Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Elektrika
Label: Self-released
Released: 2009
Length: 43:47
Rating: 5/5
Sometimes an album lands in your hands absurdly late. But this one stands out. A Slovenian album. It stands out on the Slovenian scene as our rock ‘n’ roll amusement park knows it. Present, past and? Future. Because this is an album that has passed the test of time. It came out in 2009, made by seasoned musical tomcats who understand and know exactly how rock n’ roll has to sound to put a spell on you instantly. There’s just one word. Simple, but devastating! Elektrika! So let the music do the talking!
After leaving the legendary Don Mentony Band, the even more legendary musicians Zvone Kukec (guitar) and Robert Fritsch »Frič« (drums) founded Elektrika. A damn five years passed after the band’s formation before it reached stability around 2006 and the chemistry in the newly solidified lineup really started to bite. Only then did the material ripen to the right level of quality for the time to come for a studio debut, the one we’re talking about in this review. An album with a title that, much like the band’s name, hides no deeper philosophical meaning. The word is simple, but it hits you straight in the face! »Stereo«.
We can say that »Stereo« was written and matured under the strong influence of the then-fashionable trends in alternative rock and metal. If we pull back the veil on the album’s sonic essence in a bit more fine-grained way, we find grunge aesthetics lurking behind its sound and style. Only to the ears it sounds »prettier«. Let’s say more accessible instead. And in that period of the new millennium’s first decade, when the material for Elektrika’s debut was taking shape, bands like Creed, Incubus, Audioslave and Matchbox Twenty were fascinating the international scene with their presence, strongly »dishonoring« the tops of the charts as they shaped a kind of new subgenre of alternative rock called post-grunge. The guitar sound on »Stereo« is fat, crackling, stripped-down, and it kicks bestially, untamed and head-on. Right in the face. Production-wise, »Stereo« ranks way above average for albums built on similar genre foundations, if we look for parallels in the Slovenian music space. Plenty of well-established, recognizable international acts (read: bands), higher-ranking names in the trendy alt genres, would kill for a sound like this. In that sense, »Stereo« set a new standard that still hasn’t been surpassed to this day. »Stereo« is a finely crafted art brilliance of full-blooded rock ‘n’ roll confession, with an erectly pulsing, voluminously exposed breathing and coexistence of all the building blocks of the sound. A massive wall of thick, greasy guitars, a warm-toned, agile, twisting, tightly wound and ultra-melodic bass line that emphasizes the effective »groove« suspension of the record, and the cannon-like noisiness of the drums, in its truthfulness occasionally almost bordering on doom-laden Black Sabbath-style demonization. Want more? The vocals. They’re an absolute expressive one-of-a-kind in the Slovenian music space. The use of the Slovenian language is optimized, and the pronounced electrification of the album’s confession is further amplified (intensified) by the vocal delivery and the very color of the voice. The vocal is mid-to-low pitched, manly, defiant. It has an extremely sensitive and pleasing vibrato that fills the atmosphere with real dramatic moments, an unbridled, passionate mix of pain, eroticism and personal destruction, exactly what the energy of »Stereo« needs. Roman Vukina’s voice is a voice of huge charisma and unique expressive character. As such, along with the outstanding production, it’s one of the album’s first magnets, irreversibly drawing in and enchanting the listener.
»Stereo« is art. Sure, it’s a product of the time of the past decade, but it’s art. A brilliant manifesto of musical expression to which you can add nothing and from which you can take nothing away. It works perfectly in its polish. In every detail. From the perfectly balanced coexistence of a devastating, almost doom-laden atmosphere, generated by relentless guitar blazing, to the brilliant generation of penetrating melodicism. The songs, as compositions, stand on equal footing; the verse-chorus pairing builds up gradually in mood to an atmospheric peak in the chorus melody, where it achieves a complete turn of feeling. The dynamics of the album are constant. Even though the album is struck fairly »one-dimensionally« in its expression, in the sense that, as a debut, it defined its stature and voice right from the start, it can’t buckle expressively (arrangement-wise) for even a moment, because it’s got sturdy rock ‘n’ roll balls. Listen to one track and you’ve basically got the bulk of the picture of Elektrika.
Excursions into »semitone bends« of guitar phrases don’t let up in their rushing rally straight into the bosom of the abyss of perdition, and there’s no room on this album for stringing together fairy tales about a nice and honest world! So there’s no room for illusion. »Stereo« takes you through the gates of hell, even though it stirs a desire in the listener’s subconscious to spot a path to heaven somewhere on the album.
The opener Dobr prjatu is basically a Black Sabbath-sharpened riff odyssey (if I were to measure where the most »underground« Sabbath demonry on »Stereo« can be heard, I’d pick the track Čudn dan – the measured drum transitions astonishingly recall Bill Ward’s old school). Already the first track lines up vivid contrasts between riff figures, unrestrained drum pounding, the cultured volume of the bass guitar’s groove and a full-blooded, biting, passionate vocal that could fit perfectly into grunge waters at any time. So Elektrika quickly rock their story into a real drama theater, whose grip doesn’t let go until its last second. And if not sooner, the second track on the album carries you off into a post-grunge atmosphere – Rojčeva 6. That Alice in Chains-type catharsis of destruction lurks nearby the whole time, but the band steers its story away from the danger of falling into an atmosphere of »potential destruction« with a generous dose of melodic accessibility for the average ear. Even though the album is steeped in a dark atmosphere, Elektrika by no means »torment« you in the style of the signature wrist-slitting grunge of the genre’s flagship bands from the first half of the nineties. The gloomy atmosphere of apocalypse horsemen, infused with passionate eroticism from an exceptional mix of instrumental playing and the nature of the vocal delivery, draws possible energetic parallels with the passion of some Spanish dark-mood merchants like Heroes Del Silencio. Except that Elektrika is a Slovenian temptation. Slovenian melos, a Slovenian art album. From head to toe. Even though there’s a good chance that Elektrika would have set the international scene on fire with this album on release, had it been in English, since it shows great conceptual sharpness, art character and distinctive charisma, and consequently a instantly grabbing energetic flux, it only works to its full expressive yield in the Slovenian language. The poetry is fully tangible, and most of it was written for »Stereo« by the legendary artist and poet Esad Babačič (Via Ofenziva), who sensed an exceptional artistic depth in Elektrika’s music and in this way contrasted and enriched it further in content. And there’s one more ingredient the band didn’t forget and cleverly used to enrich the authorial expression of this album. In the background of the production picture, it has slyly laid down a synthesizer veil here and there, effectively lifting the high atmospheric reach of the record’s soundscape (Vzemi nazaj besede, Neonska dekleta).
That the band sweated blood over this album is also proven by the outstanding design of the product. From the logos to the inside of the booklet and the outer sleeve. The album also came out on vinyl. That too is simply a sign of the artists’ exceptional commitment and deep faith in the work they created. This musical achievement radiates proof of great love. And, consequently, of what matters most. Truthfulness and authenticity.
Now just a philosophical conclusion! There’s no room here for waverers, calculators, idea-less leeches who feed in the shadows on the authenticity of other people’s ideas and try to exploit them for their own prosperity while fawning like hyenas. »Stereo« is an album that is perfect. In all its demonstrated magic of great truthfulness, it’s not only the herald of the time of the first decade of the previous millennium, it’s also a bare textbook example for all Slovenian bands of every generation of how to approach musical art in rock ‘n’ roll. In Slovenia you absolutely have to take things into your own hands! Stay strong and know no obedience in order to realize your own distinctive idea. To get an album of such artistic independence out of yourself, as »Stereo« shows, is, in a country where Severina fills the biggest halls, an act beyond the bounds of reason. »Stereo« is yet another album that (sadly, as expected) went overlooked in Slovenia’s cultural and artistic space and to this day hasn’t received its due. And it won’t. It can only receive it from that handful of still-living individuals among us who approach musical art with an honestly pure heart and the maturity of spiritual and emotional intelligence to carry »Stereo« to the place of salvation it deserves. The question is whether it will even pay off for Elektrika to repeat another bold, self-grown original story in the future, one that would follow the gem called »Stereo«. Sadly. But with »Stereo«, if for nothing else then at least for its own moral satisfaction, the band created a monumental evergreen that preserves a lasting confessional freshness of gripping art brilliance and puts »Stereo« right at the very top of the greatest records in the history of Slovenian rock!
Lineup
Roman Vukina – vocals
Zvone Kukec – guitar
Bajlo – bass guitar
Robert Fritsch – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Denis Beganović – keyboards, string arrangements, backing vocals
Production
Zvone Kukec
Track list
1. Dobr prjatu
2. Rojčeva 6
3. Elektrika
4. Bič
5. Sama
6. Čudn dan
7. Ruska
8. Tukaj sem
9. Vzemi nazaj besede
10. Neonska dekleta
