Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dovč & Krmac & Mureškič
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Running time: 70:54
Rating: 5/5
Every now and then you get an album in your hands and know right away that no reviewer’s expertise, however meticulously detailed, will be up to the job. Its form is simply too rich in content, and the written word, with the »ratio« switched on, can’t match it with any dignity.
»Baraka« is yet another top-shelf release, positively bursting with musical peculiarities and a superb mix of jazz experimentation, infectiously dynamic kinetics, tight rhythmic structures and lead melodies. What we have here is a story of supreme fusion between ethno music and jazz! The experiment and the melodic accessibility are beautifully balanced across the whole record. The trio is made up of Janez Dovč, Nino Mureškič and Goran Krmac. Three top-class instrumentalists and composers who don’t lack for seasoning or experience. Mureškič, among other things a former member of the jazz project Quatebriga?, is a man with an extraordinary arsenal of percussion ideas, and the brilliance of those ideas is boosted by a clever implementation of »sub-rhythmic« patterns, added where the soundscape needs thickening as special rhythmic effects of programmed sampling. For the average layperson, Goran Krmac is living proof of how an instrument confined to a template of a few basic notes in brass orchestras can be handed a completely different role and function, a special musical experience that, in its exploratory character, doesn’t lag an inch behind either Janez Dovč’s accordion or Nino Mureškič’s rhythmic structures. The tuba takes on the role of bass guitar and/or double bass. It rarely happens that it gets challenged and pushed into a role where experiment is demanded of it. The album »Baraka« (in Hebrew the word means »blessing«) is just the right title for that kind of experiment. Krmac and Mureškič literally explode in the rhythms of the Mediterranean-Balkan-flavored treat Follow Us Again. Goran Krmac is definitely the hottest Slovenian tuba player right now.
And then there’s visionary music guru Janez Dovč! His contribution to the album comes in just the right doses: jazz-salted adventurous improvisations on the accordion, followed by melodically refined moments of »calm« with a genuine ethno character. These melodic passages are the factor that perfectly calibrates the album, releasing the »voltage« of the more demanding parts. For all the exuberant, freedom-loving experimenting the trio allows itself, there’s never any fear that they’d accidentally lose themselves and wander off to the edge of musical chaos.
Eleven tracks crammed full of musical ideas and variety, with no limits when it comes to trying out the »untried«. The album never stops testing how far the trio’s artistic reach extends. That makes it captivating for more demanding listeners, while its well-measured tracks, with the clearly delivered melodies of Dovč’s accordion, open the door to a wider audience. And yes. This trio format belongs straight on the stage, right now!
The added string arrangements by the Symbolic String Trio create an extremely complementary color palette in the soundscape, and in the way they blend the shades of the accordion’s and violins’ melodic lines they never stop impressing, starting right with the opener “Ne pozabi, od kod si”. That first track instantly reveals the point of the trio’s musical vision.
The sound is organic, warm, alive. The natural tones of the sound work full-bloodedly throughout the record, and the cover, the work of academic painter Milan Erič, couldn’t fit better with the warm pastels of the harmonic coexistence in the album’s musical landscape.
Many parts of the album put rhythm front and center, with percussion and added (also programmed) rhythmic effects taking the lead alongside the tuba. We get that kind of »rain-calling« ritual in the track Vrga vrga vrga. Vrga Vrga!
The point of this unconventional, out-of-the-ordinary merger of accordion, tuba and percussion into one musical body has hit its target in all its boldness. It delivers a completely autonomous musical experience, one you’d struggle to match with any musical relatives. The trio sails for the most part through world rhythms covering the Mediterranean, Africa, and Latin and South America, and often deftly mingles with the aforementioned integration of programmed rhythmic textures, as in the closing Na noge, which somewhere around the fifth minute leaps from a »tango« sway into a dance-spinning rhythm, and the track picks up the character of a trip hop adventure that will interest even fans of the likes of Gotan Project.
»Tvoja dolžnost je, da si srečen« is the track that marks the album’s peak. It’s the longest track on the album, which isn’t the point, but it’s here that the fusion of jazz elements with the characteristics of world ethno sound, in which the string trio feels perfectly at home, reaches its greatest variety and, within the experiment, its most expressive wit. The core of the track is definitely the opening mood-building, based on an extraordinary interweaving of percussion. Across many layers it forms an extraordinary platform for the track’s further development. Mureškič even adds the sound of the African instrument kalimba to all this! King Crimson were already doing that. Always have. In the outro of Moonchild from their debut album, and again as late as 2003 in the track Shoganai. On this track Dovč’s accordion works like a vocoder, which deepens the album’s moment of artistic daring! This is the composition where the element of spontaneous, unpredictable development is exposed most intensely. It even contains traces of genuine avant-garde jazz figures, and you could tag it as the album’s true prog delicacy! The track reaches its real crescendo in a big closing finale where the harmonic contrasts, together with the string arrangements, bolster the three basic building blocks! Brilliant!
»Snebersko dupliška samba« is bound to intrigue, much like the opening «Ne pozabi od kod si«, fans of Remember Shakti, above all for the use of vocals as an additional instrument that communicate with the percussion lines in a fascinatingly seamless way. This dialogue between vocal improvisation and the extraordinary dynamics of the percussion, with a collision of Latin rhythms boldly peppered with all sorts of unbridled jazz figures, only grows through the track. Dovč’s accordion, with its interspersed melodic ethno passages, is pushed into the role of softening the album’s otherwise more demanding composition. The mood of the track rides the crests of giant waves, where the intensity of passion churns up to the maximum and then comes back down to points of complete, melodious calm.
The tracks »Tvoja dolžnost je, da si srečen« and, right after it, »Snebersko-dupliška samba« were taken from the album’s presentation on 14.10.2013 at Ljubljana Castle. So they’re live recordings, which is further proof of the remarkable self-confidence of these seasoned instrumentalists! And what outweighs that is the fact that the tracks for the album »Baraka« were played »in one piece«, or »first go«. In the first attempt (»in one take«, as the Brits say). So these are one-of-a-kind creations that will reflect in space and time in new guises in every reinterpretation to come. Again and again, for as long as the trio performs the music of »Baraka« in this lineup. It’s exactly this principle of recording first go, a concert performance in the studio, that is the greatest expressive strength of the album »Baraka«.
The album »Baraka« has such a strong and unusual musical ID, with such a dominant, pronounced character, that it can suck the listener into the parallel world of its own homegrown atmosphere. One such almost »cerebral« moment of the album is, for example, »Mimohod odločnih«.The album is crammed with a spirit of celebration and optimism. It keeps up the party mood and a great sense of playing for the sheer joy of it. It unfolds in the glow of the mischievous twists of a playful jazz-ethno carousel, while being remarkably listenable at the same time. The elementary symbiosis of jazz passages and melodious tunes is a guarantee that this release is accessible to any music listener. In their mutual chemistry and sensible linking, the symbiosis of these two approaches is literally stunning. All we can say is this. An album that, in the honesty of its musical expression, knows no limits in space or time. An album that instantly seduces and enchants you in the unique musical world it’s written into. An album by great musical masters that you’ll enjoy for a long, long time, and that will richly reward you with new and ever newer feelings through an autonomously shaped musical landscape that you’ll unveil slowly. Veil by veil! This is an album of extraordinary multifaceted depth that you simply have to surrender to in order to merge with its legacy.
Let’s hope the story doesn’t end here for the trio and that another record follows. Even though you don’t really miss a guitar on “Baraka”, a musical environment like the one created by the unique formation of Dovč, Krmac and Mureškič would make room for an interesting integration of some kind of “alien”, such as Miha Petric (Moonlight Sky). The platform for further evolution, in the glow of dropping a “shock element” of full-blooded original surprise, is simply outstanding!
Lineup
Janez Dovč – accordion, effects, electronics, vocals
Goran Krmac – tuba, programming on tracks 5, 7 and 11, vocals on tracks 8 and 10, keyboards on tracks 5 and 7
Nino Mureškič – percussion, kalimba, vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Symbolic String Trio
Vasilij Centrih – violin
Barja Drnovšek – violin
Klemen Bračko – violin, viola
Production
Janez Dovč & Baraka
