Label: Self-released
Release date: 20.09.2018
Production: Generator
Album length: 46.57
Genre: Art / Pop Rock
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Generator is a nine-piece collective, though its creative nucleus is built around the axis of singer Anina Trobec and her partner, English musician Joseph Wheba, who handles mostly keyboards on the debut »Open Eyes«.
At its core, »Open Eyes« is an art pop album. Right off the bat, this is a record whose musical substance smashes the frame of predictable, pragmatic songwriting, the kind where an artist is supposedly chasing the favor of radio airwaves with their work. It all revolves around Anina Trobec’s infectious, charismatic soul and R&B vocals, while the nine-piece crew is bold, sparkling and above all inventive enough in its starting ideas to pile a heap of genre extras onto that soul and R&B vocal contour. They surprise and keep the listener on their toes, and because of them the record firmly turns its back on pop templates and predictability. All this “added value” gives Generator a touch of eclecticism, or downright musical uniqueness.
There’s a weave of woodwind pastels, neatly embedded, warm and organic-sounding keyboards (even the veiled, old-school sound of the Hammond organ gets its moment), guitar inserts, clearly defined detours into more complex rhythmic loops (reggae, Latin, Balkan, even nods to the rhythmic danceability of seventies disco), plus a blend of world music, reggae, funk and more. Then come the jazz inserts, which, with their compatible arrangements, shake up the core of the songs to great effect. In this respect, »Open Your Eyes« is an extremely carefully and cleverly packaged piece of work. It keeps its excellent listenability and compactness. Despite all the variety and the countless musical arrangement details, which coexist very peacefully in this rich and expressively dense musical world, it still stays firmly within the expressive realm of pop culture.
The band’s affinity for reggae brings three tracks woven in that vein to the album, placed so that they somehow “relieve” the most interesting parts of the record, namely the ones boasting the biggest dose of the band’s eclecticism and musical quirks. That makes for a pleasant bit of variety, but when you weigh up the whole substance of the album, the reggae numbers come across as the most predictable and so surprise the least. The real highlights are worth hunting for elsewhere, especially in the moments of ultra-bold leaps in the rhythmic and genre culture of the record. One of them is the sudden rocker burst of guitar from Marko Turk (read: Tučo from Dan D) in the song Frame Bend Over, popping up exactly where you’d never expect an arrangement like that.
Anyway, all the musicians are seriously experienced, and everything fits together beautifully in the interplay of all the musical shades of the expressive landscape created on the record, which shows the musical maturity of each individual. That’s underlined by the contributions of the guests too, who leave their own performance stamp, while this turn of events also highlights the excellent mutual awareness and communication between all the musicians. Still, a nonet needs a clear conductor’s baton, and Anina and Joseph obviously fit that role very well.
On their debut, Generator present themselves as a band that is artistically very interesting, more so than you’d expect given the general impression of “average grayness” left by most of the newly formed acts that try to find their way around the Slovenian pop scene with various artistic levers. This is definitely an ambitious, big-picture project that is still developing and growing artistically, with plenty of different expressive directions open for the future as they chisel out their own artistic charisma. Evolving the natural way. That’s why Generator are still shaping their expression. The album is a bit too long, which reflects its creators’ ambition, but the substance doesn’t waver in quality or fluctuate and keeps a consistent standard, so it’s well covered against any remarks about running time. With all its interesting character and the detailed merging of musical moves, the album »Open Your Eyes« comes across as one of the most interesting and daring pop releases to come out last year on the sunny side of the Alps. This is an act that will be very much worth following on its further musical journey.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9 / 10
Track list:
1. Open Eyes (04:18)
2. Frame Bend Over (04:04)
3. Trouble Me (03:31)
4. Dancer (05:12)
5. Suddenly (03:57)
6. Ljubav (03:04)
7. Mother’s (03:19)
8. Easy (03:36)
9. Cleavage (04:01)
10. Love Is The Most (04:26)
11. Cider (04:10)
12. TMWIWTG (02:53)
Lineup:
Anina Trobec – vocals
Joseph Wheba – keyboards, backing vocals
Marko Turk – guitar
Tomaž Zorko – guitar
Mitja Turk – saxophone
Gregor Turk – trombone
Denis Androić – trumpet
Primož Špelko – bass guitar
Maksim Špelko – drums
