Label: Office 4 Music
Release date: 09.01.2019
Production: Žarko Pak
EP length: 27.32
Genre: Alternative Rock / Indie Rock
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And here it is! The new release from Bališ, the Austrian-Carinthian band with Slovenian roots, and it’s more than just a single. It’s not a full-length new studio album, sure, but it’s an EP with seven tracks and a good twenty-seven minutes of pure-blooded rock. Six songs are originals, and one is a cover.
Bališ are a long-lived band. They’ve been at it for over two decades, and over time they’ve traded their elementary rock’n’roll mockery and sarcastic sting for a much bigger dose of musical catchiness, dressed in a modern alt-indie pop rock outline. Let’s say they’ve picked up a taste for artsy maturing along the way. The real musical transformation was firmly confirmed by the album »Novnos« (2010). Nine years later, the brand-new EP »eleven degrees« (»11°«) keeps that same musical direction. On »11°«, Bališ remain a collective with a recognizable rock character, one that squeezes huge musical allure and likability out of its basic ideas by composing with commitment and finesse, in lightly measured steps and strokes (the »less is more« principle). That artistic maturity, with a pop engraving added on top, knocks straight on the door of the radio airwaves. The EP is tweaked a bit to fit, since with it Bališ have carved out a middle track and delivered a record that »sweet-talks« Slovenian, Austrian, and broader Swiss and German radio waves all at once. With that in mind, the band decided to cover a hit by Austrian pop legend Georg Danzer called Daham bleibt Daham, which on »11°« is of course repackaged into the pure-blooded Bališ alphabet, the band’s typical arrangement recipe, so it sounds almost like one of their own songs even though it isn’t. So Einfach delivers yet another highly memorable and hyper-catchy musical chorus, keeping this record seriously primed for radio rotation. It’s interesting to see how remarkably adaptable the band is when it comes to the possible pitfalls of correct metrical use of both Slovenian and German. Bališ are very skilled here, and the proverbial hardness of both languages, which tends to surface in music especially, doesn’t diminish the big musical payoff and tightness of their songs. What’s also interesting is that the very timbre of Norbert Bališ’s wonderfully pleasant voice sounds just a shade different in each language.
Even though the native Obir-region dialect in the lyrics has been replaced by »Ljubljana-style« Slovenian, it’s right in the opener Spal bomo če smo hin that the band most audibly clings to its dialect on the new record. This pop outline is, on »11°« too, wrapped in modern production techniques, still handled in a thoroughly pleasing way by the seasoned Žarko Pak, who once helped build Siddharta’s sound too. With the excellent musical payoff of the chorus melodies and the melancholic, yearning vocal contour of singer Norbert Lipuš, the new Bališ record occasionally stirs up some associations with the artistic vocabulary of the biggest Slovenian rock band of the last two decades (Siddharta).
»11°« delivers seven extremely detailed songs that keep things organic, with a live, warm production. The building blocks of the sonic picture are effectively and contrastingly highlighted and coexist in that soundscape within a beautifully balanced layout. They coexist in equilibrium, in other words. The soundscape is packed in an exceptionally cunning way. Žare Pak production, what can you say. The master knows his stuff. With its fashionable aesthetic the band edges toward the art pop to alt rock vocabulary of that somewhat forgotten MTV wave, with acts like Kaiser Chiefs, maybe even a bit of Franz Ferdinand, but that’s by no means a rule. Just a passing »landmark«, precisely because Bališ have managed over the years to build a completely their own recognizable musical character, and to hold on to that recognizability and distinctiveness even after the musical transformation. Among the seven songs there are clear, concise arrangement, compositional and therefore expressive departures. That only proves that for this record Bališ picked the best of the best from their arsenal of freshly born ideas, and that they polished it with real dedication.
With »11°«, Bališ are (be)coming sonic and arrangement aesthetes. The songs have a hungry edge, that real touch of rocker heart from these soulful rock’n’roll preachers, expressing great evolutionary maturity with this record and, in that sense, their own creative zenith. Let’s hope that behind this EP, and in a bright future, its proper full-length studio successor is already cooking.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9 / 10
Track list:
1. Spal bomo če smo hin
2. 11°
3. Ljubezen je bolezen
4. Jaz sem revolucija
5. Daham Bleibt Daham
6. Dokler plešeš si še živ
7. So Einfach
Line-up:
Norbert – vocals
Dani – guitar
Davorin – guitar
Rudi – guitar
Izi – bass guitar
Marko – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Nikolaj Efendi – vocals on 5.
Katz Tamina, Rutar Lara, Sadnikar Irina, Smolnik Fabian, Urank Katarina, Marko Stern – choir on 5
Stern Rafael – acoustic guitar on 3
