Label: Celinka
Year of release: 2014
Production: Boris Romih
Album length: 45.28 min
Genre: Singer / Songwriter
Andrej Trobentar’s artistic road has been no walk in the park. The man is a proper legend. A trained academic painter, he helped build an important chunk of the Slovenian music scene back when the adventurous core of its pioneering spirit was hot property in the music business and homegrown creativity was properly rewarded. The romantic days are long gone. Andrej Trobentar is an artist who absolutely deserves honest recognition for what he’s given the Slovenian music scene. Through the odd, wonderful creativity of Sedem svetlobnih let and Šest km na uro, back when Andrej was evolutionarily shedding his skin and establishing himself above all as a singer-songwriter, and especially when the hard-hitting eclectic rock outfit NLP (Na lepem prijazni) came along, Trobentar, with his one-of-a-kind theater of unsuspected vocal charisma and the exceptional message value of his sharpened, masterfully metaphor-wrapped poetic preaching, wrote a special story in our Slovenian music space and gave it a rich shake-up. Abroad, with those creative predispositions, he could have earned his bread in the seventies with bands full of avant-garde leanings, like the British musical provocateurs Gong, Henry Cow, Soft Machine, Comus or Maching Mole.
Interestingly, NLP got reactivated not once but twice. First in 2005, when the band released the album “Potaplja se raj” under the name Na lepem prijazni Mutant, and then in 2013, when the lineup, again as Na lepem prijazni, put out “Tudi če se vrnemo nazaj”. Even though Na lepem prijazni are currently active at least “on paper”, Trobentar clearly felt once more that working in a band format holds him back artistically, so he went looking for a creative space for his new ideas that gives him total freedom to make them real. And so a pure singer-songwriter album, “Dar”, was born.
The album “Dar” is Andrej’s personal, confessional story, and at the same time a perfect document that couldn’t embody Trobentar’s musical philosophy and creative depth any better. Past, present and, last but not least, future. It’s got his (traditional) unbridled fondness for the popular “musical excess”, or let’s rather say his fondness for the eccentricity of musical experiment, which always nudges him a little away from clear genre pigeonholes.
This prolific artist has lined up a full 15 musical pieces on “Dar”. In just 45 minutes of music. Even from that “passing” bit of trivia it’s obvious that the message of the poetry plays the dominant role here. That said, you shouldn’t overlook the rich, idea-packed variety of the arrangements in the songs themselves. Even though they’re stripped-down and organic-sounding, some of the tracks reach for expressive touchpoints with the sound and spirit of Na lepem prijazni, and through them you can also see the link between Trobentar’s elemental musical perception and the work of Begnagrad as well as Buldožer. Trobentar has been connected with both bands throughout his career. Moments like these work on the album “from the background”, yet they offer an important contrast and magnify the content of the message through the lived-in, dynamic vocal chameleonism of Andrej Trobentar, who also proves himself a very good guitarist on this record. There are several such moments, and gentle shades of psychedelia are caught up in them too. That’s the case with Misel toward the end, with one of the most lucid songs on the album, Lovec, and earlier with the bluesy Gosta je hosta, which could keep company with some of the Jethro Tull songs from their first three studio albums, with harmonica in place of flute. Soldat belongs in this category too, where a lively bass line plays an important role alongside Andrej Trobentar’s bitterly accusing vocal. The rhythm section opens up in the instrumental passages, while the saxophone (Lovec, Soldat) makes for hugely compatible company to Trobentar’s voice in deepening the feeling.
The album opens with a teasing, easygoing Stisnem te k sebi, which immediately puts Trobentar’s “vocal theater” front and center. The playfully cheeky opening, with a dash of country folk and bluesy melodic seasoning, Cinična Val za valom turns the mood upside down, and its wisecracking note could well be dedicated to the pirates of Lake Bled storming the island. With Sava, which carries a rock fix with embellishments of electric guitar, the record’s sermon picks up a “green tongue”. Quite a few songs further into the album point to Andrej Trobentar’s deep ecological awareness, to how entwined and connected he is with nature and planet Earth. This is a guy who knows what love is. More than once Trobentar openly settles scores with the delusions of human greed and rapacity that cripple the healthy functioning of the blue planet (let’s hope, for now, that it’s still working). Just how expressive and powerful Trobentar’s charismatic voice is gets underlined by four “a cappella” performances, where he deftly uses his gift for vocal chameleonism and delivers the message of the poetry with real drama! Those are Breza, Lev, Košana (which a gospel choir of swaying Black grannies could join with no trouble) and the closing Med nebom in zemljo.
On “Dar”, Trobentar is a grimacing cynic, and wrapped inside that cynicism is the author’s pain, voiced through a poetic core of masterfully tuned metaphors. Behind the “mask” of mocking cheek, the album also holds moments of great tenderness, which land deeply in Mravlje. There, the poetry, carried by the melody of a Slovenian folk saying, is masterfully amplified with additional string arrangements, so the song also achieves a special sense of calm and gentleness. A fully formed singer-songwriter charisma, which through its own deep experience creates the album’s one-of-a-kind confessional adventure, simply seduces and enchants.
An album Trobentar needed as an artist to give voice to the current state of his spirit and senses. Unvarnished, sincere and heartfelt. A rich, deeply moving and confessional “gift” of art in the truest sense of the word, one that wears a metaphorical mask of mocking jabs, while underneath it hides a message so powerful it will shake you with its honesty and knock the ground out from under your feet!
A minor observation that has little to do with the music, if anything, but still. The middle of the booklet’s interior is spread with a photo of overgrown lakeside. Greenery everywhere and the pristine, untouched blue of the lake. But on the left side of the photo, stalks with lance-shaped leaves of a non-native invasive plant, Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), catch the eye; in full bloom it grows over two meters tall. Maybe you’ve come across impassable “plantations” of tall stalks with purple flower clusters along some river or stream in summer, ones that “explode” when you touch them? An uncustomed import from the Himalayas. And yet with a purpose.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.5 / 10
Track list:
1. Stisnem te k sebi
2. Val za valom
3. Sava
4. Pred tvojimi jasami
5. Breza
6. Prebujena
7. Lev
8. Zlati meč
9. Lovec
10. Gosta je hosta
11. Košana
12. Soldat
13. Misel
14. Mravlja
15. Med nebom in zemljo
Musicians:
Andrej Trobentar – vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica
Nino De Gleria – bass guitar, double bass, “fretless” bass guitar, kalimba, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Jelena Ždrale – violin, viola
Vlado Špindler – accordion
Bogo Šečnikar – clarinet, baritone saxophone
Boris Romih – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, percussion, sampling
Jani Tutta – drums
Aleš Rendla – drums
