Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Goran Krmac Kvartet
Label: Celinka
Release: 2016
Duration: 39:40
Rating: 4/5
Goran Krmac, Janez Dovč and Nino Mureškič are known together as the formation Baraka, who put out a self-titled studio album four years ago. Add harpist Eduardo Raon to the mix and what do you get? Yep. Logical. A fourth element, and Baraka turns straight into Goran Krmac Kvartet. Goran is a tuba player who, much like his (career-long) indispensable buddy and collaborator Dovč (the one credited with accordion), has lifted this instrument, which we mostly know from village folk bashes, out of its usual spot and given it a special place in the musical universe. That way the tuba got a whole new dimension of artistic expression, a pedigree of its own: a tune of ethno-jazz tomfoolery, backed by free-spirited understanding, stretching to electronic sound experiments and even flirting with classical music. In this way Krmac handed the tuba a new quality of popularizing itself, because listening to the album »Pozabljena ljudstva« turns into a temptation of shocking bliss that fascinates even the most demanding music gourmet. Longtime partners in crime Dovč and Krmac are, in this respect, a perfect creative pair, though this time around the compositional initiative belongs to Goran Krmac.
Playing favorites with any one instrument in this review simply doesn’t hold up. Harpist Eduardo Raon, true, doesn’t step into the spotlight quite as intensely in this whole story as the instrumental integration of the other three members does (the exceptions being, for example, the excellent, gentle and fragile Mistika, which sounds, as its title says, »mystical« and mysterious«, or the solo moments where all three other instruments »step aside« for the harp – the track Listen Very Carefully), but his use of the harp in a musical body like the one the quartet forms is just as much a new story about the unusual sonic expression of an instrument that many people generally believe goes no further than the saccharine, commercial »ringa-raj« of Andreas Vollenweider and, as a result, the teary faces of moved moms, aunts, grandmas, nonnas and signoras. And Nino? Nino stays Nino. If the ear doesn’t deceive, he once again couldn’t resist the marimba (the intro to Tatovi vode), and his rhythmic textures once more do the job of effectively filling up the sonic landscape that the rest of the quartet »serves« him. Mureškič remains, in this respect, a master of the manual skills of a seasoned percussionist, his web of unbridled improvisational ingredients a rowdy child of the wide open spaces of his imagination.
The band also has a bagful of cheekiness and blasphemously teasing childishness in its playing, which you run into on the track Slim & Fat. It opens with a »collapsed« two-voice harmony on Goran Krmac’s tuba. One note of the harmony is »chubby«, the other »skinny«. Just like the track’s title says. Meanwhile, Mureškič, with his percussive curiosity, quickly shifts into an all-out offensive that wipes out any predictable template of motif formatting, and later in the same track Janez takes over Goran’s opening motif on the accordion. And so on. Toward the kingdom of unexpected turns inside the quartet’s joyful comedy.
What’s most appealing about this album, besides the basic instruments that, in an unusual manner of coexistence, build the quartet’s musical body, is the word »programming«, which signs off on how every single instrument is used. Janez Dovč plays a big role here, a sort of reformer and innovator (at least in Slovenia) when it comes to exploiting the accordion (in the sense of knowing the whole physics of the instrument). In this respect Goran Krmac Kvartet address the listener right from the start with the track Zrak niha. Oscillation, waves, ahhh, that vibe. Sonic rarefaction and compression. In succession. Sound. Music. For a general feel of how the accordion (and the tuba and harp too) often functions on this album, look for the answer in Dovč’s studio release »AkordiOn« as well. In short, the band exploits special sound effects through programming and in this way smashes the settled forms of expected templates, shocking the listener by offering them the »unexpected« (in exchange for the expected). The plethora of varied sonic tricks the quartet coaxes out of its instruments gives the arrangements a distinctive face, a musical character of their own. Put differently, it generates eclecticism. There are certainly »echo-delay« effect tricks here too, but the band isn’t overstuffed. In Tatovi vode, for instance, musical minimalism is enough, based precisely on the use of »echo delay« effects in sound programming, and the sheer result of creating atmosphere can carry the listener off into a state of cerebral rapture. That very track is the musical high point of expression in itself when we weigh up the programming side of this album.
As the album title hints, Goran and the crew try to take us to a world we’ve forgotten. Let’s not forget that we come from nature, that we’re children of the sun (as Yes would have put it in 1973), even though in this new age we do everything to subjugate our own mother (and we’ll pay for it dearly). The quartet’s primal approach, which first and foremost follows its own instincts, and as a consequence paints original sound structures and rhythmic textures, tries to take the listener back to prehistoric times, when the first human drummed with bones on the stalactites of cave depths and discovered the wonder we call »sound«. True, the structures are (loosely) brought together in an ethno-jazz way, but on the other hand the group doesn’t hide its fascination with the world of neoclassical music either. Take, for example, the closing section of Tatovi vode, or the whole title track (which could easily be used as a film soundtrack). The tracks Ples and the closing Rondo alla Gorchi contain the most classical sound in the way they use all four building blocks of the sound. That’s hardly surprising, since they were recorded live in June 2015 at the GodiBodi festival, when the quartet was »in its infancy«.
To keep this from running too long: »Pozabljena ljudstva« is a new album of pure eclectic bliss. It’s a provocative musical oddball, and the exploratory adventurism of a symbiotic relationship between an unusual combination of four instruments, yet one that’s generally tolerant and contemplative in its dialogue, gives it a unique, unrepeatable and instantly recognizable place in the musical universe. Not just in Slovenia, but on the wider international scene too. An album that, in its sonic strangeness, driven by the bubbling, unbridled free-spirited mindset of the layered, genre-unburdened musical understanding of this quartet’s seasoned building blocks, wakes you up and rouses you for real.
Goran Krmac Kvartet – Ples (live, Godibodi festival, Hostel Celica, Ljubljana, June 2015):
Lineup
Goran Krmac – tuba, programming
Janez Dovč – accordion, programming
Eduardo Raon – harp, programming
Nino Mureškič – percussion, programming
Production
Igor Vuk
Track list
1. Zrak niha
2. Mistika
3. Ples
4. Listen Very Carefully
5. Pozabljena ljudstva
6. Slim & Fat
7. Tatovi vode
8. Rondo alla Gorchi
