Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: rock bar Downtown / Kranj / Slovenia
Gig date: 11.05.2009
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)
This year’s Youth Week in Kranj remains a hugely important event, giving plenty of “exotic” Slovenian bands a chance to show off their skills, talent and musical vision. The trip to Kranj on 11.05.2009 looked especially tempting thanks to the announced appearance of Game Over. I’ll just hint in a single sentence that this is a band that formed back in the eighties, gave in to the thrash metal fad of the day, released an album, “Tilt” (on cassette only), and then pretty much “went quiet.” The years passed in silence, and last February “Eclectric” came out. There’s not a whiff of metal on it – only the occasional riff excursion thrown in as extra seasoning – but with “Eclectric” Game Over served up a big juicy bone to chew on, because “Eclectric” marks a completely new musical direction, one that loose labels like “progressive” or “art” can’t begin to cover.
But let’s take it from the top. The whole day was insanely busy! Mandatory servitude to Big Brother, then two interviews, and finally a relaxing raid on Kranj. A little past nine in the evening, the Škofja Loka lads in Angel’s Perfect Dream took the stage. These youngsters surprised me. I watched the band with zero expectations, yet got a convincing set from a promising quartet. Promising in terms of quality stage performance and a compact, really solid sound, introducing a band where all four members have their hearts beating for the same musical cause.
As far as expression goes, Angel’s Perfect Dream are interesting only as much as you miss bands like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots or Alice In Chains. What came across from the show was basically the nightly “grunge” footwear with which those bands, plus plenty of others, trampled the planet Earth in the early nineties. The band, which had just released their debut “Perfect Dream,” used the hour-long set to present material from the album, adding a boldly reworked, sped-up, furious, “screechy” version of the Oasis hit Wonder Wall. The guys made great use of the opportunity, and during the set the place filled up a bit too, so these evocations in the spirit of reviving “grunge” music are definitely not falling on deaf ears. Even at this gig the band showed excellent tightness, the members fill the available sonic space nicely (making the most of it), and above all I was impressed by the tall guy, going by the stage name Bertholomeus, who has a superbly disillusioned, stoned, desperate and accusing voice, born for the genre the band cultivates.
Game Over (don’t you dare confuse them with “Gay Mover,” even if that’s pure fiction) are now a crew of seasoned old cats. After what they squeezed out on “Eclectric,” it’s obvious why we had to wait so long for it. The musical metamorphosis of the band, which today consists of Klemen Gasar (guitar), Gregor Rožič (bass guitar), Aleksander Miklič (guitar synthesizers, guitar) and, as a special helper for the Kranj gig, Blaž Soklič (drums), practically demanded a little death and a rebirth, accompanied by the spirit of total musical transformation. The old molds burned down, and on that very same scorched ground a completely new musical vision was born.
Today Game Over present themselves as an instrumental band, fully devoted to experimenting, testing and lifting the veils that open up views onto new musical expanses. In Kranj it seemed like the crew lost their innocence all over again as they started their show. The intro was a kind of “eclectic” frenzy, with the band squatting on programmed rhythm patterns, over which Miklič layered blurred “soundscapes,” while Gasar disharmoniously sliced through them, warming up on the fretboard of his guitar. Rožič, too, with his refined work on the bass guitar (it sounded gloriously pleasant), convinced me that this is a crew of serious musical gourmets and sonic perfectionists. In the first part of the set, when the band played the material without drummer Soklič on stage yet, what bugged me was the realization that Gasar’s guitar was too quiet, so you couldn’t clearly hear the machine-gun bursts of extremely fast guitar scales being fired off. When Blaž finally appeared on stage, that effect of course turned into a whole new experience for the listener. The performance stepped up to a higher energy level right there. The whole sound. The audience felt it too – they’d been watching the “weirdos” on stage from a cautious distance, but after that the barrier between the people and the band finally gave way.
Game Over are excellent musicians and performers. They convinced us of that beyond any doubt over an hour-long set. What their show needs is a bit more stage “glamour,” because at times the pretty demanding chopping up of the material into repetitive patterns can feel monotonous, even though it was fascinating throughout to watch how the band would reproduce the studio sound of “Eclectric” on stage. The fusion of many sonic palettes, with the warm bass tone eating into it on one side and Gasar’s playful guitar jamming on the other, set the imagination racing. What if Mike Portnoy himself popped up behind them with his drum kit? A remark from one of my colleagues who watched the band during the set struck me as spot on. It would kill two birds with one stone. The music could (conditionally) leap to an even higher experimental level, while the show would gain the dimension of a proper stage spectacle – the band would win in terms of spectacle whenever they appear live on stage. Then again, maybe all this writing is totally unnecessary, since this was the band’s first “birthing” show in many years, and we can be very grateful it happened at all. In that sense, Game Over really kind of honored us.
Game Over are big-time oddballs. They’re special above all because Miklič is a keyboardist who plays keyboards via a guitar, through guitar synthesizers. That makes the band’s very expression incredibly distinctive. Both on stage and in the bare musical expression carried by the album “Eclectric.” The show, just like the album, only more intensely, emphasized the contrasting swing between moments heavy on the repetition of certain sonic loops, which worked in a mesmerizing, hypnotic way, and moments where a metalized guitar riff came pouring down, reason enough for a head or two in the audience of that Kranj evening to spin like an airplane propeller.
I can say, roughly speaking, that Game Over are pure artistry, multilayered and not part of the arsenal for the wider masses. It will please above all the more demanding ears of spoiled musical gourmets who are searching for something challenging, different and boldly adventurous, and who can only be satisfied by the constant exploration dictated by the free spirit of expression through musical art. All in all, that’s really the most a musician can offer you, except that in this day and age of the concrete jungle, we’ve kind of forgotten about it. Let me close this report with the great joy that Game Over have transformed into a band that holds a special place in the Slovenian music scene, and, given how distinctive their expression is, you could even say a special place on the wider (world) stage. Let’s just hope the band keeps proving and cementing its standing at as many gigs as possible in the future, as well as with new studio releases!
photos: Robi Lipej
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