Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Drašiči / Turistična kmetija Simonič / Slovenia
Concert date: 10/26/2012
Attendance: 30
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)
Sometimes you show up at a gig without knowing it’s a gig! And without knowing it’ll end up as a report. Whatever kind of report it turns out to be… Agencija Concertica is full of surprises. Just this past September we got to enjoy a show in Ljubljana, where Agencija Concertica put two classic rock acts on stage that nobody would have dreamed would ever visit Slovenia again: Wishbone Ash and Nazareth. The point of the get-together at Turistična kmetija Simonič was to celebrate the successful pull-off of that Ljubljana concert a month earlier. Nobody knew about the surprise, though, because the rowdy partying in the venue was colorfully spiced up by a set from the seven-piece El Kachon.
The septet, made up of Tina Gerbec Radaković (vocals), Andrej Krt Barbič (guitar, harmonica, backing vocals), Tomi Perinčič (vocals, slide guitar, guitar), Dejan Sondža Gerbec Radaković (bass guitar, backing vocals), Žiga Dobravc (drums), Primož »PimpS« Malenšek (percussion) and Mladen Cetina (keyboards), took things deadly seriously in a setting where the crowd was in no short supply of boozy, rowdy winding around the corners, and spent a good chunk of time getting everything ready for an optimal live performance.
The attention to detail paid off. It’s obvious that El Kachon are musicians cut from the right cloth, tackling every single thing with a big dose of love and respect for the art of music. In their far-from-modest set, split into two parts, they served up a repertoire made almost entirely of their own original material.
El Kachon are definitely oddballs of the Slovenian music scene. Their style is hard to pin down. The easiest label would be progressive blues rock. Their compositions weave together an outstanding tangle of classic blues rhetoric with detours into psychedelic rock, plus a dose of jazz elements. Tomi’s slide keeps reminding you that a given part of a song can very quickly tip into something that could smell of bands like the Allman Brothers Band, or on the other side the “southern” Govt ‘n’ Mule, even Lynyrd Skynyrd. The sound was excellent throughout the set, and the building blocks of the sonic landscape were evenly spread. The lead vocals of Tomi or Tina, often paired up in duets, were wonderfully harmonized with the backing vocals of the other members too. It’s precisely the vocal delivery, together with excellent interpretation backed by the rich experience of the band’s members, that tips the scales and fully convinces you of El Kachon’s exceptional quality.
There’s no room for a slip-up here. In this kind of organic harmony, every single mistake, however small, gets heard. And this time there were precious few, if any. El Kachon, who felt very much at home in this setting – probably not much different from the rooms where they rehearse – are a phenomenon of remarkable listenability, yet with a lively, even complex story behind how the songs are composed. Apart from Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl and Albert King’s The Hunter, which blues heavyweights from Canned Heat and Blue Cheer to Free have reworked in their own versions, the setlist featured originals: Home, What If, Snake Bite, Solo Moon, Little By Little, One Fine Day, Mustang Sally and Still.
El Kachon blew us away with their perfection and precise tightness, which reaches the level of flawless Swiss-watch operation. This is the kind of band Slovenia is short on, so let’s hope they get proper exposure on the scene in the future, and above all that they get a studio debut out as soon as possible and bring as many of their gigs to the masses as they can. In Ljubljana you’ll have a chance to catch them on 11/29/2012 at the club Channel Zero, at Metelkova.
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