Label: Kapa Records
Release date: 25.10.2018
Production: Vitja Balžalorsky
Length: 38:02
Rating: 9.0 / 10
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Frankly, this album is finger-licking good. It’s not reinventing the wheel and it’s not bringing a musical revolution, but everything that comes through the confessional mission of its “melodious expanses” shows extraordinary focus, incredible concentration, dedication and commitment, and is therefore a product of this young band’s huge enthusiasm. At the same time, it’s an honest manifesto from a band that stays true to its creative perfectionism. Haiku Garden already tipped us off with the EP “Waver” that they’re a band promising a whole lot. That hint came a year earlier, when the compilation “Klubski maraton 15” came out, where their two tracks were actually the highlight of the release. This is a band with unsuspected creative potential that cashed in on that potential on its studio debut, took it up an artistic notch, and ended up with an album we can call a work of great artistic aesthetics and a gorgeous tribute to shoegaze. You may well have figured out for yourselves pretty quickly that Haiku Garden, with their homegrown musical philosophy, aren’t aiming just at recognition within Slovenian borders. Their music is already, from the very first notes, geared up for an assault on the international “Euro” scene of contemporary alt-rock club underground, which, let’s hope, the band conquers wholeheartedly. The predispositions for that are ideal!
Haiku Garden walk in the footsteps of shoegaze and go down a storm with the crowd that flirts with the so-called post rock tag. That means their alt-rock elementality, combining the deep-ringing jangle of overlapping guitar lines with rustling synth lines, is aimed first and foremost at creating a sonic mass of waves that sucks you in instantly through a vibrant atmosphere. The lead vocal is cleverly “sunk” into that sound in the production and comes across as if it were arriving from the beyond, from another galaxy. Like the chants of an extraterrestrial being. Or, if you like, the voice of a fulfilled soul that, searching for nirvana, has just left its body for the last time . The atmosphere of the record is cold, but not alienating. It sounds “bright”, and thanks to its feeling of lightness and ease, the record is instantly infectious and incredibly appealing to listen to.
The four lads of Haiku Garden aren’t just musical talents when it comes to writing music, they’re also big perfectionists who don’t rush things, and are instead blessed with the character traits of persistence and patience. And in the expression of musical art, that always brings good things, So they prefer to create over a longer period and diligently wait for everything to fall into the right place, since that yields the final result, which is the true imprint of the band’s musical vision.
Given the point of evolution they’re currently at after just three years together, Haiku Garden have optimized their ideas as far as they can, which doesn’t mean they’re incapable of reaching further and higher in an artistic sense. But slowly. Evolution will deliver, creative zenith included. On the debut, the band “hired” a special collaborator: the exceptional, multi-layered, seasoned musician Vitja Balžalorsky, who also knows his way around a whole bunch of faders and other sampling gear and sound-structure twisting. Vitja is also extremely experienced and, as an accomplished musician, a hugely welcome reinforcement when it comes to the final polish of the arrangements. A superb move by the band, then, to invite Vitja. It’s more than obvious (and not hard to spot on this record) that Vitja effectively acts as the fifth member of the band, which means the crew found the right working chemistry and magic.
Musically, Haiku Garden are incredibly easygoing. The layered sound is propped up mostly by the trivially tuned simplicity of straightforward rhythms that push the body of any listener into a song-driven “wiggle”. The band whisks the listener away in an instant into a singular experience of surrendering to musical soundscapes, where it’s easy to switch off the logical mind and, under the record’s hypnotic spell, freely “float out of your head”. A dreamy atmosphere of an alt-rock mission , flintily belted with layered shoegaze rhetoric, post rock elements and musicality that flirts with light pop rhetoric. When composing, Haiku Garden actually keep a lot of creative space open for themselves, which offers the option of weaving in several ideas that complement each other as a given composition develops. That’s why “Where If Not Now” carries an element of events unfolding on the “expect the unexpected” principle. That’s the sweet (transcendent) charm of expressive unpredictability. As dense and spectrally saturated as the sound of this record is, Haiku Garden are still extremely concise in how they dole out their artistic moves. These embody short, punchy arrangement strokes with tangible motifs. That means they aim for lightness and ease rather than anything else, and the album doesn’t fall into the trap of over-experimenting, which could ungratefully “crumble” (fragment) the compositional core of the songs. In that respect Haiku Garen are still minimalists, who exploit the “less is more” axiom with great skill.
The Haiku garden is thus in full bloom. The band is really only at the start of its career, and if it keeps carrying this creative momentum over from record to record in the future, it will also keep its constant artistic flowering going strong.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
tracklist:
1. Catch My Breath (02:58)
2. What Lies Within (03:55)
3. Barriers (04:47)
4. Dawn Chorus (01:12)
5. Days, Dripping Away (05:23)
6. Hazel (05:13)
7. Idle Abyss (02:15)
8. Drifter (08:37)
9. Caving (03:48)
lineup:
Anže Knez – drums
Matevž Bitenc – bass guitar
Klemen Tehovnik – guitar, synthesizers, vocals, “sampling”
Luka Flegar – guitar, vocals, acoustic guitar, sitar
guest musician:
Vitja Balžalorsky – synthesizers, drum machine, percussion, twelve-string electric guitar
