Label: ZKP RTV SLO
Release date: April 1, 2021
Production: Drago Popovič
Album length: 45:12 min
Genre: Art Rock/Rock’N’Roll
Rating: 10/10
“Črno na belem” is the eighth studio album from the now-legendary Slovenian rock’n’roll and art rock outfit Mi2. Widely regarded as one of the most beloved rock bands Slovenia has ever produced, Mi2 outgrew the “band” label a long time ago. They’ve become a household name, a true people’s rock band.
The big success of its predecessor “Čista jeba”, released in 2014, shows just how far the band has grown into a bona fide musical icon on Slovenian soil. That record went gold, and it also won them the Golden Pipe for album of the year.
So what is it about Mi2 that makes them stand out so sharply in the Slovenian rock league? Well, plenty, but you could say it comes down first and foremost to their incredibly strong lyrics, to that always sparkling delivery of hard-hitting messages, and to poetry interpreted through the very essence of rock’n’roll.
For the new album, the band has officially grown into a sextet. They’ve welcomed into the fold their longtime studio buddy, who has always helped out on keyboards: the fascinating Davor Klarič. Finally, you could say, the cherry on top. His joining Mi2 feels as natural and obvious as breathing oxygen. With Klarič on board, a whole new range of musical maneuvers the band hasn’t tried before opens up, and his contribution is unmistakable in the sound of the new album (especially in Kakor nekoč, where he shows off several faces of his sharp wit). In the awakening, upbeat Le zaspi, Klarič adds sounds we’re not exactly used to hearing from Mi2, yet they fit perfectly and feel completely at home, so the band has delivered something new here. Even though Davor has been tied to the group for ages, his playfulness, in the cheeky way he slips in decorative flourishes, is more noticeable and more pronounced now, and he communicates even more naturally with the sound of the new Mi2. The sound of the album as a whole speaks to you with incredible fullness: it’s thick, contrasty, hungry and organic. The production is outstanding, and the sonic picture brims with brilliant three-dimensionality. The bass is pushed forward in sharp contrast, flexing phrases through a sequence of musical lines, ever-present and creating an incredible “drive” across the record. The guitar “jangle” is emphasized and glorified. The best examples of the top-notch artistry and compositional maturity Mi2 have reached in 2021 are Le zaspi and Kakor nekoč, where the band masterfully builds and ramps up the atmosphere from verse to chorus. Then there’s Midva (without the number 2). A tune written in a sort of eighties style that could have slipped out of the U2 camp in 1983/84, except that Klarič’s Hammond sounds like it escaped from The Who’s “Who’s Next” (1971). Sly.
“Črno na belem” was made in bursts, in the stretch between 2017 and 2021. That just proves the guys were in no hurry. They approached things when the time was ripe, so nothing was forced. That’s why everything at Mi2 develops so naturally and with complete honesty. “Črno na belem” is an album that touches you limitlessly. An album that crushes the listener, again and again. And with Mi2 that’s nothing we haven’t known from before. They’re poets who, through melody and delivery, give the message that extra push that grabs you, stirs up emotions in you, moves you, gets to you. Considering the crew’s tremendous experience and the seven years the album took to develop, the result is absolutely brilliant, and the art charisma of this one-of-a-kind Slovenian rock’n’roll band shines again with full intensity. Spotless. Eleven songs are eleven self-contained entities, each with its own musical ID, its own file, its own story.
Mi2 remain socially critical (the punk rock-tinged, bristling Joj, joj, joj), cheeky, lucid and teasing (the stumbling cabaret waltz Čavun (backed by ‘honky tonk’ piano), Adam in Eva, the SKA funk explosion Proklete vijolice, the hard rock “juiced-up” Slepi šus, the closing waltz polka Počasi Matilda,…), but also mystical, especially sensual and melancholic, nostalgic and yearning (Kakor nekoč, Le zaspi, Lanski sneg, Midva). The tracks are artistically incredibly strong and will in time grow into evergreens of the band’s iron concert repertoire. As long as the band keeps writing such distinctive tunes as the endlessly combustible Proklete vijolice, it’ll keep a full-blooded connection with the psychological profile of those Trubar-style ‘young and fair Slovenes’. The vocal and songwriting partnership of Kregar and Dirnbek remains immortal.
“Črno na belem” is a phenomenal new album from Mi2. You can’t add a thing, you can’t take a thing away. A perfect work of great artistic aesthetics. Wiser, wilder, and better and better. The story doesn’t stop. In 2021, Mi2 remain firmly in the saddle of their musical vision and deliver a fascinating new chapter on their long and winding road of endlessly piercing, distinctive rock’n’roll preaching.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Joj joj joj
2. Midva
3. Ljubezen na žlico
4. Proklete vijolice
5. Slepi šus
6. Lanski sneg
7. Kakor nekoč
8. Le zaspi
9. Čavun
10. Adam in Eva
11. Počasi Matilda
Lineup:
Tone Kregar – vocals
Jernej Dirnbek – guitar, vocals
Egon Herman – guitar, backing vocals
Davor Klarič – keyboards, backing vocals
Robert Novak – bass guitar, backing vocals
Igor Orač Peter – drums, backing vocals
