Label: Celinka
Release year: 2015
Production: Iztok Turk & Janez Dovč
Album length: 48.44
Genre: Art
Janez Dovč has been one of the most creative musical artists in Slovenia in recent years. He’s everywhere (and it’s still not enough). A musician who gradually forged and developed himself into a top-class composer and solo performer, he first made a name for himself with Terrafolk and Jararaja. His first solo release didn’t come until 2008, when he recorded the album Filharmonika: Janez Dovč & Orkester Slovenske filharmonije (Slovenska filharmonija). Besides numerous guest appearances and active collaborations across all sorts of musical projects, he has put out two seriously interesting releases in the last two years. The first is a project called Baraka, where he joined forces with tuba player Goran Krmac and percussionist Nino Mureškič, and the second is “Pomladne sanje”, made together with singer Brina Vogelnik.
“AkordeON” is an extremely ambitious album that puts accordion playing in a special corner of the musical universe, a far cry from the one we usually get in everyday encounters with the instrument, which in Slovenia has always come with a mandatory folk label. While shaping and delivering his fresh ideas, Dovč leaned heavily on sound manipulation. With it he created contrasting harmonies, built rhythmic foundations, and added rustling sonic effects. In short, programming in this setup is an immense form of fun, both inspiring and teasing, when you approach it with the zeal of a research experiment. Absolutely everything you hear on this album comes from one and the same instrument: the accordion. The only exception is the occasional coloring of the arrangements with vocals that work as an additional instrument (no lyrics). “AkordeON” is thus a completely instrumental album.
Besides his unsuspected musical talents, Dovč is also a very skilled and resourceful “handy man”, and his background in physics, which he studied, gives him a solid foundation for it. The man has been experimenting with electronic processing of the accordion for the past few years, and his new studio album is best understood as a follow-up to the Baraka project, where he first tried out this technique of delivering musical ideas in a more concrete way.
For all its experimentation, the album carries an exceptional musicality. It sounds soft and refined, and it has an air of originality about it. The musical dossier the album represents is made up of elements of electronic music, world music and jazz, and almost every track could easily be used as a film soundtrack.
The accordion is often fitted with additional sound effects that gratefully expand the depth of the sonic picture and color the soundscape itself in vividly contrasting hues. The basic motif is harmonized with extra “sub-harmonies” that thicken the soundscape of each individual track. A heap of echoing, minimalistically shaped sounds surrounds the core of the leading melodies on the album. In the sonic softness of their lead motifs, the tracks are almost cerebrally seductive. You can drift far beyond the rational with them in no time. They carry you off into a state of mental rapture, a disconnect from consciousness. If you dare to give in to it, that is.
Since the album is distinctly melodic, you can listen to it at literally any moment of the day or in any situation your “humble” everyday life throws at you. Given Dovč’s refined, holistic approach to shaping the tracks and his astonishingly deft experimenting, the album still comes across as broadly accessible and incredibly likable, right from the first listen, “straight off the bat”. The atmosphere is exploratively scattered, often melancholic, but also awakening and optimistic. The tracks are mostly mellow, though there’s definitely a playful bouncer or two, like the track at number 5, Schrödingerjeva mačka, which served Dovč as the album’s first single.
On “AkordeON”, Janez Dovč put absolutely everything in the right place. All the building blocks sit side by side on the album in a one-of-a-kind symbiosis, and the record isn’t weighed down by any single element, nor does it need anything added. It’s an exceptionally beautiful, cohesively shaped, polished and artistically mature album that sounds unusual and, precisely because of that, extremely appealing. It comes across as authentically original, unique and incredibly confident. It’ll be interesting to see where Janez Dovč heads next in his musical discovery of the undiscovered. The path he’s chosen is incredibly alluring, and new challenges keep opening up for him along it. Let’s hope he takes them on.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 10 / 10
Track list:
1. Schoreditch Tango
2. Turingova lokomotiva
3. Kvarkova svatba
4. Ples v nevihti
5. Javorjev drevored
6. Schrodingerjeva mačka
7. Beločrni burkeži
8. Štefanov tok
9. Prebujanje
10. Razgled
11. Nežen pristanek
Lineup:
Janez Dovč – accordion, programming
