Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Date: 04.11.2009
With a live broadcast from Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška, Val 202, the second program of Radio Slovenia, presented the live compilation CD “VAL 09 – Imamo dobro glasbo”, which carries on the tradition of the first edition of its kind from last year. The whole point of this collection of 15 tracks, picked from a pool of songs submitted by a whopping 140 different artists, is to make it clear that we’ve got good music in Slovenia! And the fact that Val 202 is the one pulling all the strings matters even more, since it’s still the most listened-to radio frequency in the country. It’s worth pointing out something even the deafest listener can hardly miss: this is a station whose content is served up by excellent music connoisseurs, analysts and reviewers. In today’s age of hyperplasia of independent radio frequencies, which with their mostly sloppy, undefined “mush of everything” (read: programming) pull listeners further away from the definition of a “healthy, middle-of-the-road music offering”, these professional music journalists and music experts are the last “healthy, unsawn root” in the Slovenian radio landscape.
After the press conference, led by the jurors, that is, the people responsible for shaping the content of the new compilation CD, Andrej Karoli, Jernej Vene, Igor Bašin and Jure Longyka, who kept the presentation of the CD short and sweet, we were all invited up to the top floor of Kino Šiška. There we could see for ourselves how some of the promising Slovenian acts featured on the new “Val 09” CD hold up on stage, too.
Host Jure Longyka, a.k.a. Paolo Maldini (ex-FC Milan) – check out the hairdo – guided us eager folks with practiced ease from one act to the next as they took the stage. First to wake up the crowd were MC Laren. They contributed the track Delfina to the CD “Val 09”, and they played it for the audience as well. This multi-member band cultivates a flirty, temperamental brand of rock with a strong emphasis on rhythmic, danceable grooves, including some funk foundations, and it’s definitely a nice shot of color on the Slovenian scene. Richly layered arrangements written for a classic rock quartet, to which MC Laren add horns (trumpet, saxophone) and multi-part singing from a pair of lead male and female voices, drew plenty of attention. The band is really well rehearsed and looks completely confident on stage. Of course, the members are still young and… The musical character itself is tailor-made for growth that can steer the band in the future to enrich their stage show, especially at moments that call for more playfulness, mischief, even cheekiness and arrogance, some sexual flirtation. That will of course come with maturing. So a bit more polishing of a more provocatively eye-catching stage look, and of livelier, more dynamic, more energetic performances as a result of working on the shows themselves, could really “push” the band forward!
Second on stage was the trio of Katarina Juvančič, Dejan Lapanja and special guest Andraž Mazi on acoustic slide guitar. For “Val 09”, Katarina Juvančič and Dejan Lapanja contributed probably the biggest musical detour among the CD’s 15 tracks, titled Uej Uej (Magdalenca). It got an “unplugged” treatment, with a special country touch brought in mostly by Andraž on banjo. So a fully re-dressed, seriously restructured track points to three musicians on stage who can absorb a wide musical spectrum without limits and who wisely (modestly and unnoticeably – which is the whole point!) follow the basic principle: “I do what feels right to me!” In that given moment. In its original version on the CD, the song works as a mix of Idrija lace-makers’ chants into which “Pero Gnus” sneaked with his out-of-tune guitar of exuberant “falconry”, and that’s exactly what gives it its special recognizable stamp on the CD. Andraž Mazi, who looks like Captain Beefhart’s sidekick and independent self-taught musician Bonnie “Prince” Billy, brought a really interesting character to the songs with his slide playing. The Slovenian folk song “Je pa davi slan’ca pala” came across especially vividly, in a provocative, almost bluesy take from all three performers.
We leaned back into some rock-punk suspension when the three lads of “Adijo kultura” took the stage. Fairly static at first, they kicked off with Sneg, which is on the “Val 09” CD, and then cut loose on stage in earnest, as if answering my wishes. Actually, Sneg is a track that doesn’t capture the band’s true face, since for the rest of their set they sounded a lot less ear-friendly than in Sneg, and they pretty convincingly undermined the foundations of the “urban culture” of Kino Šiška’s halls, which is supposedly the point of the band’s name (and from that I conclude, of their basic motive). The band, from Hotedrščica near Logatec, rounded off the set with a “probable” title (I didn’t manage to dig up the exact info), Ovce, which cleverly picked up the “stamping-machine” phrase of the empty-headed holes where the majority of the “exalted rabble” belongs, wallowing in the abundance of prosperity and sacrificing their individual identity for the common good, and “beheaded” it in punk language. Convincing provocation! Fair play!
Feedback from Tolmin belong to the range of Slovenian bands that build their expression on a foundation of jazz-rock fusion. The track Zbogom, which got them onto the “Val 09” CD, is in that respect the most “off to the side”, or put differently, a “less typical” definition of the band’s broader musical nature. Judging by what I heard (I was listening to them for the first time in my life), I can conclude that Feedback are a more ear-accessible outfit that leans on blending jazz on one side and rock on the other. That gives them just the right cue for reaching wider recognition on the Slovenian music scene. The band is active and incredibly vital! Two days ago they released a hot new studio effort titled “Pro mehanika” (2009). For the average ear, Feedback are just the right spot between sweet easygoingness and exploratory musical playfulness!
The colorful evening was wrapped up by special “secret” guests Stranci, who appeared on last year’s first edition of the CD, “Val 08”, with the track Rdeča raketa. Unfortunately, the aftermath of partying with Porcupine Tree in the same venue the day before left this article’s author with serious damage to the brain’s processor, so at this point he took his leave and sped off into the dark night toward a warm, safe bed. Still, nobody doubted for a second that partying with Stranci was anything but worth the visit and the enjoyment of their debauched performance.
One more remark. It doesn’t even matter whether the jury had a hand in this too, but the bands that performed sit on the compilation album at track positions 1 (MC Laren), 2 (Katarina Juvančič & Dejan Lapanja), 14 (Adijo kultura) and 15 (Feedback). That is, the first two and the last two tracks on the CD. These four acts nailed the essence of the current diversity of the genre spectrum that the Slovenian music scene has to offer, a scene we hope might one day occupy and shape the healthy, middle-of-the-road mainstream of Slovenian popular rock music, and not just the healthy character of Val 202’s radio program!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
