Location: Orto Bar / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Interview date: 09/21/2010
It’s been a long time since a band on the Slovenian music scene got taken under the wing of a major Slovenian label as an unknown name, free of trends, while still clearly and unmistakably showing off its musical talent. What’s more, I’m talking about a Slovenian band with a recognizable identity and its own artistic language. Its name is Eskobars!
RockLine: How does it feel to have your debut studio album out?
Bogdan: We’re really happy. We’ve honestly worked hard for the last two years to get here. It all started with Jure. He was already writing and recording music at fifteen. By the time he was twenty we knew each other and started working together. The songs had to be rearranged for a band. Once we found bassist Rok Druškovič, we recorded demos at his place.
Rok: We sent the demos to Dejan Radičevič. He gave us some pointers on how to polish the arrangements. After that we worked intensively for about two months. We delivered the recordings to him and he was happy with them. We played everything in one take. It was only in the studio that we decided to swap the English lyrics for Slovenian ones. At first everything was written in English.
Bogdan: In the studio, Jure had to translate and adapt all ten songs into Slovenian at Dejzi’s urging (Dejan Radičevič, producer, ed. note).
RockLine: Jure, how did you take that, with someone dictating what you had to do, when as an artist you’re the one who decides what you want to express and how you’ll express it?
Jure: At fifteen I was listening to British and American bands. I started writing lyrics in English mainly because I still had my head in the clouds back then, thinking I could make something happen abroad that way. Then I looked at the local bands playing a similar style to ours. They all perform in English. So I said to myself, why don’t we try it in Slovenian. It also genuinely felt like I was trying to make some kind of impression on people with the English, and that wasn’t really what I wanted. At that point I didn’t feel honest enough with myself anymore. The end result was that I could actually get much deeper into the material in Slovenian than I could otherwise. It also started to feel uncomfortable to imagine, say, the English listening to our music and making fun of our made-up English. I listened to Dejzi, but don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t done at his demand, it was my own decision. For me it was really useful advice. And this way we kept our originality too.
Bogdan: The songs were already written and recorded, and at that point there wasn’t a single line of lyrics written yet… And it’s really hard to write lyrics in Slovenian, so Jure did an excellent job.
Rok: When you try to think of how to shape some catchy line, your brain just starts switching to English….
RockLine: How did you pick the band’s name? Where did the idea come from?
Bogdan: The band name is derived from Jure’s last name.
Jure: It happened really spontaneously. I didn’t even like it at first, but I shrugged it off and stopped worrying about the name. As far as I’m concerned, we could’ve been called “Refrigerator”.
Bogdan: Since the name Eskobars pulls too much toward Pablo (after the famous Colombian drug cartel boss, ed. note), we wanted to shorten it to Esko, but then Jure pointed out that it sounds like an ice cream brand, ha, ha, ha… later we started trying combinations of two words, the second one tied to Eskobars and so on…. There was even an idea to call ourselves Stuff, but later other people basically assigned us the name Eksobars. They just liked the name.
RockLine: You recently became a four-piece. Why did you make that move?
Rok: Teo and I have known each other our whole lives.
Jure: Here’s how it went. We had our band, Teo had his. They played covers, we played covers. They also had a few originals that Teo wrote. A few years went by, and Teo grew into a truly top-notch guitarist. The “pro” version.
Bogdan: We also recorded string and piano arrangements on the album… and at first we were looking for a pianist as an extra member, but it didn’t work out. But when we tried Teo out, we completely exploded at the very first rehearsal. An energy came out that we really didn’t expect and that blew us away. Having Teo with us felt like such a great move.
Jure: Teo brought the necessary dose of fire to Eskobars. We’ve become way more energetic and loud. Not just at rehearsals, but above all on stage. He has a really constructive effect on me, because he fires me up, in a way provokes me to give everything I’ve got too. My absolute max.
RockLine: So basically he takes some of the load off you as the vocalist?
Jure: Exactly. He also fills the gap that’s left in the sound by the extra guitar. And I get more room to focus on my vocals.
RockLine: What kind of background do the ideas for your music come from?
Jure: I’ve always loved old music. Even the sixties, with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones back then. When I met Bogdan, he showed me different music and we started complementing each other. That’s how I came into contact with more modern approaches to music. I was a bit old-fashioned myself. Set in my ways. I didn’t even like electronic music, but over time I realized I have to accept all genres, because that’s the only way to progress and learn. To grow as a musician. In a way, to ripen.
RockLine: When I saw you opening for Skunk Anansie in Ljubljana in May 2010, and then at Orto Bar in September, even though it’s a different venue and a different atmosphere, you can feel that you’ve stepped it up a notch, that you come across even tighter. Especially the song you played once more as an encore at Orto Bar, called Sobotne noči.
Jure: That song actually defines us. Our sound. That song represents us. It stands out on the album too, it’s special, it sounds different. I don’t know a single band I could compare it to. That’s also why we decided to release it as a single. Sobotne noči came about like this: before I even met Bogdan, I was working on an instrumental. Back then I was even planning to have an instrumental band, a more “jazzy” version of us.
Bogdan: When I heard this instrumental for the first time, it blew me away on the spot. The song “kills it”. I knew and felt we had to build on it and keep working on this song. When I added my “shuffle”, it came out like The Clash playing jazz. Crazy. These phenomenal themes Jure wrote had to be split up, and that’s how this phenomenal track was born. There were also some songs that gave us quite a few headaches before we shaped them into a form we all liked…
Rok: Take Cosmo Blues, the song that’s getting radio play right now…. It comes from a funk foundation
Jure: At the start it was a singer-songwriter tune. Bass, guitar and vibraphone. It was developing along funk lines. Then “Dejzi” steered us. I’ve never been especially into funk myself, so we turned it into a more danceable – “disco” version, and that’s how we got the final Franz Ferdinand-style vibe in this song.
Bogdan: But it’s Sobotne noči that’s really ours.
Jure: Yes. Most of the songs, when you listen to them on the album, including Cosmo Blues, are very friendly to radio frequencies, more so than Sobotne noči. But we wanted to highlight our originality, so we decided to put out Sobotne noči as our first single.
RockLine: Who brought Neisha onto the album, how did you meet her?
Bogdan: “Dejzi” brought her in.
Rok: We needed someone for the arrangements on the song Zemljin sin. And she put together those keyboard arrangements.
RockLine: How did you strike the deal with the Dallas label?
Jure: Dejan Radičevič brought Matej Mrčnik to one of our gigs in Portorož. Dejan realized we’d need a label to release the album. It would’ve been hard to do anything on our own.
Bogdan: The mood back then wasn’t exactly thrilling. There were maybe six people in front of the stage. And we played like it was a packed stadium.
Jure: That’s what fascinated Mrčnik. That energy, that carefree attitude. So he recommended us to Dallas. Later Matej and I got closer too. We have a similar taste in music. He’s also into The Beatles.
RockLine: Energy counts.
Jure: Totally. An empty room in front of the stage must not affect the gig. We actually come together even more then. Contact is a must, that sensing between us. And if we played, say, perfectly, without a single mistake, but just stood there like statues, it wouldn’t have any effect on people at all. What matters is letting go.
RockLine: So what are Eskobars’ plans for the near future?
Bogdan: We expect a lot from the label, but we’re also looking for gig opportunities ourselves. We’re hunting for shows aggressively, even if it’s just for a sausage and a beer.
interview by: Aleš Podbrežnik
text translated and edited by: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos by: Aleš Podbrežnik
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