Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Olfamož
Label: ZARŠ Records
Release: 2015
Rating: 4/5
Olfamož is Andrej Fon, a man of peculiar musical visions. »Hupam, da ste dobro« is his second studio album under the Olfamož banner. All in all, the guy is basically a kind of singer-songwriter. On the first record he cooked most of it up on his own, but on the new one he’s joined by a whole musical collective of more than ten contributors.
Since Andrej Fon’s basic visionary premise remains musical adventurism that knows no frames or limits, meaning it fits no genre template and deftly cruises outside all of them, calling it musical eccentricity in the spirit of rock in opposition, or even avant-garde schlock, is too mild.
Even though the music often falls apart at the seams and the whole thing can sound downright irritating and cacophonous, like in the instrumental part of Anton Stres (and there’s plenty of that on the album), Fon also called in musicians who come out of the jazz school, and for them the label “musical experiment” is by no means foreign. Alongside him, a multi-instrumentalist who also handles lead vocals, Olfamož is joined on this album by a colorful wind-and-string and rhythm collective that delivers a loose, hacked-together sonic palette of bold expressive provocation. »Brez olfagoža, olfamroža in olfanoža.«
A product of a juicy, undefined musical story, this is a special, one-of-a-kind album, which, given the approach, wasn’t hard to pull off. For the most part it blends elements of jazz, avant-garde and alternative-rock schlock, which Andrej Fon mostly pulls off through deliberately irritating vocal excess (exactly as irritating as this kind of music demands) across the whole album. Here and there it’s filled out by two female singers to whom musical eccentricity is no stranger, especially Irena Tomažin, who in the closing Princ na belem kozlu contributed her trademark vocal outburst of a sort of black fortune-teller, quite likely caught on classic recording tape, yet tastefully woven in and glued into the point of the song. Truth be told, there’s not a speck of musicality. That only sneaks in on the closing, hidden eleventh track of the album.
The poetry often comes across as a tangle of crazy pains in a sea of surplus information, the voice of a lost individual in a brave new world. In its eccentricity of total absence of logic, yet with a lucid, whimsical seasoning, ruled by deliberate play with words (often deliberately turned upside down), it honestly never stops being entertaining. It is, after all, the core of the homegrown, tangible musical substance of Fon’s expressionism. The instrumental excess that constantly accompanies the poetry works throughout as a decorative cloak and only registers “secondarily” when you listen. In other words: the first thing that hits your ear on the album is Fon with his frenetic yelling and screeching. The vividness of Andrej Fon’s sparkling mind is captured in the album booklet by the lyrics of Makadamija and the opener Za v razrez. Fon “drives” us nicely into the stories and in their endings he shocks the hell out of us, jolts us awake. Clears the head.
Even though the bulk of the album is utterly unformatted music, thanks to the excellent interplay of the contributing musicians the new record is an absolute step up from the studio debut. With »Hupam, da ste dobro« Fon consolidates his unique, homegrown pose of total eccentricity, which, with its spontaneity and unexpected musical moves, surprises the listener in a good way at every turn. You don’t need a thick skin for this album to crawl under it. You just have to switch off your rational mind. And that’s not an easy thing in these new times, is it? In short, from Fon we can expect even more musical adventurism and monstrous-deviant maneuvering in elusive musical excess in the future. »Hupam, da ste dobro« is a textbook album of underground, experimental musical provocation of Slovenian geographic origin. Daring and brave. Every single musician who contributes their piece to the picture of the album gets to live out their expressive moment in it. That’s the key. An album of organic feel and natural collages, unadulterated in substance. It chases expression caught on the first take. In other words, experimentalism in the true sense of the word. The music itself is so seductive in its unformattedness that it could easily be conceptualized and used in a stage play, a sort of musical.
Lineup
Andrej Fon – vocals, guitar, tenor saxophone, clarinet
Marko Jenič – violin
Ana Kravanja – violin, vocals, balafon, percussion
Samo Kutin – hurdy-gurdy, balafon, percussion, vocals
Vitja Balžalorsky – guitar, percussion
Ivo Podržaj – bass guitar
Jošt Drašler – double bass
Vid Drašler – drums, percussion
Jaka Berger – drums, percussion
Cene Resnik – tenor saxophone
Vesna Godler – vocals
Irena Tomažin Vocals
Production
Sašo Kalan
Tracklist
1. Za v razrez (06:07)
2. Kamen, zmlet v drobni pesem (00:41)
3. Bo(ga!) (00:44)
4. Anton Stres (06:15)
5. Samomorilska vinjeta (01:24)
6. Diskocinik (03:48)
7. Se seseda (04:39)
8. Makadamija (02:54)
9. Hodim (07:28)
10. Princ na belem kozlu (20:14)
