Label: Dallas Records
Release date: 10/15/2019
Production: Jadran Ogrin
Album length: 38.40 min
Genre: Pop Rock
Rating: 8.5/10
The album below landed in this humble writer’s hands completely out of the blue. A good month ago. Long after its official release, that is. Two years ago, in fact. It’s the work of Boštjan Velkavrh, one of the Dallas label’s own. The guy is no stranger to the Slovenian music scene. Besides imitating Joe Cocker with incredible skill, he’s best known for “rescuing” the 2001 album »V peni sprememb« by the legendary Lačni Franz with his vocals.
He’s a seasoned musician, first and foremost a singer and songwriter, who has found his permanent home on the Slovenian coast in recent years. A move from east to a bit further west. All the way to the sea, where there’s simply a natural (evolutionary) border for every land-dwelling creature. That’s also where he forged creative ties with musicians who, through their deeds and activity, more or less embody the local music pulse. And they started shaping that pulse decades ago. Especially when it comes to Jadran Ogrin, who was closely involved in shaping Velkavrh’s debut »Potovanja«.
The album carries pop rock rhetoric drawn from the spirit of the eighties, brought up to date and artistically refreshed. It has the freshness of the present. Still, while you’re listening, the associations reach deep into the range of Slovenian radio waves of the eighties. This often nostalgia-tinged album is accompanied throughout by a positive, optimistic character that speaks to you with bubbling cheerfulness, a sense of triumph, and faith in the beauty of life. Ten tracks, tightly chiseled, draw their poetic spirit from Boštjan’s eternal fascination with the phenomenon of love. Love that heals all wounds and helps you on the road to your goals. To personal happiness and fulfillment. No wonder Boštjan dedicated this album to his life partner. Women have always been the fuel of inspiration. And this time is no different.
If you’re a fan of the persona and work of Danilo Kocjančič, you’ll feel right at home on this album. It’s an art and pop rock record woven from fine, you might even say splendidly projected, yet relaxed, concise and short, slyly tuned moves and filigree arranging touches, and there’s certainly no shortage of subtlety and mindful fine-tuning in piecing the parts together into a compositional whole from the seasoned players pulling “strings from the background”. Boštjan’s vocal interpretation is powerful, commanding, sensual and magnetic. In the moments when the album’s art pop and rock development also leans on an element of blues, as in Barve ljubezni, Boštjan’s vocal delivery picks up that raspy charm we linked to Cocker at the top. But it only picks it up. Boštjan is a vocalist with his own vocal charisma. At times a hard rock moment also takes over the arrangements, as caught in »Tvoja pesem« with its strongly accented guitar phrase.
The album’s production is excellent. The placement of the building blocks of a full, sensual musical landscape reaches a fascinating balance here. Boštjan’s vocal, stepping firmly to the front, is surrounded by the contrasting movement of the instrumentalists’ accompaniment. The middle-eight passages serve up the sentiment of guitar soloing that evokes old-school rock moves yet adapts deftly to the nature of the arrangements, as the jazz-tinged solo in the opener »Dvigni me« shows. Transitions or song intros can also be enriched with the ‘erotography’ of the saxophone, there are nostalgic pastels of Hammond, while the lead vocal is colored very skillfully by the complementary harmonies of the backing vocals. And you can’t overlook the high musical yield of the firmly accented bass lines from the seasoned Jadran Ogrin.
»Potovanja« is a gorgeous piece of work that slips into your ear instantly and has lovely conceptual flexibility and expressive variety. It sits within the well-known aesthetic of Slovenian art pop and rock culture, the kind that would have brought Boštjan quite a few evergreen hits in the eighties. Nostalgia is one thing, reality another, but the fact is that albums like this are extremely rare on the Slovenian music scene today, which is exactly why they’re so welcome. They’re a kind of memory of times not all that distant, of carefree days and big hopes.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Dvigni me
2. Krila za sanje
3. Poletiva
4. Samo midva
5. Igra življenja
6. Barve ljubezni
7. Potovanje
8. Tvoja pesem
9. Šepetanja
10. Vse je tvoje
Lineup:
Boštjan Velkavrh – vocals
Zdenko Cotič ‘Coto’ – guitar
Gabriel Ogrin – piano, keyboards, Hammond organ
Grega Kozar – saxophone
Jadran Ogrin – bass guitar, backing vocals
Blaž Korez – percussion
Moreno Buttinar – drums
Saša Saška Matajić – backing vocals
Anja Hrastovšek – backing vocals
