Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jurki & Basisti
Label: Celinka
Release: 2014
Runtime: 42:13
Rating: 4.5/5
Bojan Jurjevčič is a man with a career of biblical proportions. Over three decades of artistic work devoted to theater music, he has also led a band the whole time, one that has gradually shed its name over the years, from Basisti to Jurki z Basisti and on to the current incarnation, Jurki & Basisti. With a new, revamped and rejuvenated lineup, Jurki decided to release a new studio album. All told, barely the third real full-length document!
Bojan Jurjevčič is a music veteran who’s been around the block and knows every trick in the book. With a bag full of new original ideas and a revamped crew of excellent musicians, who have likewise played in various bands and with many renowned artists throughout their careers, he’s put together a superb new musical achievement. It’s no news that Jurki is incredibly expressive as a poet and that the singer-songwriter streak is strong in him. On this record, Jurki once again tersely tears into a few seriously »rancid« things in his messages.
The album Jurki & Basisti sounds alive, modeled on a live performance. At the same time, compared to the album »Dama in top« from 2002 it’s more »mellow«, with more melodious warmth and depth, and the sound picture in the production is considerably denser (the building blocks are put to better use) than on its predecessor. In the twelve-year gap between the two albums, Jurki earned his daily bread by creating a pile of music for commercials, TV shows, films and theater productions. There’s certainly no doubting his creative productivity. And thanks to the huge mileage this artist has racked up, it’s also perfectly clear that during composing and arranging he knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows precisely how any given track has to »stand« to »grab« you right away and to make its message hit the target straight in the bullseye!
A crew of proven musicians shows that, working under the baton of the experienced Jurki, they turn on a dime in the studio. For the album »Jurki & Basisti«, Jurki left the wind instruments out of the arrangements entirely. As a result, the »velvety warmth« of the Hammond and Wurlitzer sounds gets more expressive on certain tracks! It blends wonderfully with the guitar phrases and colors the motifs, also through the artful placement of pedal steel and lap steel guitars in the arrangements. This backdrop, which Bojan’s charismatic vocal sits in, is propped up by the stocky, compact kinetic form of a rhythm section, fused together by the excellent drummer Žiga Kožar (Don Mentony Band, Moonlight Sky Trio,…), while the seasoned bassist Jani Lah (Tomaž Domicelj Band, Matej Krajnc,…) adds refined precision. At the heart of it all is Jurki’s vocal interpretation, which once again brings a dose of his recognizable sarcasm, and a playful touch too. A master is a master. He delivers the verses with a note of extraordinary lived-in feeling, and the songs move within loosened genre frameworks of playful cabaret blues (En lep dan na tvojo dlan, Priznam) and cabaret rock ‘n’ roll (Pismo), even the occasional detour toward jazz, all the way to a hard-hitting mix of blues and alternative rock with a desperado, gunslinger flavor (A in B, Vsak je sam, Navaden dan). Nick Cave would surely listen to the songs listed in parentheses in the previous sentence with interest, too.
The song Janezu se jebe is a bigger stylistic deviation, but for those of you who know Jurki’s broader body of work, the composition won’t come as a surprise. Still, it’s the odd one out on the album »Jurki & Basisti«. The associations with Janez Janša aren’t even that important here, compared to the fact that the message of this song can be instantly tied to the stereotype of the classic mentality of the average Slovenian everyman, while also vividly summing up the current, utterly orphaned state of mind of Slovenian society, robbed of all moral values and backbone. In this song the guitars hit harder too, the rhythmic kinetics even lean toward funky levers, and the feel and its development call for a kind of eccentricity that sensibly brings to mind the band Na lepem prijazni (NLP)! It’s also in this very song that the opening trick, built on an operatic female vocal, is a fitting parallel that ties Jurki to Ennio Morricone-style tricks. Well, that’s exactly the sort of arranging spice that a hardened master is right at home with when it comes to creating music for any film script.
Tacked onto the very end of the album is the well-known original Od dela se umira, written in the mid-eighties but still totally evergreen! This track too, freshened up with a new remix, keeps surprising with its effective use of that elementary axiom of composing, »less is more«. In that respect it’s a true gem of songwriting. Besides, this approach isn’t hard to pick out across the whole album »Jurki & Basisti«. Front and center is of course Jurki’s recognizable vocal, which does the bulk of the work enchanting the listener, while the other building blocks of the compositions very effectively color the backdrop and perfectly contrast and magnify the moods Jurki wants to build in his messages.
Jurki & Basisti deliver a quintessentially Slovenian album to the Slovenian music scene. Seasoned with the melos and feel of the true geographic origin where this (Slovenian) album was brewed. On top of that, the album delivers a likable and tasty variety of ideas, layered perception of musical essence, and the essence of all essences! An extremely deeply felt interpretation of poetry that, through ingenious metaphorical sarcasm, deftly paints our world throughout. Jurki is a situational preacher. An observer. The song Pismo will make you laugh to tears with its poetry, with the closing fact of how the daughter »outwits her mother-in-law«, while at the same time biting you with the warning that there’s a whole lot of truth in this joke, which we witness (mutely) every day. In the bosom of this unpretentious, even often thoroughly relaxed and easygoing album, a tightly packed anguish and melancholy hangs stretched over the sky of Slovenian territory. The feelings, passions and emotions are delivered with great expressive power, which is why this record is so real, convincing and rich in content. You’ll be gnawing on it for a long time.
If I may add a bit (more) of a personal note to this gorgeous record, I sincerely wish that authentic, full-blooded, one-of-a-kind creations like this would show up more often on the Slovenian music scene. So let’s hope we won’t have to wait more than ten years again for the follow-up to the album »Jurki & Basisti«, and in the meantime, hats off to Jurki and the crew for this honest confession and musical masterpiece.
Lineup
Bojan Jurjevčič Jurki – vocals, guitar, dobro, mandolin, synth, baritone guitar, bass guitar, programming, blues harp, wurlitzer, percussion
Miha Meglič – guitar
Miloš Rebula – hammond, wurlitzer, piano
Janez Lah – bass guitar
Žiga Kožar – drums, percussion
Andraž Mazi – lap steel, pedal steel
ADDITIONAL VOCALISTS:
Barbara Fürst – operatic vocals
Aleš Hadalin – backing vocals
Petra Trobec – backing vocals
Metod Banko – backing vocals
Neža Peterle – backing vocals
Tomaž Maher – backing vocals
Blaž Medja & Aleš Berkopec – remix of track no. 11
Production
Franci Rainer & Bojan Jurjevčič Jurki
Track list
1. En lep dan na tvojo dlan
2. Priznam
3. A in Be
4. Pismo
5. Navaden dan?
6. Back on dixie bound I
7. Vsak je sam
8. Če imaš prav
9. Janezu se jebe
10. Back on dixie bound II
11. Od dela se umira (remix)
