Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Darla Smoking
Label: Kapa Records
Release: 2017
Length: 40:25
Rating: 4/5
The tandem Darla Smoking is made up of Brgs and Nac, two seasoned Slovenian musicians. Jaka Berger, the man behind the name Brgs, is regarded as an incredibly sharp-minded musician, a textbook case of total musical nonconformity and the polar opposite of anything that might even faintly sound commercial. He works, for example, as a solo artist, with Borghesija and in the band Ludovik Material. Stylistically these are extreme deviations that only confirm the multilayered vision of a musician who knows no limits. His output is also always incredibly appealing. Simply because it’s provocative in its unusual musical vision. This time, on »Big Bug«, the debut of the duo Darla Smoking, Brgs takes care of the rhythm, while Nac creates the melodies, or the basic backdrop of the soundscapes. It’s an electronic duo that, quite as you’d expect, is developing a style all its own. Electronic music, dub, world music, ethno! All in one unified, distinctive sonic cumulus that sounds unusual, yet in the same breath feels oh so familiar.
So. »Big Bug«, as the duo’s studio debut, serves up a broad palette of layered sonic loops glued together over light, infectious rhythms that often push the listener into involuntary swaying and dance steps. Right from the start, the album’s first trip-oid experience addresses you in a completely unpretentious way. »Uspavanka za prvi svet«, where a dub rhythmic backdrop and sound sampling that follows a traditional South Slavic tune join hands in an original, fully contemplative dialogue. The soundscape also repeatedly weaves in vocal chants from the traditional melos of world music and ethno. Golden Blood then turns the atmospheric picture toward gloomy vistas. If not before, the title track is the one that redirects all your attention to the album itself. If you’d been listening lazily up to that point, from the title track on you’ll listen boldly and on the edge of your seat! The title track is an incredible weave of eerie screams and chants that enter into dialogue with the sound sampling and take primacy over everything. The rhythmic undercarriage is cemented by a sound resembling a didgeridoo. Yep, Darla Smoking can get very dark, even fiercely, tensely creepy. So be ready for extreme deviations in the way the moods are strung together.
The album practically begs for cerebral experiences, and the atmosphere is mostly thoroughly trip-oid. The moods feel fully meditative. That’s the kind of fusion of dub, electronics and traditional soundscapes of Hindu origin you’ll find in Sunrise Soldiers. The command of a typical dub undercarriage of tuned rhythm becomes intense especially in the next one, Smokers Delight, where both musicians show particular sensitivity and finesse in blending the rhythms and twisting the programmed patterns, once again creating a thoroughly bizarre, even wondrous backdrop of musical strangeness that nonetheless still speaks pleasantly and calls for another meditative experience. The track Sali flirts with arabesques, while the closing act of the album, Agia Dub, whisks us off somewhere to the southern Mediterranean, toward the shores of Greece and Cyprus, with melos and rhythm (close to sirtaki). An excellent musical collision to wrap up »Big Bug«.
In short, seven tracks that form self-contained entities, yet are woven together in a way that gives Nac plenty of room throughout for any sonic experiment he likes. The musician uses it skillfully. He doesn’t overdo it by piling layers of sound on top of layers of sound. He’d rather stick to minimalism and so deftly handles the axiom »less is more«. The melodies Nac develops with his samples also bring in a moment of unpredictable development to the album.
»Big Bug«, that is »big beetle«, is an album where you absolutely have to switch off your rational brain. Only then will it grab you full-bloodedly and carry you off into the wild, untamed expanses of a unique musical language, created by Brgs and Nac in an equally untamed world of music culture. The cornerstone has been laid. We’ve got an exceptionally interesting, unusual, conceptually provocative and fresh album full of sharp-witted aesthetics in translating the traditional melos of world music into the bosom of electronic music’s rhetoric. Hand on heart, though. The sonic look of Berger’s solo works »Endless Walls« and »Fragments of the Present« also demands a complete shutdown of the rational mind, and from their very look you can draw plenty of family ties in how the moods are strung together on »Big Bug«, even if Darla Smoking is a whole other musical story. Especially one that’s a good deal less bizarre to taste.
»Big Bug« will surely keep surprising you pleasantly for a long time, draw you in fully and reward you as you discover the backdrops of its soundscapes. Slowly. Veil by veil. That is, of course, if you’re a music gourmet who looks for juicy bizarreness and musical excess, the kind that knows no exaggeration, but, in the free-spirited and boundlessly brave essence of constant sonic exploration, keeps to a measure of musical rhetoric that will gratefully reward even those of you who step into the world of musical experiment »less prepared«. That is, with a somewhat less »thick skin«.
Darla Smoking – Big Bug (promo video teaser):
Lineup
Brgs – rhythm
Nac – sound programming
Production
Darla Smoking
Track list
1. Lullaby for the First World
2. Golden Blood
3. Big Bug
4. Sunrise Soldiers
5. Smokers Delight
6. Sali
7. Agia Dub
