Self-released
Release date: August 21, 2021
Production: Jernej Zoran
Album length: 32.58 min
Genre: Art Rock / Instrumental Rock
Rating: 9.5/10
Well, some musicians talk and talk and nothing ever happens, while others keep quiet and work and create, diligently. Jernej Zoran, the tireless, endlessly flexible, big-hearted musician from Dolenjska, a true rocker and guitar master, definitely belongs in the second league.
Here’s his new album, with the full-blooded title “What Happens If I Press This Button?”. It’s a new all-instrumental effort that Jernej sort of quietly foreshadowed with last year’s EP “Deuce”, which came out in early January, right before the now well-known movie script we’re all living through in real life. Speaking of the “Deuce” EP (RockLine review), it’s worth pointing out that Jernej tacked three tracks from the EP onto the tail end of the new album (the “cinematic” Swamp (Oh Yeah), Blue and the “esoteric” Daydreamin’). Blue, with its more-than-phenomenal solo, where you can feel, among other things, the musician’s momentary “switching off” and where the influences of Peter Green and Jeff Beck blend together, could easily have gone on and on. These three tracks can be seen as bonus material on the album, so from here on we’ll focus mainly on the first eight.
Anyone familiar with Zoran’s earlier work will pretty much know what to expect from the new studio release “What Happens If I Press This Button?”. It goes without saying that an album like this could be welcomed with open arms under the review lens of foreign music media too. It’s fully instrumental, and the track titles are all in English. We know Jernej also writes music suited for vocals, but this time he felt it was time to record something instrumental. “What Happens If I Press This Button?” can also be read as a clever maneuver to get this guy’s name noticed beyond the borders of our little corner of the world. The album has all the predispositions, artistically too, because as a whole it’s, once again, a gorgeous achievement.
Eleven shorter pieces flow into one another so often that you lose the sense you’re listening to separate songs. At times it feels like one track with many faces, even though that’s not the case. The album is a crafty genre stew in which Jernej shows off not only a multilayered soaking-up of inspiration and the transformation of a wide, varied palette of ideas into the language of music, but also confirms all his excellence once again, both technically and in terms of compositional and arrangement maturity. A few of the solos are downright stunning. That goes for the organic feel of the album’s natural sonic pastels, and at times especially for the “one take” moment of soloing inspiration that Jernej brilliantly caught more than once and laid down on tape. It’s hard to pick favorites, since these are artistically detailed (self-contained) pieces with a chiseled, personal, confessional dossier, separated from one another by shifts in genre and musical expression.
The opening title instrumental is a cheeky funky catalyst that, in all its playfulness, sends the listener off on the album’s journey. The curious yet contemplative interplay of flageolets and long sweeping lines of fretless bass in Meet Me At Midnight hints right from the start that this is a track full of mystical yearning and gentle, exploratory tones, which, above all, bow to the pursuit of musical catchiness, and that goes for the album as a whole. There’s the cheeky rock’n’roller Great Wide Open, and the musically super-conciliatory and flirty Chanse Encounters, accompanied by shades of southern rock. In the middle of the album sits the mysterious Antares, which, especially on the arrangement side, shows the exceptional artistic maturity Jernej Zoran reaches on the new album. A track of many faces and mood swings, it counts as one of the creative peaks of Jernej’s new effort. MCDN Station is a more-than-welcome artistic leap into ‘Balkanesque’ territory, both rhythmically and musically, and a new, distinctive detour on the album that Jernej crossed beautifully with his native rock ‘n’ roll sentiment. Astroglider is a track whose compositional framework Joe Satriani could easily have put together too, except that here it’s Jernej Zoran laying the embellishments inside the leading motifs, finding far more inspiration in listening to rock and roll classics like David Gilmour and Jeff Beck. Not counting the three extra tracks from the “Deuce” EP, we can say that Falling From Grace is the closing piece of this album. Falling From Grace is a melancholic track with a chiseled lead motif that offers the sensual, organic warmth of the recognizable tone of Jernej’s guitar playing. We can say it’s one of the finest examples that puts on display, in one place, not only Jernej’s compositional style, which has hit the highest point of creative inspiration, but also Jernej’s personality as a musical artist. A heap of finesse. The skillful use of tremolo, or rather its placement in the core of the song, the series of delicate ‘pull off’ bends, and the constantly refined placement of notes in general, plus all the other filigree fine-tuning that comes with it, are just the icing on the cake of this guitar matador’s brilliant statement. Falling From Grace, the closer, is the culmination of it all.
Jernej Zoran has once again completed his mission with flawless merits. Given the high creative standard he has gradually built up on his studio albums so far, it’s heartening that Jernej’s creativity of this kind is nowhere near running dry. If we draw the bottom line under the musical substance of “What Happens If I Press This Button?”, only one conclusion holds: “Jernej. We’ve gotten picky and we want more! Hats off for a new brilliant achievement.”
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. What Happens If I Press This Button?
2. Chance Encounters
3. Meet Me At Midnight
4. Great Wide Open
5. Antares
6. MCDN Station
7. Astroglider
8. Falling From Grace
9. Swamp (Oh Yeah)
10. Blue
11. Daydreamin’
Lineup:
Jernej Zoran – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Darko Vlahović – bass guitar
Brian Petry – drums
Miro Tomšič – drums
