Location: Ljubljana / SiTi Teater / Slovenia
Date: 25.01.2013
When the talk turns to musical experimentation that you hurl into the century-old template of recognizable tunes from the Slovenian folk music landscape, you’ll struggle to find a bigger artistic high point than the sextet Katalena offers these days. Twelve years running now. In an unchanged lineup with Vesna Zornik on vocals, Polona Janežič on keyboards, Boštjan Gombač on wind instruments and other folk exotica, Boštjan Narat on guitar, Tibor Mihelič Syed on bass and Robert Rebolj on drums.
A fair bit has been said about Katalena over the years, but this is music that would need a doctoral expert all to itself. And even that wouldn’t be enough, nor is it worth trying. Simple as that. You never get to the bottom of it. Its multifacetedness, the countless shades of the musical landscape they create, seem to have neither end nor edge, and that’s exactly the biggest fascination of the energy we call music, which was sent our way so we could revel in it. There are few bands who, with their razor-sharp genius for arranging, have won such freedom within their own prism of homegrown, one-of-a-kind artistry as Katalena. This is a one-off on a global scale, and they’re very well aware of that abroad too, since Katalena has already thrilled audiences in full measure at international venues in the past.
Especially when it comes to creating a contagiously hypnotic atmosphere that grabs the listener in a firm grip and doesn’t let go for the whole gig. Siti Teater, with the excellent acoustics of its space, couldn’t have been a better location for creating this world.
To kick things off, the gig in a packed SiTi Teater opened with a sweeping calibration of the instrumentalists. That kind of free-flowing, musically experimental platform is offered by the song Dež. An experimental number with room for things to unfold on the edge of improvisational disconnect, with a hint of unexpectedly picked motifs that nonetheless keep pleasantly teasing and stirring up the cochlea. It’s a rich landscape of soft, unobtrusive shades, passed back and forth between guitar and winds, while in the background of this intro a gentle Balkan veil keeps watch, given organic grounding by an active bass line.
In the song Shod, Vesna Zornik sneaks onto the stage like a little mouse from the background, and the group’s stage lineup is complete. Katalena is a sextet. True, during the gigs the front line of Narat-Zornik-Gombač takes most of the attention on stage, but you can clearly feel during the band’s set that this is the cohesion of six equal entities working together, each generating its own sonic flux, which reaches its crescendo in an eclectically dynamic jigsaw of a unique musical form. Take away just one of the six entities and the concept collapses in a flash, like a house of cards. Every member of the sextet plays an integral part in the Katalena story, and its content is, so to speak, essential. At the start Vesna’s vocals were a bit too quiet in the sound mix, but later the techs set her vocals to the right level too.
After a more generous dose of tracks from the current album »Noč Čarovnic« in the first two thirds of the gig, the band built up its show toward the end, and the first peak came in the last third with the performance of (Rad imel bi) Jabuko, which the audience had long since made its own. The crowd suddenly came alive and woke from the hypnotic climax, keeping the tempo of the song going with spontaneous clapping. Older material followed, with the one-of-a-kind Lisica standing out especially, and the gig was wrapped up by another song from the beloved album »Kmečka ohcet«, the rearranged folk song Oj božime.
The gig itself was further fanned by the mischievous duo of Narat and Gombač, who in the breaks between songs gave theatrical free rein to stage skits that would fit right into some stand-up comedy spectacle. In those moments of wacky lucidity, the two guys mostly made use of their acting chops, which are simply an integral part of the band’s performances. What was especially infectious there was the intellectual undertone of certain carefully wrapped-up nuggets of everyday truth, which they served up to the crowd at SiTi Teater hungry for bread and circuses. Vesna Zornik is a chapter in herself, and it’s incredible how supple, soft and fragile her vocals float in the sonic landscape built by the instrumentalists. Vesna naturally took the main focus with her multilayered dose of sensitivity, which sparkled to the fullest especially in the softest moments of the show’s musical tenderness, while at the same time dizzyingly flipping those moments into spots of energetic, piercing vocal excess, seasoned with a polished sense of theatricality
A whiff of avant-garde clings to Katalena, and with each new work the band keeps ripening in this department over the years. A touch of unpredictable turns is firmly built into the arranging of the songs, as they develop with the flavor of an intelligent fusion of many genres, from funk, jazz and blues to world music,,… and the sense of spontaneity that comes with this kind of stage show is just as impressive. Lisica, played toward the end of the gig, is the pinnacle of this exceptional coexistence of a traditional folk tune with doses of current genre cues, which tickle the receptor organs most pleasantly while also unsettling with a feeling of the »unheard« – the opening vocal duet of Zornik and Janežič is extremely infectious in this respect, and the song even rocks out in the middle when Narat solos on his »F-hole« Telecaster. After Gombač’s early quip that Narat’s guitar also hits notes the band doesn’t need, Narat paid him back during the gig by teasing Gombač theatrically through the mic before his entrances for his solos on clarinet, whistle, mini trumpets, little saxophones and other rattling exotic props.
Exceptional chemistry, exceptional tightness, exceptional focus. Countless gigs, years of working together and knowing each other! That remarkable togetherness cast a spell over SiTi Teater, which even after the encore had a hard time shaking off its daze. Katalena simply keeps ripening, and with its performances confirms that it remains one of the main stage attractions, offering, with the tangible substance of its musical message, directed as full-blooded theater and wrung from raw emotion, a fascinating realization of a unique musical experience. A world all its own, a world created by the musical language of the band Katalena.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Dež
2. Shod
3. Zeleni Jurij
4. St. Lawdič
5. Zvezda
6. Ne orji, ne sejaj – Gizdava
7. Pastirče mlado
8. Ta solbaška
9. Šla bom na goro visoko
10. Noč čarovnic
11. (Rad imel bi) Jabuko
12. Lucija
13. Lisica
14. Komur se dremlje
15. Zrelo je žito
16. Oj božime
