Artist: Adam
Label: Self-released
Release: 2010
Duration: 78.04
Rating: 4.5/5
Every once in a while a miracle happens: you get an album by a Slovenian rock band and you just can’t run out of enthusiastic things to say about it. Adam! A band with a modern take on rock music. Alternative, challenging and, most importantly, more than just promising! Guitarist Peter Dekleva is probably a pretty familiar name to those of you who follow the stars of the Slovenian mainstream. The man has worn out his guitar neck for Big foot mama, Laibach, Dan D, Tinkara Kovač, Srečna mladina, Alya, Jadranka Juras, Sausages, among others… The lineup is rounded out by Damir Lisica – Dado (vocals) from Anavrin, Gregor Jakac (drums), who jumped ship from Tida, and bassist Anej Kočevar (Anavrin). In short, seasoned, proven names who’ve huffed and puffed a good heap of miles on the Slovenian scene.
Adam don’t cultivate any particular fanatical obsession with the legacy of the Old Testament. Still, we can draw parallels between the first “man” made in the so-called image of God and the legacy of this band’s music. Just as Adam was (supposedly) the first officially created earthly biped, the band’s music is so special that we can say a band like Adam has never existed on the face of this planet.
This is a band that has brilliantly fused the heritage of Slovenian melos into rock music. The lyrics are in Slovenian. That’s a good choice. They’ve got the required measure of intelligence, without a speck of dryness, and carry a compact, tangible message that’s not hard to unravel even through the grip of metaphors. Adam are dark, thanks above all to Damir Lisica’s vocal performance. The color of his voice and his articulation are behind that. Lisica deftly exploits the space left by the guitar melody and tangled up by the rhythmic framework. He maneuvers his vocals with experience and, with a touch of “detachment”, successfully brings the emotional side of the messages to life. You can feel a longing in the air to break free from the shackles of everyday life into which the little man of the middle class has been thrown, in a self-important, comfortably conformist (and, on top of it all, these days) morally devalued Slovenian society
Adam is a band that sits outside the set molds of rock music. The sound is organic! Besides using clean to half-clean tones in the chords, Dekleva pays attention to building a rich sonic backdrop, with delicate, simple yet hugely effective tricks leaning on pedal effects, which give the music a touch of special atmosphere, a constant, compact shifting into different moods of the personal spirit in the moment. Dekleva uses a truly wide expressive palette to create rich and manifold atmospheres. He achieves this through the strong, confident expertise of the musician himself, who has built up a lot of routine and musical knowledge. So it’s no surprise that he creates witty images by twisting the basic picture of the organic sound to the extreme limits of the spectrum of sonic color (heavy reverb, a plethora of “crunch” effects, poisonous wah-wah, delays, stereo chorus etc…). This combination sits especially well in the restrained, shyly unfolding course of the songs Novi svet or Odnosi med srečnimi.
Behind Dekleva stands a solid rhythmic framework which, with great insight, musical flexibility and the necessary touch of “chameleonism” for creating a moment of unpredictability, serves throughout as a faithful support in the sophisticated blending of artistic freedom of expression with melodic receptiveness and listenability, which brings Adam closer to the broad receptiveness of Slovenian music audiences.
The band can boast an exceptional number of original songs that radiate a top-notch mix of rebellious rock energy, a witty play of sonic curtains and rapid-fire shifts in the sequencing of moods. There are as many as 18 songs on the album. Luckily, the band manages a rare virtue here: it keeps the album interesting from start to finish, since the arrangement structures of the songs are varied enough and the sequence of tracks is thoroughly shuffled into a highly dynamic body. There’s a wide range of basic motifs the songs are built on. This wit, or inspiredness, in delivering motivic variety keeps Adam’s recognizable musical signature intact throughout.
The 18 songs on the album are not an easily conquered mass for the listener. That’s the album’s virtue, because it creeps under your skin slowly and lasts a long time. Bit by bit you uncover the individual veils of the sonic collages, as well as the moods of the songs. That’s also a rare virtue in Slovenia. We’re talking about songs that contain a nice dose of musical experiment, as well as an innate sense for building compact, melodically catchy tunes. Even ones that could land on the radio airwaves without any major upheaval (on musically “open and understanding” and independent radio stations, of course).
The song ČB Spletni tok is the album’s moment where experiment meets melodic finality (the chorus) in a wonderfully compatible handshake, and in that respect it reaches the album’s finest vocabulary. Also extremely interesting are the song Novi svet and the exploratory, experimental folder-fold Včeraj, danes, jutri, where Adam give the feeling of deliberately searching for the original melancholic, folk-song-ish melos and skillfully (with atmospheric seasoning) laying it over the grips of rock riff and rhythm. This inherited Slovenian melos, which even the “ponarodele” folk-pop songs don’t hide, is taken up even more directly by the acoustic Pridih. It gives Damir plenty of room for improvisational manipulation while effectively keeping a Slovenian melancholic touch in it (what a fitting word!). The choral songs Ključ hardly need singling out when you’re looking for the original Slovenian melos. Pot v neznano is reminiscent of Pat Metheny’s instrumental Last Train Home. The rhythmic bed picks up the huffing of a steam locomotive, with the nimble play of bright tones from Peter’s guitar laid over it. No straining, no overdoing it and no needless squandering of tonalities. Always in an enjoyable dose.
Dom stands out on the album. This is a song the band could easily adapt into a radio hit. Levers of accessible electronic sounds, short and compact melodic design, with an excellent compatibility with the dreamy vocals. The rhythmic bed stems from the grips of the eighties, when Depeche Mode opened up new horizons for the world of music with their electronic approach. Dom proves the wide musical range of experimentation that is understood by the essence of Adam. Herointeror is also a standout, which the band occasionally rolls through a rocky, almost Sabbath-like riff. Of course, in the production, it’s disguised, dressed up in its Sunday best in the “Adamian creed”.
“Lighter” and more “direct” in their definition are the opener Teater (V dvoranah domišljije) with its rhythmic bed, quite funky and full of movement, the especially melodious Dar, with an excellent black-and-white combination between verse and chorus (even the sound of a theremin is added), Grlo brez odmeva with a modern U2-style rhythm, the “grooved-up” funk detour Brez strahu, and Otroci brzine, which in its rock intensity, melos and (above all!) verse delivery lightly brushes against Siddharta. The sophisticated moments of the album stress the subtle, character-driven side of the vocals, which is defined above all by the new, simple organic design of the melodically superb song Odnosi med srečnimi. The band also has an exceptional sense of never overdoing the experiment, instead effectively following its inner feel for keeping the red thread of melodic finality. The bright rocker Modrost, with added string arrangements, speaks once more in favor of this conclusion.
You’ll struggle to pin down the highlights of this album, because its boundaries are, given the generally predictable form of Slovenia’s alternative-leaning bands, harder to determine this time around. With “Alfa” Adam clearly stand out from that average. They’re a prime example of excellent blending of melodic finality and compactness with just the right measure of musical experiment. With their understanding and broad musical horizons, they manage to build a specific musical atmosphere that’s something completely new and not yet heard on the Slovenian scene. This is a combination of a quartet that comes across brilliantly in the studio. The album has excellent live production, which reveals that a real bond of creative working chemistry has been woven among the guys. The feeling that the band played a concert in the studio is definitely there.
Adam are therefore an exceptional addition to the Slovenian music scene, a kind of fresh discovery of an unexplored musical horizon. The album “Alfa” is a real recommendation for all new bands on where to head in search of their own essence. Not in the sense of imitation, it can serve as a handy guide that points you toward how to express the music playing in your head and deliver it in a unique, one-of-a-kind way. “Alfa” is therefore a new milestone for the Slovenian music scene. Adam are a band that will appeal both to the less demanding listeners and to all the (surviving) music gourmets.
Lineup
Damir Lisica – vocals, theremin, keyboards
Peter Dekleva – guitar, backing vocals, programming, keyboards, percussion, vibraphone, whistle
Anej Kočevar – bass guitar, programming, glockenspiel, backing vocals
Gregor Jakac – drums, percussion, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Andrej Završnik – drums, vibraphone
Žiga Gombač – singing saw
Jure Rozman – timpani, flexatone, gong
Boštjan Artiček – church organ
Production
Adam
Track List
1. Teater (V dvorani domišljije)
2. Dar
3. Grlo brez odmeva
4. Brez strahu
5. Modrost
6. Otroci brzine
7. Alfa
8. Novi svet
9. Dom
10. Revolucija
11. Odnosi med srečnimi
12. Herointeror
13. ČB spletni tok
14. Punker
15. Pot v neznano
16. Pridih
17. Včeraj, danes, jutri
18. Ključ
