Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Trobentar, Andrej
Label: Celinka
Release: 2014
Duration: 45:28
Rating: 4.5/5
The artistic road Andrej Trobentar has traveled is no walk in the park. The man is the real deal, a bona fide legend. A trained academic painter, he helped shape an important part of the Slovenian music scene, back when the adventurous core of its pioneering spirit was hot market goods in the music business and homegrown creativity got properly rewarded. The days of romance are long gone. Andrej Trobentar is an artist who surely deserves honest recognition for what he’s brought to the Slovenian music scene. Through the creative oddness 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 with the birth of the hard-hitting eclectic rock outfit NLP (Na lepem prijazni), Trobentar, with his one-of-a-kind theater of unsuspected vocal charisma and the remarkable message value of his ruffled, masterfully metaphor-wrapped poetic preaching, created a special story in our Slovenian music space and gave it plenty of color. Abroad, with such creative predispositions, he could have earned his bread in the seventies in bands brimming with avant-garde leanings, like the British musical provocateurs Gong, Henry Cow, Soft Machine, Comus or Maching Mole.
Interestingly, NLP were reactivated not once but twice. First in 2005, when the band put out the Mutant album »Potaplja se raj« under the name Na lepem prijazni, and then again in 2013, when the lineup, once more under the name Na lepem prijazni, released the album »Tudi če se vrnemo nazaj«. Even though Na lepem prijazni are currently active at least »on paper«, Trobentar evidently felt once again that working in a band format limits him artistically, so he went looking for a creative milieu for his new ideas that would give him complete freedom to realize them. And so a pure singer-songwriter album was born: »Dar«.
The album »Dar« is Andrej’s deeply 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 carries his (traditional) unbridled fondness for the popular »musical excess«, or let’s rather say a fondness for the eccentricity of musical experiment, which in creative terms always nudges him slightly away from clear-cut genre boxes.
This prolific artist has lined up a whopping 15 musical pieces on »Dar«. In just 45 minutes of music. Even from that »passing« factual observation it’s clear that the message of the poetry plays the dominant role on this release. That said, you can’t overlook the rich musical and arranging variety of the songs themselves. Even when stripped down in arrangement and organic-sounding, some tracks reach for meaningful expressive touchpoints with the character and work of Na lepem prijazni, and they also reveal the link between Trobentar’s elementary musical perception and the work of the bands Begnagrad and Buldožer. Trobentar has been tied to both groups throughout his career. Such moments on the album work »from the background«, yet they provide an important contrast and magnify the content of the message carried by Andrej Trobentar’s deeply felt, shape-shifting vocal chameleonism, and he also proves himself a very good guitarist on the album. There are a few such moments, and mild shades of psychedelia are caught in them too. That’s the case with Misel toward the end, with one of the album’s most lucid songs, Lovec, and with the bluesy Gosta je hosta, which could keep company with some of the songs from Jethro Tull’s first three studio albums, swapping the harmonica for flute. Soldat belongs in this category too, where a lively bass line does an important job alongside Andrej Trobentar’s bitterly accusing vocal. The rhythm section opens up in the instrumental passages, while the saxophone (Lovec, Soldat) can also keep Trobentar’s vocal remarkably compatible company in deepening the feelings.
The album opens teasingly with the laid-back Stisnem te k sebi, which instantly puts Trobentar’s »vocal theater« front and center. The easygoing opening of the record, with a dash of country-folk and bluesy melodic seasoning, Cinična Val za valom turns the mood upside down, and its mocking note could be dedicated to the pirates of Lake Bled who raid the Bled island to the island’s misfortune. With Sava, which wears a rock fix with added electric guitar ornaments, the release picks up its »green tongue« sermon. Quite a few songs later on the album point to Andrej Trobentar’s strong ecological awareness, to how entwined and connected he is with nature and planet Earth. This is a man who knows what love is. More than once Trobentar openly settles scores with the follies of human greed and rapacity that cripple the healthy functioning of the blue planet (let’s hope, for now, that it still works). Just how expressive and powerful Trobentar’s charismatic voice is gets underlined by four »a capella« performances, where the man skillfully uses his gift for big vocal chameleonism to deliver the message of the poetry with special drama! Those are Breza, Lev, Košana (which a gospel choir of swaying Black grandmas could join without any trouble) and the closing Med nebom in zemljo.
On »Dar«, Trobentar is a wisecracking cynic, and that cynicism is packed with the author’s pain, confessed through a poetic core of masterfully tuned metaphors. Behind the »mask« of mocking sarcasm, the album also carries moments of great tenderness, which land with real force in the song Mravlje. There the poetry, delivered through the melody of a Slovenian folk saying, is masterfully magnified by additional string arrangements, so the song achieves an effect of special calm and gentleness. A polished singer-songwriter charisma, which crafts the album’s singular confessional adventure through lived-in experience, simply seduces and enchants.
An album that Trobentar needed as an artist to confess the current state of his spirit and senses. Unmasked, sincere and heartfelt. A rich in content and deeply moving »gift« of art in the true sense of the word, wearing a metaphorical mask of mocking jabs, and beneath it hides a message so powerful that it will shake you with its honesty and knock the ground out from under your feet!
A minor note, but still. The inside of the booklet has a photo of a lake shore spread across the middle. Greenery everywhere and the virginal beauty of unspoiled lake blue. But on the left side of the photo, stems with lance-shaped leaves of the invasive non-native plant Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) catch the eye, a plant that in full bloom grows over two meters tall. Maybe in summer you’ve come across impassable »plantations« of tall stalks with purple inflorescences along some river or stream, which »explode« when touched? An uncustomed import from the Himalayas.
Lineup
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
Production
Boris Romih
Tracklist
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
