Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Katalena
Label: Založba Pivec
Released: 2015
Length: 35:24
Rating: 4.5/5
Time flies! Four years have gone by since Noč čarovnic came out.. It feels like it was yesterday. And now here’s the new »Enci Benci Katalenci«. Your first listen is like hitting the right turn signal while driving and then swinging left at the intersection. Unlike its predecessor, which was an album of original music, »Enci Benci Katalenci« is at its core an album of children’s folk counting-out rhymes that have been put through a radical process of so-called »Katalenization« or »Katalenizing«.
Look back and you’ll see Katalena were taking similar creative steps already when they were »chasing away the witches« and wandered off into the »Resian landscape«, so it’s no surprise at all that »Enci Benci Katalenci« brings the same kind of starting point for an experimental makeover of folk melos. The real springboard for the new album is a collection of children’s folk counting-out rhymes, »Enci benci na kamenci«. In step with their life stage, the band members recently took on the role of young parents, and found that this role can be more than inspiring when they listen to their kids babbling those rhymes. So »Enci Benci Katalenci« is a genuine imprint of Katalena’s healthy evolution, their artistic development and maturity as of 2015. It’s a kind of artistic valve that the band, at this point, simply needed, and they couldn’t have dodged it.
The band members are so seasoned, with so many miles on the clock and such a honed sense for building a composition (by the »Katalena recipe«, of course), that the new mixture of building blocks works beautifully. It’s led by a colorful blend of folk melos, experimentally flipped upside down with jazz variations, then veers off toward cabaret chanson, blues, swing, gospel, rock, fresh again, immensely witty, and in terms of content it effectively melts down not just genre borders but generational barriers too! That makes the album a good fit for demanding listeners, meaning the grown-up crowd, and just as much for entertaining the youngest ones. That’s why on stage the album also gets a kind of interpretation whose staging is clearly tailored to the way the little ones take things in. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the members of Katalena are real specialists in stage performance, and for them acting on stage is something that simply belongs with live musical interpretation.
The interplay of all the album’s building blocks once again radiates an exceptional bond and working chemistry between the band members, held together by great camaraderie and a feel for one another. The album is stamped through and through with distinctly organic sonic pastels, and sounds organic and alive. It radiates a playful side and huge enjoyment, which clearly ran through the musicians as they shaped the compositions in the studio itself. In the process of »Katalenizing« the source forms of the individual rhymes, Boštjan Gombač (somewhat as expected) won the most room for solo exposé, with his well-oiled use and integration of a whole galaxy of wind instruments. The band also filled out the sonic picture with strong vocal contrasts, marked by pointed vocal harmonizing and doubling of the basic lines of the lead vocal melos, or by the interweaving of lead female and male vocals, mostly between Zornik and Gombač. The elements of mischief and lucidity are present across the whole album, as two of the essential and most striking trademarks that have always made Katalena’s musical voice recognizable. Besides the mostly bouncy, skipping-along feel, the album also has moments of real compositional sophistication. Two tracks are especially captivating: Križ kraž and, just before the end, Uspavanka, whose softness and delicacy of interpretation draw out a special kind of intensified emotion and mood!
So the new musical experiment has once again fully succeeded for Katalena. It sounds unmistakably Katalena-esque, yet different from everything the band has offered listeners in its career up to this album. The transformation of Slovenian folk counting-out rhymes into the story of the album »Enci Benci Katalenci« once again radiates the band’s exceptional artistic brilliance, and its depth of content and layering will slowly lift the veil on the finer points and details of the composing and keep you thoroughly enthralled long after many spins of the album in your CD players!
Line-up
Vesna Zornik – vocals, backing vocals
Polona Janežič – keyboards, harmonium, percussion, backing vocals
Boštjan Gombač – clarinet, trumpet, flugelhorn, soprano saxophone, bass recorder, Irish whistles, aliquot flute, theremin, ukulele, melodica, fujara, whistles, accordion, andes 25F, kazoo, percussion, backing vocals
Boštjan Narat – guitar, banjo, percussion, backing vocals
Tibor Mihelič Syed – bass guitar, saz, ukulele, kalimba, typewriter, bass drum, percussion, backing vocals
Robert Rebolj – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Production
Blaž Celarec & Marko Turel
Track list
1. Enci benci
2. Bela lilija
3. Cipcipilipcipilonika
4. Križ kraž
5. Maček
6. Andale bandale
7. Bam bam bam
8. An ban
9. Uspavanka
10. Gospod in gospa
