Label: ZARŠ
Release date: September 18, 2018
It’s a curious story, how this compilation showed up in my hands totally unexpectedly, long after its official release date. On top of that, you wait for the right reviewing moment, when the energy quantum is favorable, and the compilation ends up getting reviewed half a year late. Whatever the delay, we’re talking Slovenian rock with Slovenian roots, which deserves priority coverage. And the annual Klubski Maraton compilation, put together every year by the Kočevje musicians’ association under the punchy slogan “Kočevje špila”, holds a kind of primacy on our turf when it comes to digging up and presenting the unusual, the provocative and the eclectic in Slovenian music.
Even in its eighteenth edition, the “Klubski maraton” compilation delivered plenty of interesting, musically adventurous provocations of homegrown, self-made excess. In that respect there’s sometimes so much democracy in Slovenian music that it can run an act smack into the real border of bizarreness. The new “Klubski maraton” basically gravitates toward the field of alternative rock, but the subgenre passion is often as all-over-the-place as the subgenre fusion itself, so pigeonholing gets tricky all over again.
“Klubski Maraton 2018” is opened by two tracks of hard-hitting experimental adventure, coming this time from the alternative rock kingdom, straight from the expression of the band Apory Museum. It’s what happens when, in the smoky rooms of basements and garages, the acrobatics of sonic minimalism come alive, poured into a seriously stinging and interesting musical adventure with a tangible, hypnotic effect. The crew leans on loop programming and layered synth sounds, and nurtures a love for Apple laptops, as in a gloomy yet dense passion they flexibly and dynamically set against it an alienated, howlingly hollow, extraterrestrial vocal that’s been produced that way. Apory Museum can be a “fix” if you switch off your ratio, they carry their charisma from the get-go, creating a vivid soundscape with lively electronic sounds, full of dark vistas of a free-spinning journey that teases you with the moment of unexpected twists and spontaneity. The whole thing will be interesting for those of you who get the coinage post rock, though that label is too loose this time.
The compilation is followed by the experimental sonic tinkering of the tandem Balans, which carries it even more resolutely into transcendental expanses of a distinctly obscure-looking soundscape, where the tricks of absolute sonic minimalism and manifold repetitions shake hands, preparing a runway for the road toward switching off the ratio. Balans are a duo who just these days dropped their third studio album. As always with a jokey, mocking cover, stressing that the duo rides the edge of bizarre self-parody excess. Hypnosis and the tricks of minimalism are woven together in their own way and keep surprising, even though the whole thing seems basically very banal and stitched together with careful musical focus. Balance in the true sense of the word. Boundless bashing-out, if not downright fun, comes especially from V vrsti stojim, where, thanks to the use of vocals, a bit of post-punk contour gets added. When the Lower – Fidelity approach recipe reigns. A fun one.
Next, the duo Baltazar shoots through the compilation. Genius name. Weird that nobody thought of it before them. With only two in the crew, they have to get some help from a sampler, especially when it comes to total vocal ignorance. The band behaves completely instinctively and in the moment. Wherever inspiration takes it. So both tracks work like two garage jams, full of authentic organic feel, where the fat, noisy racket is mainly provided by sprawling guitar madness (Animal Transistor). It swings either through a cannonade of phrasing or sends the guitar into howling semitone bends that bring back that post rock feel. Baltazar is that proper minimalist ritual racket reminiscent of the approach of Ptuj’s Vibesonic Jam. But in their own way, of course. The second tune, Drumich, carries a touch of dub, which might excite fans of Dubzilla too. The complexly structured rhythms alongside riff excess can be interesting even to those who know the band Disdrug from Železniki.
China Traffic love Nirvana, even though their music doesn’t remind you of that band at all, but rather the destructive energy itself, embodied above all in the vocal excess of superiorly piercing madness from vocalist Jure Javoršek, who wields a guitar at the same time. The second track, Sudoku, especially reveals an indie moment, even though the first one, called P 17, in all its bristling racket and spewed-out aggression is still a little kid compared to their “regional countrymen”, the noise terrorists Nikki Louder from Kamnik. But China Traffic are no pretty-eyed, sugary indie rock Bambis, they thoroughly rattle the joints and brain folds of the “passerby” consumer of their original musical stance with racket.
Matic from C.MA.K. in the Cerklje area asked me point-blank about the specialties of the band Maskardh and he wasn’t wrong in the slightest! Finally some metal “torment” shows up on the compilation. Maskardh are an extremely interesting addition to the Slovenian music scene, or rather its metal underground. The production is totally raw, calibrated to just the right “temperature of hell”, but that’s not the deciding factor. The band is unbelievably technically accomplished. At the core they grind death metal, while two vivid growls bring the extreme, perfectly stirring things up like extra instruments in the already colorful development of both compositions, stitched together from countless successions of rhythmic breaks and phrasing twists. Maskardh bring that veil of hope that Slovenian metal will get back on its feet in the near future. Definitely a band that lovers of boundlessly attractive technical excess, of the kind generated by extremely bristling death metal boots, have to check out. Maskardh strike an authentic pose from the start and deliver one of the more interesting moments of this compilation. Eleven minutes of first-rate brutalization with Maskardh.
Samuel Blues is Samo Pivač (or the other way around). A singer-songwriter who has found his footing remarkably well in everything he does. He doesn’t do all that much, but precisely in the axiom “less is more” he’s becoming a true master of his craft. The track Slovani can be found on the album “Alpska Psihadelija”, but this version on the compilation is different, with a few added tricks of sonic juiciness. Samuel Blues is a D.I.Y. minimalist. He plays everything himself, dictates all the rhythm himself and of course sings it all himself. In Submarine Machine, with his undisguised vocal cynicism, he’ll become your undisputed singer-songwriter hero, perfectly fusing elements of blues with the findings of classic alternative rock approaches in singer-songwriting worldwide. He’s sub-Alpine gloomy, but from a guy from Jesenice you can’t expect anything other than that, given the geography. Yet he’s unbelievably piercing with his musical peculiarity. The tune Submarine Machine is another one he’s already presented, on the album “Rocket Ship Fly”, but in the new version it’s extended and upgraded. Both tracks work on the compilation as if they’d been recorded back to back, at the same time, in the same place. In a single take. Live, of course. With his diligence and musical peculiarity, Samuel Blues is a singer-songwriter who keeps cementing his position in the Slovenian underground and never stops entertaining with his approach of caustic, cynical gallows humor, which still keeps the poetry realistically grounded. That’s why the guy is so convincing, too.
So the eighteenth compilation is one of the more interesting, more dynamic and therefore especially attractive editions of “Klubski maraton”.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.0 / 10
Track list:
01. KM18 – Popotnica (1:38)
02. Apory Museum – Age Of… (5:49)
03. Apory Museum – The Fold (4:14)
04. Balans – Na isti strani reke (7:08)
05. Balans – V vrsti stojim (3:58)
06. Baltazar – Animal Transistor (6:41)
07. Baltazar – Drumich (7:09)
08. China Traffic – P 17 (3:15)
09. China Traffic – Sudoku (4:45)
10. Maskardh – Reverse Utopia (6:02)
11. Maskardh – Thrills Of Deconstruction (4:58)
12. Samuel Blues – Slovani (3:23)
13. Samuel Blues – Submarine Machine (4:02)
Details:
The tracks on the Klubski maraton 2018 compilation were recorded and mixed at the Radio Študent studio.
Sound engineering: Blaž Pavlica (4, 5), Jure Gruden (6, 7, 8, 9), Luka Seliškar (10, 11), Makis Ananiadis (2 , 3, 12, 13)
Mastering: Neven Smolčič, Fabrika 13 (www.fabrika13.net)
