Karma Reset

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik

Artist: Momento
Label: Celinka
Released: 2014
Running time: 50:21
Rating: 3.5/5

»Karma Reset« is the second studio album from Momento, a trio from the island of Krk. The band has been active since late 2006, and its members count as seasoned, battle-hardened players. The clearly crafted musical track record embodied by »Karma Reset« backs that up. Its contents show that Momento belong with those Slovenian alt-rock bands with a melancholy-tinged atmosphere, one that’s always paired with a well-developed sense of musicality.

Momento build a compact, richly layered yet organic wall of sound, and the lead vocals slot right into it. The sound plays electric against acoustic, the guitars are recorded in multiple layers with added decorative flourishes, so the backing picture is thickened up in a thoroughly modern way. The band understands the value of letting the mood build gradually across a song, all the way to an infectious crescendo in the chorus melody. Especially in the calmer stretches (verses, intros, outros and mid-eights), the band adds strings, flute and keyboards as a special atmospheric glue in the arrangements, and the moods are also effectively »shifted« by alternating the guitar sound through a sly use of sustain, wah-wah and stereo chorus effects. The band is developing its own musical culture and its own artistic identity, while the musical value is combined with an alternative rock attitude aimed at wider recognition, so this studio document delivers a nice bundle of tracks that wouldn’t be hard to slot into regular radio rotation. Momento will therefore appeal to anyone who’s into Slovenian rock bands such as Siddharta, Flirrt, Bohem, Shyam and Dan D.

In terms of composing and arranging, Momento are a strong band, which is to say strong »songwriters«. A pile of melodically infectious chorus hooks proves it, the kind that grab you on the first listen. Tracks like Zgodbe poti, Nisem sam, Druga stran or Novo upanje have a charming anthemic theatricality, even a touch of mood-driven grandeur, along with the pronounced, typically dark and melancholy streak that defines this kind of work on the sunny side of the Alps, in the geographic territory of the Republic of Slovenia. In other words, this is a textbook Slovenian rock product.

The band approached the making of the album as ambitiously as possible. They also tried out a few songs in English, but those come across far less convincingly than the tracks sung in Slovenian. The meter of Slovenian verses simply locks into the lead motifs and the traditional Slovenian melos of alternative rock soundscapes much more effectively and convincingly, and the English delivery in the verses falls below satisfactory standards, which right from the start rules out any potential breakthrough on the international rock scene. The album is a very nice, high-quality product, no doubt about that. Still, it would have been a far more sensible move for the band to tack the three English-language songs onto the end of the album as bonus tracks (or release them on a separate EP, which in other words means that Karma Reset is “too long” precisely because of those three English tracks) rather than mixing them in among the rest of the Slovenian-language songs, since they fail to develop the same strong expressive range as the songs sung in Slovenian. That’s why the dynamic flow of moods across the album is somewhat stifled. All in all, »Karma Reset« is a record of strong alternative rock material seasoned with highly vibrant moods and an infectious musical streak. Definitely a nice piece of work that shows plenty of commitment from the band.

Line-up

Boštjan Levičar – vocals, backing vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar
Marko Jakopin – bass guitar
Robert Dvoršek – drums, percussion, backing vocals

GUEST MUSICIANS:
Eva Koprivšek – viola
Kristian Ilić – violin
Lucija Grošelj – cello
Matija Udovič – violin
Miha Koretič – guitar
Nana Milčinski – vocals
Peter Urek – keyboards, flute

Production

Uroš Bon

Track list