Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Tolmin / MINK / Slovenia
Concert date: January 30, 2016
Attendance: 45
Ticket price: €2.00
Divje Jezero are a jazz rock fusion outfit from Idrija with clearly present elements of progressive rock, though the guys obviously love to wrestle with world music too, which isn’t unusual. You get it, right? The Balkans and “arabesque” sounds have always been close to us, one way or another.
Last May the band released their studio debut »Mestni vrvež« – RockLine review HERE. It’s dedicated, among other things, to the town of Idrija. Divje Jezero belong to that league of Slovenian rock bands that is extremely rare, endangered, if not right on the verge of extinction. Today they’re a relic of those distant days when progressive rock (as a genre) was popular all over the planet, back in the first half of the seventies. That era also gave us Slovenian bands like Predmestje and Izvir. These days you can count on the fingers of one hand the Slovenian bands that can be seen as legitimate heirs to those old Slovenian bands of the genre. We could add Tolmin’s Feedback, Ljubljana’s Monlight Sky and maybe, for now still very little-known, 4th Dementions from Kočevje, who are right at the very start of their career and still finding their style. And then the whole thing pretty much runs out. The Divje Jezero quintet is a crew of exceptional musicians who are, for the most part, completely equal in their command of their instruments. That’s how they build an incredibly balanced sonic and stylistic experience of musical arrangements, where no single instrument grabs the spotlight or dominates. Spontaneous jamming is definitely one of the key cogwheels driving the machinery of these young Idrija hopefuls forward. At the same time, though, the quintet is mature and thoughtful enough to shape the arrangements of their instrumental pieces in a way that keeps delivering a finely tuned middle path between musicality and improvisational challenge. That’s why Divje Jezero aren’t for every pair of ears; they’re tailor-made for music gourmets who revel in a subtle sonic symbiosis marked by a heap of solo escapades, successions of many lead phrases and rhythmic keys, with which the guys string together their sonic and expressive landscape through frequent, unexpected shifts in mood.
The hypersensitive guys thus delivered another in a series of autumn-winter shows, this time at MINK in Tolmin. It was also RockLine’s very first visit to this legendary t’min club, in the media’s nearly ten-year career. Just before ten in the evening the band was testing the sonic characteristics of the room. It sounded cranked. »This is going to be quite a different show from the one in Domžale, December 3, 2015,« I quickly concluded.
As expected, the band played the entire studio debut in a show split into two parts. In seriously “souped-up” sound conditions that would be acceptable even for a metal gig. The roughly 40 people you could count right at the start of the show were huddled a few meters from the stage, in the heart of the club, closer to the bar. Still, they engaged with the band the whole time, rewarding it with applause and waves of enthusiasm. The band really approached this gig on a much higher level compared to the Domžale experience. They played for at least two hours and delivered a considerably longer setlist, with songs that announce new original material is brewing. In the second half the band surprised with an excellent rendition of Spectrum (Billy Cobham), and shortly before the end they poured oil on the fire with a cover of Jeff Beck’s Led Boots.
The sound, as I said. Unexpectedly cranked for the demands of jazz rock fusion, which felt amazing precisely because you don’t expect it. This kind of music belongs on the “posh” stages of Cankarjev dom and Križanke, as part of the Ljubljana jazz festival, right, Brane Rončel? All that was missing was a Weather Report or Return to Forever cover and the cup would have been full. The band is also extremely tight and brilliantly rehearsed. Fascinating all over the place, watching them enjoy every single move, and seeing how they complement each other in this kind of performance. The warm, velvety bass guitar, with impulsive funky slapping and subtle full-bodied “flicking,” held up the solo escapades of the keyboards, guitar, saxophone and drums the whole way through. The guys stunned with an excellent show in which there wasn’t a moment’s shortage of feeling or performance dynamite. If you want to treat your soul to a huge helping of excellent, highly intelligent music, full of hypersensitive subtlety and expressive originality, for next to nothing (admission was a ridiculous €2.00), there’s only one answer. Catch one of Divje Jezero’s shows. And do it soon.
Photo Gallery
