Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Various Artists
Label: Radio Študent
Release: 2010
Duration: 43:05
Rating: 3.7/5
This year’s cross-section of club enthusiasts offers a whole palette of differences, and that variety swings in quality too. If we hold all six featured picks up to the same yardstick, we find a package full of hidden potential and a healthy dose of schizophrenic mouths. And this time the variety shows up in scattered pairs, which keeps the compilation lively and a bit easier to digest. So let’s go neatly in order, like the houses in Trieste!
The disc opens with the rock’n’roll quartet from Celje, GOD DAMN IT, BOYS! These guys are unpredictable, and in their mantra-like devotion to the garage sound they present themselves with two tracks – ’11.’ and ’16.’ – a pair of charging, English-sounding bursts of old-school-sounding rock. The kind served up for the new millennium on Crypt Records. Associations with The Hives and similar merrymakers are perfectly natural. Definitely good fun for the less demanding part of the audience, but the guys still have plenty of room to level up. What follows is a bit more alternative and artsy. STOJAN KNEŽEVIĆ, the Styrian poet of melancholy and the former mother and father of the project S.O.A.P. (a.k.a. MILO), this time bets everything on his own poetic outpourings of frustration in singer-songwriter garb. Stojan identifies with Thom Yorke and performs his catharsis solo from start to finish. The formula is a fragile, questioning rummage through his intimate moments, which can easily bewilder an unprepared listener and put them off digging any further through the archives. ‘Ali znaš obdržati skrivnost?’ and ‘Volk, zakaj imaš tako lepe oči?’ are artsiness that Vladimir Benzen might perhaps get, but the proverbial Kranjski Janez certainly won’t, though that’s definitely a matter of taste. SPOCK STUDIOS is the brainchild of Mr. Spock, and it comes to life as a tasty pairing of experimentation with conventional guitar and bass sounds and somewhat colder, but by no means irritating, electronics. An almost eight-minute excursion into the world of ‘Red Tomorrow’ and the more futuristic dance antipode of ‘Kolors’ offer a musical treat for lovers of experiments. Visuals are added to the music, so the dehumanization of the world goes down a bit more gently than you might first think, given the number of players involved. My favorite part of the musical offering is the band SPORTBILLY KRŠI EMBARGO, who, with a mix of folk and above all prog, dub, jazz, ethno and an exceptionally tasty horn section, burrow into every pore of your being and put you in a state of movement, enjoyment and dancing. The guys are genuinely mature and musical, and the sextet, with its embargo-breaking and frequent crossing of genre borders, very subtly tests your spectrum of acceptance of diversity. ‘Hipi in vesoljšek’ could be part of some film moment – say, an updated version of Odpisani or Valter brani Sarajevo … ERRORIST are a fitting extension of the audio-manipulative scheme, one you float into quite naturally. The intro is ‘Mark Two’. It’s as if they melted down from acoustic into electric and kept the jazz in this bionic blend, while the club atmosphere darkens with the second act – the track ‘Dark Current’. The loose chillout aesthetic doesn’t wreck you, and the play of the digital signal plugs into your energy body through the cables in a way that Borghesia would be very proud of. A more merciless punishment for the ears is the noise sound of IT’S EVERYONE ELSE, who feed from the same trough as Atari Teenage Riot, and this duo of sonic wreckers from Prekmurje is dynamic, even melodic and metallically rhythmic. With the track ‘Pig Milk’ the condensed mass tips over into the more consistently electronic part. The organic becomes inorganic. ‘Moss’ brings back the post-punk atmosphere, and the return to normality is gradual and by no means ill-considered or artificial.
The closing act of the disc can thus once again be wrapped up with the sounds of what is, as I said, my favorite among the fragments on offer. ‘Kobacaj’, the playful finale from Sportbilly, who break the embargo, rounds off the whole thing into a tenth package that leaves no fear that the club avant-garde will die out. The favorites are left to your own judgment, while we’re left with the sincere hope that this extravagant rerun will be repeated soon – a year from now, that is. The reason is single and simple: a hatchery for young talent is needed, and so are the channels through which we can, with good and better, make waves on the monotonous surface of the local scene, stir up some rebellion, encourage movement and give birth to yet another good idea for the road ahead. And if not that, then at least add a good topic for chats in the dimmed corners of the club where something new, something never heard before and something passionate swept us away!
Lineup
ERRORIST:
Miha Milek – electronics
Jure Legac – visuals
GOD DAMN IT, BOYS!:
Uroš Klincov – vocals
Aleš Mačkovšek – guitar
Andrej Mihevc – bass
Rok Martinčič – drums
IT’S EVERYONE ELSE:
Lucijan Prelog – sound synthesizers, electronics, vocals
Pika Golob – vocals, sound synthesizer, sampler
SPOCK STUDIOS:
Mr. Spock (a.k.a. Blaž Flerin) – guitar, programming
Matic Šuštar – bass, vocals
SPORTBILLY KRŠI EMBARGO:
Jaka Berger – drums
Jure Najdič – bass
Danijel Marinič – accordion
Miha Klančnik – trumpet
Rok Uhan – saxophone
Jernej Stegnar – guitar
STOJAN KNEŽEVIĆ:
Stojan Knežević – vocals, guitar
Production
Andrej Kocan, Marko Trstenjak, Aleš Trtnik, Samo Pavlica & Primož Vozelj
Tracklist
1. GOD DAMN IT, BOYS! – 11.
2. STOJAN KNEŽEVIĆ – Ali znaš obdržati skrivnost?
3. SPOCK STUDIOS – Red Tomorrow
4. SPORTBILLY KRŠI EMBARGO – Hipi in vesoljček
5. ERRORIST – Mark Two
6. IT’S EVERYONE ELSE – Pig Milk
7. SPOCK STUDIOS – Kolors
8. IT’S EVERYONE ELSE – Moss
9. ERRORIST – Dark Current
10. GOD DAMN IT, BOYS! – 16.
11. STOJAN KNEŽEVIĆ – Volk, zakaj imaš tako lepe oči?
12. SPORTBILLY KRŠI EMBARGO – Kobacaj
