Label: ZARŠ Records
Release year: 2011
Production: Miha Šajina
Album length: 62.17
Genre: Dub / Art Rock
Insight really does know no bounds sometimes. Dubzilla are a special collective rising out of a “special” patch of Slovenian soil. “Podgurje”, which in geographical terms roughly means the area “south of the Krka river up to the foothills of the Gorjanci”. Dubzilla are homegrown, self-made originals in the musical sense. Of course, their sound is rooted in the primal ancestor of sleepy reggae rhythm, where echo, in the most literal sense of the word, plays a properly “echoing” role. Yes. As the band’s name already hints, we’re talking dub music as the starting point.
But Dubzilla’s authentic vocabulary reaches much, much further. In order to win as much freedom as possible on the creative proving ground embodied by the blooming creative genius of these five musicians, within the fascinating puzzle that their debut “Dubzilla” packs together, built on a cunningly brilliant weave of many genre forms (which is what earns this kind of expressionism the “art” tag), they started by cutting vocals out of the picture altogether. So yes, we’re talking about an instrumental record.
An album running over 62 minutes that doesn’t bore the listener for even a millionth of a second, and instead thrills with the sheer dominance of its creators’ incredible mental flexibility. Every track on this record is a self-contained entity with its own recognizable atmosphere and the quintet’s own charisma of artistic insight.
Hypnotically lazy rhythms, soft and organic-sounding, solidly propped up by the warmth of a dynamic bass line, carry on their frame an airy, fragile structure of an extraordinary blend of interwoven lead motifs, built on a base of mellifluous synth drapes and simple guitar phrases, while brilliantly “gnawing” their way into all of it are sampled sound loops that strengthen and deepen the mood-driven power of the atmospheres the quintet wants to bring out. Dubzilla build their authenticity very simply. They let pure “feeling” guide them in their creating.
There’s no shortage of interesting stuff on this album. As a listener you’ll practically be forced to pick your own personal favorites. I’ll only point out the most interesting moments, but otherwise I urge you: try the album and listen to it from start to finish, in the track order of the CD, and go with the flow. The cerebral, esoteric element trapped in the essence of the album is everywhere, so it’s worth enjoying it by switching your “ratio” completely off.
The recorded “recitals”, “speeches”, “addresses”, “exclamations” and so on, incorporated into the basic motif structure of the tracks, of course hint at a trip-hop touch, and the band uses them brilliantly to break the basic motif form of a track into a multifaceted structure that lives together in fully compatible harmony! The most successful moments of these moves are caught in the tracks Krpan dab, Tribe and Rdeča kapica v linearni roaciji, where the atmospheres literally come alive!
These three tracks also go after an element of lucid sarcasm “Slovenian style”, which here, in Dubzilla’s hands, is expressed in a unique way, of course. For the track Krpan dab the guys latched onto a one-of-a-kind idea. The “Krpanization of dub” is one of the craziest yet most brilliantly realized ideas the band has on the album. Your mouth, stretched in full elastic flexibility, practically pushes toward your ears as a sample suddenly kicks in of actor Janez Albreht reading Levstik’s tale of Martin Krpan, which was once broadcast on TV screens in several parts. In the track Tribe, Ivan Kramberger speaks up, to this day the only honest politician in independent Slovenia, one who didn’t bite his tongue, which sadly he later paid for with his life. Tribe is the band members’ revolt against the state of general dehumanization, the general devaluation of Slovenian society, and the slow decay and falling apart of the Slovenian state, which we all once built with such high hopes. It’s as if an icy blast suddenly blew through the album, gnawing your bones right down to the frost. Then there’s the immensely sarcastic Rdeča kapica v linearni rotaciji, where the band again brilliantly weaves into the musical form samples of characters from literary recitals of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in the Slovenian language.
The gloomy two-minute intro that kicks off the album, in the track Trial, soon spills over into proper Zion-style esoterica, rippling on a synth curtain inherited from the pioneering sounds of the late seventies, already used by the legendary Miha Kralj on the album “Andromeda”. It’s clearly contrasted with the rhythm. A moment of Yugo-nostalgia is caught in the following Zlatne stijene, where the band used a mandolin sample as the wall of the sonic background (later in the track it’s replaced by lighter synth curtains), and the track keeps up an extraordinary colorfulness and mutual tolerance between all the pieces of the puzzle. In its outro the guitar also roars with distortion, in a warped, grimacing echo of course, which lifts the mood to a new level beautifully . And Kvart goes properly snarling rocker-crazy in its outro!
The track “Od nič do neskončnosti” has an exceptionally beautiful lead melody in the intro and outro, combining melancholy and exploratory adventurism, which ties into the track’s central message as well. Judging by the included samples of a “conversation” between two people, it’s fair to assume this is the band’s thank-you to Nikola Tesla, inventor of alternating electric current. An excellent and truly special track on the album. Its atmosphere works brilliantly from head to toe and leads the listener toward a special dimension of the band’s musical vocabulary.
Enough of the pontificating. It’s already grown into a “heavy read”. In short: “Pudgorski dub” is a rainbow-bright musical picture book, where the richness of expression across a wide spectrum of contrasts in painting the sonic landscape is exceptional. You could say optimized with the quintet’s outstanding sense, which blends these contrasts with refined, filigree precision into an extraordinary weave of perfect musical symbiosis. It has a special character, a special atmosphere, the kind only Dubzilla know how to define.
The debut “Dubzilla” is one of the best albums to come out in Slovenia in 2011. It has everything a good album has to have. Fundamental authorial insight, a clearly expressed touch of avant-garde authenticity, highly effective moods in the album’s individual high points, in which the band develops its own special atmosphere! “Dubzilla” is an album that’s extremely easy for the listener to get into, one that stirs the imagination with ease, while at the same time fascinating with the boundless depth and breadth of expression of the quintet’s homegrown musical intelligence, proving that it’s still possible to redefine the artistic spheres of the musical universe. The album unfolds with supple spontaneity, softly and utterly unobtrusively stringing together contrasts of an undefined musical adventure, which defines and paves a new musical path, “Artzilla”. Don’t hesitate: join it, and it will reward you richly in its own “free-spirited, sparkling musical concept”.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
score: 10 / 10
Tracklist:
1. Trial
2. Zlatne stijene
3. Krpan dab
4. Kvart
5. Tribe
6. Echoes
7. Steppa rulz
8. 0 -> ∞
9. Rdeča kapica v linearni rotaciji
10. Green Garden
Lineup:
Luka “Singer” Švajger – guitar
Dejan “Sleyk” Slak – keyboards, synthesizer, sampling
Saša “Selyak” Serban – turntables
Črt “Krt” Zorko – bass guitar
Tomaž “Buc” Rifelj – drums
