try!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
