Label: Self-released
Release year: 2012
Album length: 119:35
Rating: 10 / 10
I welcomed the album “Fluid” (judging by the cover, you’d think it was an ad for a new mineral water) with great joy when it landed in my hands completely unexpectedly, right before my interview with the band džeZZva. And since I count as an absolute layman when it comes to classical music, it’s a real challenge to figure out how to put together a few sensible words about the feelings its music stirs up.
The creator of the album “Fluid” is Dejan Berden, otherwise the keyboardist of džeZZVa, an absolute one-of-a-kind in music. This pianist and music teacher from Prekmurje isn’t just an extremely prolific composer and arranger (and producer, too), but also a musical visionary of a special sort. He’s in high demand on the Slovenian music scene. Over his career he’s racked up collaborations with plenty of well-known Slovenian acts, among them Vasko Atanasovski, Marko Črnčec, Jure Ivanušič, Lačni Franz, Ethnotrip, Patetico, Siti hlapci, Jure Tori, the avant-garde, completely bonkers project Od Franclna možgani,… and the collaborations reach all the way to names like Alfi Nipič and Edvin Fliser. Although Dejan is a man who prefers to keep quiet and modestly “invisible” in his actions, working “from the background” – that is, he usually turns up in music projects as a studio musician or a helper shaping arrangements (co-arranger) – as a solo virtuoso he can boast an impressive stack of solo studio releases, including the double CD “Fluid”, which is devoted strictly to piano improvisation. Even though this album came out back in 2012, the printing of the physical CD’s booklet reveals the year 2016. So it’s either a reissue or, in general, the first release of the album in physical form.
When we talk about Dejan Berden, softness, subtlety and sensitivity are definitely the main trump cards of this delicate-souled musician’s playing and expressive power. At the same time, you can’t overlook the sheer mileage of experience he’s armed with, which generates the exceptional quality of all the fine mechanics and details in his piano playing. Dejan recorded the music on the album “Fluid” in just three sessions. That sounds very routine, yet over all his long years of playing Dejan has also become an incredibly seasoned musician. Between August and November 2011, Dejan stepped into the recording studio just three times and laid down sixteen demanding compositions, and we ended up with almost two hours of instrumental music, a unique set of original piano improvisations.
In the years right before džeZZva came together, Dejan’s fingers were itching especially badly, and in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 he was positively bursting with inspiration. The result was a series of recorded and released solo albums on which Dejan tries his hand at the pure adventurism of solo escapades, the kind that the sheer purism of piano playing offers.
As the name itself suggests, the double-CD album “Fluid” is, in its basic vision and idea, devoted to the musician’s communication with the water environment. It’s an artist’s response to contact with water in all its forms and its effects on the surroundings. It might be just sediment, bubbling, reflection or rapids, which is also how the individual compositions are titled. What feelings do bubbling, reflection and/or rapids stir up in a musician, and how will he encode those reactions, translate them into the language of music? Will he successfully get into those states or not? That’s the biggest riddle and, at the same time, the allure of documents like “Fluid”. So every track is tied to water. Dejan, too, translates his feelings through the language of his own distinctive piano playing. He’s completely on the ball the whole way through, absolutely devoted and immersed, passionately seething! What’s interesting is that despite the complex nature of the compositions, in their overall identities they feel close and listenable throughout, and for the most part the album works in such a way that you can fully meditate to it or even fall asleep. It will touch you most if you know how to switch off your mind for a moment and “float away and drift” with the music.
Over the years the man has developed a completely distinctive musical voice, an incredibly cunning blend of classical music, jazz and world music, and over all of it the melody of the traditional folk makeup of the Prekmurje plains shows through, too. So it’s clear that this release is also marked by a melody of constantly yearning melancholy, which can also be sensed in the music of the band džeZZva. Over almost 120 minutes of music, these elements, or building blocks, of jazz, classical and world music in Berden’s artistic character are arranged differently and reveal and express (reflect) themselves differently as he plays. One thing is clear, though, and it’s a very important one. The album “Fluid” is armed to the teeth with a sense of spontaneity and unexpected twists. Although the framework of the compositions is set, in the playing they develop as if they were only just coming into being and growing out of the artist’s ever-sparkling inspiration, and as a result the album bends under a thicket of improvisational escapades, which are of course the greatest thrill, or challenge, for every music gourmet consuming “Fluid”.
Despite his exceptional talents and incredible artistic insight, which can boast an absolute one-of-a-kind in jazz expression itself, Dejan Berden stays modest in his goals. His younger colleague (no less exceptional) Marko Črnčec, for instance, has launched a successful international career, and Dejan has outstanding potential for that, too. And yet Dejan doesn’t seek or demand sensation for what he does, so he doesn’t shout about it from the rooftops. As a result, his name on the Slovenian music scene is often even unjustly overlooked.
A wide-open mind, and not just the multilayered musical polish of the artist as captured by Berden’s music on these two discs, but above all a sense of constant openness and a thrill for experimenting, where you never know where it will take you, make it easy to picture Dejan in the company of giants of such a craft as, among others, John Zorn or the late Frank Zappa. There’s an extreme expressive gulf between those two legends of avant-garde provocation, but the endless, undefined musical horizon of the truth-loving, freedom-loving purism of all the adventures in Dejan Berden’s piano playing is just as vast, and he is first and foremost a man of mood music.
While listening to the sensational piano improvisations on the album “Fluid”, you’ll be gripped by a craving to dig deeper into the original music of Dejan Berden. He remains an uncut diamond and one of the best-kept secrets of the Slovenian music universe.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
CD1.:
1. Botanika
2. Žajfnica
3. Ples
4. Vrtinec
5. Vodni pulz
6. Usedlina
7. Vodni pulz 2
8. Odsev
CD2.:
1. Panonska fantazija
2. Neurbana pesem
3. Pulzar
4. Ples 2
5. Brbotanje
6. Strunanje
7. Brzice
8. Odsev 2
Musicians:
Dejan Berden – piano
