Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Repetitor
Label: Moonlee Records
Released: 2016
Running time: 28:16
Rating: 4/5
Don’t mess with Repetitor, Serbia’s alt-rock hangmen »of their own kind«, not if you’re a “soft” soul! The album »Gde ćeš« (translation: »Where would you go?« or »Where are you going?«) confirms that the Belgrade trio, through the albums »Sve što vidim je prvi put« (2008) and its follow-up »Dobrodošli na okean« (2012), is still diligently clinging to its tried-and-true musical recipe, one devoted to homegrown, self-made development. That’s a good thing. That’s the starting point of every real artist.
For that you need a few factors that add up to the right mix of authenticity behind your musical pose and artistic character. First comes guts; second, you can’t stand fakery or cosmetic gloss, and in your search for inspiration you chase raw, primal rudimentariness, following instinct and bare feeling to bring your ideas to life. In the case of this wild trio, even sheer impulse. There’s one more important factor. The lineup can’t change over the years. The building blocks of the musical entity have to stay a constant.
Repetitor meet all these demands on their third album too. Once again they’re hard to compare with their contemporaries; as for drawing inspiration from the pioneers, there’s a sensible link to the Sonic Youth legacy. They’re their own musical story. At its core it’s a variation on punk rock, which gets joined, sensibly, by elements of post-punk and noise punk. In a way that instantly gives the whole thing a tangible difference. The ratio of these three genre ingredients shifts across the eight tracks. What mostly creates that often raucous »Repetitor« feeling of absence is the thick, hugely voluminous bass guitar, which often insists, clipped and choppy, on holding a single note, yet booms out with massive fatness and adds a vital contrasting fill to the sonic picture. The garage-wrapped guitars are again often deliberately wobbly, »knocked over«. Mic noise stays an ornament on the band’s third release too. The more everything »creaks« on the album and the more general racket Repetitor whip up, the better. The band uses all this racket very skillfully to build a full sonic picture, without pushing it into the extremes that can be typical of our own noisers Nikki Louder. Letting loose (at least a bit of) that “noiser” racket is therefore a must for reaching the aesthetic the name Repetitor stands for.
Repetitor record in one take. Their vocabulary can’t stand after-the-fact fixes and touch-ups. Given the enormous concert mileage they’ve racked up and the band’s growing popularity among the young generation of rock-underground fans (which is exactly what opens the door to ever more new gig venues), the only sensible move is to play a gig in the studio, catch it on tape and thereby record an album. First take, in other words. The vocals are definitely the most interesting thing about the whole package. All three members handle them. The vocal delivery is uncompromising and deeply instinctive. This three-way vocal setup is extremely welcome, because it livens up the look of the basic phrasing (often staring into the repetitive, semitone minimalism of two or three notes), which technically doesn’t reach any findings of musical expression worth mentioning. The music the band cultivates doesn’t even demand it. Still. Boris’s vocal can be completely psychotic and alienated, as if coming from the beyond, almost »extraterrestrial« (Kralj ničega), and then at other points he fully »screams his head off«, which, along with all the uncompromising detachment, gives the feeling that the lyrics were written in their own sweat and blood (Jataci).
»Gde ćeš« is an album that holds on to the essence and charisma of a band walking the Balkan region’s alt-rock underground completely alone. Even so, the album feels slightly more concise than both its predecessors, which boasted a bigger helping of unpredictable, spontaneous twists and turns. That’s kind of logical. You mature artistically over the years, and albums have to reflect that maturing. That means there have to be clearly noticeable gaps between them in how that artistic maturing is expressed. With the new album, then, Repetitor stay on the turf of the musical vision of both predecessors, so this record will further strengthen their position as one of the most interesting alt-rock acts of the new generation in the Balkans itself and help them win over the hearts of new fans of this kind of music.
Repetitor – Beskraj (official video):
Lineup
Boris Vlastelica – vocals, guitar
Ana-Marija Cupin – bass guitar, vocals
Milena Milutinović – drums, vocals
Production
Goran Crevar
Tracklist
1. Suženi snovi
2. Gde ćeš
3. Jataci
4. Kralj ničega
5. Crvena
6. Ako te ikada
7. Beskraj
8. Ekspedicija
