Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Berden, Dejan
Label: Self-released
Released: 2012
Running time: 119:35
Rating: 5/5
I welcomed the album »Fluid« (judging by the cover, you’d think it’s an ad for a new mineral water) with great joy. It landed in my hands completely out of the blue, right before my interview with the džeZZva crew. And since I count as an absolute layman when it comes to classical music, it’s a peculiar challenge to pick and put down a few meaningful words about the feelings his music stirs up.
The creator of “Fluid” is Dejan Berden, the current keyboardist of džeZZVa, and an absolute one-of-a-kind in music. This Prekmurje pianist and music teacher isn’t just an exceptionally prolific composer and arranger (and producer, too), he’s also a musical visionary of a special sort. He’s in high demand on the Slovenian music scene. Over his career he’s racked up collaborations with plenty of well-known Slovenian acts, among them Vasko Atanasovski, Marko Črnčec, Jure Ivanušič, Lačni Franz, Ethnotrip, Patetico, Siti hlapci, Jure Tori, the avant-garde-bonkers project Od Franclna možgani… and the collaborations stretch all the way to names like Alfi Nipič and Edvin Fliser. Dejan is a guy who’d rather keep quiet and modestly “invisible” in his doings, working “from the background”, which means he usually turns up on music projects as a studio musician or a helping hand with arrangements (co-arranger). Still, as a solo virtuoso he can boast an impressive stack of solo studio releases, including the double CD »Fluid«, which is devoted strictly to piano improvisation. Although this album came out back in 2012, the booklet print of the physical CD says 2016. So it’s either a reissue or the album’s first-ever release in physical form.
When we talk about Dejan Berden, softness, refinement and sensitivity are definitely the main trump cards of his playing and expressive power, wielded by this finely tuned musician. At the same time, you can’t overlook the sheer mileage of experience behind him, which generates the superb quality of all the finely tuned mechanics and details in his piano playing. Dejan recorded the music on »Fluid« in just three sessions. It sounds very routine, but then, over all his long years of playing, Dejan has become an incredibly seasoned musician. Between August and November 2011 Dejan stepped into the recording studio just three times and laid down sixteen demanding compositions, and so we got almost two hours of instrumental music made up of his own idiosyncratic piano improvisations.
It was precisely in the years before džeZZva came together that Dejan’s fingers were itching especially badly, and in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 he was practically bursting with bubbling inspiration. The result was a series of recorded and released solo albums, on which Dejan tries his hand at the total adventurism of the solo escapades that the pure purism of piano playing allows.
As the name itself tells you, the basic vision and idea behind the two-CD »Fluid« is the musician’s communion with the watery environment. It’s an artist’s reaction to contact with water in all its forms and in its effects on the surroundings. It might just be sediment, bubbling, reflection or rapids, which is also how the individual compositions are titled. What feelings do bubbling, reflection and/or rapids stir up in a musician, and how will he encode those reactions and translate them into the language of music? Will he manage to get inside those states or not? That’s the biggest riddle and, at the same time, the appeal of documents like »Fluid«. Every track is tied to water, then. That’s how Dejan translates his feelings through the language of his own distinctive piano playing. He’s totally in the thing the whole way through, absolutely committed and immersed, passionately simmering! What’s interesting is that, despite the complex nature of the compositions, as a whole they feel close and easy to listen to the entire time, and for the most part the album even works in a way that lets you fully zone out to it or even fall asleep. It’ll touch you most if you can switch off your mind for a moment and “float and swim away” with the music.
Over the years the man has developed a completely distinctive musical voice, an incredibly cunning blend of classical music, jazz and world music, and above all of it the melos of traditional folk music from the Prekmurje plains is plainly audible too. So it’s clear that this release is also marked by a melos of perpetually yearning melancholy, which you can pick up in the music of džeZZva as well. Across almost 120 minutes of music, these elements, the building blocks of jazz, classical and world music in Berden’s artistic character, are mixed in different proportions and bared and expressed (reflected) in different ways through the playing. One thing is clear, though, and it’s a very important one. The album »Fluid« is armed to the teeth with a sense of spontaneity and unexpected turns. Even though the framework of the compositions is set, they develop in the playing as if they were only just coming into being and growing out of the artist’s endlessly sparkling inspiration, and as a result the album is bursting with improvisational escapades, which are of course the biggest thrill and challenge for every music gourmet digesting »Fluid«.
Despite his exceptional talents and incredible artistic insight, which can stand proudly as an absolute original in jazz expression itself, Dejan Berden stays modest in his goals. His younger colleague (no less exceptional) Marko Črnčec, for instance, launched a successful international career, and Dejan has outstanding potential for that too. Yet Dejan doesn’t seek out or demand sensation for what he does, and so he doesn’t shout about it from the rooftops. As a result, his name on the Slovenian music scene often goes, unfairly, overlooked.
Široki um, ne le glasbeno večplastne obtesanosti umetnika, kot jo beleži Berdenova glasba na teh dveh ploščkih, pač pa zlasti občutek za nenehno odprtost in navduševanje nad eksperimentiranjem, za katerega nikdar ne veš kam te bo odpeljal, napeljujeta na to, da si Dejana ni težko predstavljati v družbi velikanov takšne obrti, kot sta med drugim npr John Zorn ali pokojni Frank Zappa. Med omenjenima legendama avantgardne provokacije je sicer ekstremen izrazni razkorak, vendar pa je prav tako nedefinirano brezkončno glasbeno obzorje resnicoljubnega in svobodoljubnega purizma vseh pustolovščin klavirske igre Dejana Berdena, ki je v prvi vrsti mož razpoloženjske glasbe.
Listening to the sensational piano improvisations on »Fluid«, you’ll be gripped by a hunger to dig deeper into Dejan Berden’s original music. He remains an uncut diamond and one of the best-kept secrets in the Slovenian music universe.
Dejan Berden – Vodni pulz:
Lineup
Dejan Berden – piano
Production
Dejan Berden
Track list
CD1.:
1. Botanika
2. Žajfnica
3. Ples
4. Vrtinec
5. Vodni pulz
6. Usedlina
7. Vodni pulz 2
8. Odsev
CD2.:
1. Panonska fantazija
2. Neurbana pesem
3. Pulzar
4. Ples 2
5. Brbotanje
6. Strunanje
7. Brzice
8. Odsev 2
