Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: April 19, 2018
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €6.00
If the Chinese have their bear and the Swedes have Abba, we Slovenes have our own kind of Panda: refined art pop rock veterans of Slovenian mainstream music, especially of the eighties and nineties. It’s a joy to catch them on stage every so often and soak up their flawless execution. This year’s Ortofest offered a fresh chance to do just that. The day before, San dI Ego played here and the crowd showed up at around 150 strong and the day after, the turnout was practically identical. But a completely different clientele. Jeans and leather gave way to sweaters and shirts, though with far more elegance than the strictly uniform off-the-rack look of the student crowd a week earlier, at the packed Adi Smolar show (also at Ortofest). Not to mention the serious surplus of women, who were dreamily crooning along with the band for most of the verses. In fact, every time Vlado Pirc called on the crowd to join in, the harmonized choir of the audience, in that spontaneous harmony of sing-along melodies, radiated one thing above all: a decisive female vocal surplus.
So the crowd hadn’t forgotten Panda. Evergreen radio hits that have become folk songs are a guarantee. That responsiveness, with the theatrical, mood-driven cumulus in the songs Daleč stran and Nepremagljivi (so we got at least two theatrical peaks), was an important element of the night, making the band’s performance even more infectious and the emotions and passions even more intense.
Panda are a sextet that works like a mini orchestra, where the building blocks of the soundscape and the musical vocabulary are cunningly calibrated, blended and tuned to one another, and after many, many years of defiance and experience, they get along in an interaction that’s practically symbiotic. The way the elements of the sound complement each other, their communication, perception, interaction and generally the sextet’s rapport with each other is brilliant. Singer Nina Bauman, given that she has the shortest tenure in the band, has in this short time melded more than perfectly with the group’s character, strengthened it, upgraded it. In fact, her vocals definitely grabbed the spotlight; a few times she incredibly “soulfully” “swelled up and exploded”. She has exceptional power and vocal charge with a character that shakes you to the bone. But considering her youth, Nina is already remarkably well versed in adapting, and in the softer parts, the sections and passages that demand 100% feeling, she can be wonderfully sensual and vocally even more infectious. A real balm for the ears.
Her male counterparts on stage are, as expected, the very definition of the perfection already mentioned. The kind of perfection that is practically proverbial for the band’s discography as well as its live presence. When you come to a Panda show, there’s no room for a flub; at least as an observer, given the band’s reputation and standing, you’re nowhere near expecting one. The sound engineers set up everything needed for superb sonic dynamics, where every building block of the sound was clearly audible and distinct. A special charm lies in the playful moments generated by passages of cheerful interplay, with the instruments conversing in a cleanly tuned way, especially in the keyboard-guitar solo exchanges. An excellent sonic conglomerate. If you stood in the middle, that is, somewhere halfway between the stage and the mixing desk, you got the most out of the show.
Although the starting aesthetic of the band’s musical dossier is »art pop and rock«, the prefix art is there precisely because the band has always wedged elements of jazz and world music into its hugely infectious compositions, the numbers often flirt with Latin rhythm and melody, and all this passion for arrangement-driven variety is what creates the band’s distinctiveness. The band built its set around its current studio album »Stoletni ples« (2016), but didn’t forget its obligatory concert communion and sprinkled in the expected hot spots from its rich back catalog. That Panda whipped the audience into a frenzy was confirmed by the stormy ovations and reactions that, even after the obligatory encore, showed no sign of ending. So for the second encore, the band’s boss, its engine and chief visionary and above all legendary Slovenian musician Andrej Pompe stepped out, taking his seat at the keyboards, followed by Nina Bauman, and just when it looked like the two would tackle the extra number alone, Vlado Pirc joined them for some strictly vocal coloring. Together they stayed with the album »V vročici noči« (1990), with the surprise of the evening, the song Da bo jutri še en dan, finally calming (I hope at least partly) the red-hot audience, which, if it had been at all possible, would have stayed with the band at Orto bar all night long. An extraordinary concert night, then.
Setlist
1. Sanje
2. Kakšno sonce
3. Kje je ta mož
4. Stoletni ples
5. Prebudi se
6. Zvezde z neba
7. Pozabi
8. Lino
9. Sive ceste
10. Ti in jaz
11. Življenje je igra
12. Ljubimec brez imena
13. Daleč stran
14. Noro
—encore I.—
15. Nepremagljivi
—encore II.—
16. Da bo jutri še en dan
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