Avtor: Aleš Podbrežnik
Izvajalec: Dance Mamblita
Založba: ZARŠ Records
Izid: 2013
Trajanje: 35:12
Ocena: 2/5
Dance Mamblita are back with their third solo studio album. Times change, and so do lineups. The duo has now grown into a trio. Boris Beštjak has been replaced on drums by Maksimiljan Rojc, and the duo has also taken vocalist Đuli Jenček into the ranks. But even if times change, bands don’t necessarily evolve along with them. Motörhead have been playing the same riff for 35 years, AC/DC too, even Status Quo,…
Dance Mamblita have always built on minimalism, and that’s where they stay. Their ultra-stripped-down sound contained only drums, bass guitar and vocals. On the new album »Amor« they remain true to that direction. The band’s musical vocabulary obviously has to be pinned to the legacy of punk and hardcore. Dance Mamblita try to disguise the nakedness of their arrangements, and in that respect the collaboration with the duo Portofado, made up of the “traveling” girls Angelica and Francesca, was almost a must. Šik and Rojc are neither Neil Peart nor Geddy Lee, so their expressive range is seriously limited. Conceptually, in performance, and in arrangements alike. Although the opener Vatreni, with its almost stoner-ish “twisting,” raises expectations, the rest of the album drowns them fast! Especially when the two musicians get tangled up in long instrumental passages, spinning one and the same phrase through several repetitive loops of four-four bars, and these just don’t seem to end. If only there were some conceptual shifts when it comes to improvisation. Nothing of the sort. The second song on the album, Como va, confirms it right away: in its five and a half minutes (and those don’t seem to end either) it works as a “single-syllable” thing that’s seriously nightmarish. The track is simply too long.
Dance Mamblita have always been cynics, and that’s where they stay. The vocal bits in the verses are almost single-syllable. With the banality of a baboon troop’s howling, they try to knock on any listener’s emotions in a cheeky, mocking way. On the flip side, the album works effectively at least in carrying a spontaneous note. It was obviously nailed in the first take. At least that much, even if, despite the garage sound, it fails to squeeze out of its playing the voltage needed to keep a “serious” listener around (the bar for the threshold of seriousness has really been lowered to the floor this time).
It wants to approach through a simple musical language that tries to make up for its banality with moments of boundless fun from the little hours recorded in the studio. At that it succeeds. Otherwise, in total, the album »Amor« sounds like a bunch of raw demo recordings, prepared just enough that you could lay electric guitar arrangements over them. That’s exactly why this album might even be interesting for those of you looking for some “off-the-wall craziness,” because it feels like it was only half finished. Nothing special happens until the track Barcelona, where the band manages to vividly place an accordion arrangement that in some other climate could also be used in the traditional melos of Portuguese fado. Luckily, the band repeats a similar trick in Dance Machine.
Toward the end, this release is even rescued by the fado excursion of the duo Angelica and Francesca. Paradoxically enough, their track Marujo Portugues / Rosinha dos limosa is even the creative peak of this conceptually plucked-bare and impoverished “alternative” rock album.
Lineup
Andrej Šik – vocals, bass guitar
Maksimiljan Rojc – vocals, drums
Đuli Jenček – vocals, tambourine
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Portofado:
Angelica Froschi – accordion
Francesca Colli – vocals
Production
Samo Pavlica Linch & Andrej.Šik
Track list
1. Vatreni
2. Como va
3. Sometimes
4. Brije
5. Barcelona
6. Lepo naj ti bo
7. Dance Machine
8. Amor
9. Marujo Portugues / Rosinha dos limosa
