LET 2 – Punjeta

Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba

Artist: Let 3
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2013
Duration: 67:21
Rating: 3.6/5

I can’t imagine defining Yugoslav punk without writing, in big capital letters, next to Pula on the map of every major city of the former homeland, the name of the concrete bulwark of the garage: the city of Rijeka. Partly thanks to the exceptional, hard-hitting bands Termiti and Paraf, and it was from those two that the first steps of a group took shape in the end, a group that iconoclastically smashes every limit of the permitted and the expected, and brings shock, nudity, a raised middle finger, plus great fun and music to Balkan stages with its stage presence, messages and stage rituals – I’m talking, of course, about Let 3. Despite the well-known name, few people know that before it finally settled and kicked off its work in 1986, the band went through one more very important interim phase, called Let 2. It’s precisely that raw early period, along with a devotion to theater and art already evident in the early eighties, that this anthology-style dive into the lesser-known and less-heard past of musicians Mrle, Prlja and their co-conspirators from local bands reflects. The unity of rock-solid ideas poured into an album called Punjeta, which, more than thirty years on, with no extra kitsch or touch-ups and only minimal intervention, opens a window into the heart of the multimedia project Strukturne ptice.

I don’t believe in coincidences, at least not when it comes to making music with some substance, so I believe the concept and design of the work was anything but the product of happy accidents and momentary association or inspiration already in Let 2. The first lineup of Let 2 was made up of Damir Martinović Mrle, who had previously played in the project Strukturne ptice and the band Termiti, Zoran Prodanović Prlja, who had gathered his stage experience in Umjetnici ulice, drummer Berislav Dumenčić Kiko (also from Termiti) and guitarist Mladen Vičić Ritchie, who had earlier played in the band Paraf. The album Punjeta spins the clock back to the early eighties, and for those in the know, the bridge to the present is also offered by the kitschy cover, »adorned« with the face of Rijeka scene legend Bingo, who more than two decades ago also left his mark on the cover of Let 3’s cult record, the album Two Dogs Fucking. The importance of Let 2 lies above all in the fact that they carried on, with real quality, the tectonically thrilling work of Rijeka’s proverbially strong and well-oiled scene, and with their dark, mighty, energetic outpourings of poetic new wave density they became an indispensable link in the chain of upgrade and evolution between the adolescent bitterness of Termiti, the dreaminess of the subtle Strukturne ptice, and the megalomaniac sweep and grotesquerie of Let 3. The punk essence gradually evaporated, and on the Kvarner coast too, the void began to be filled by the new wave, with its chaotic melodics, its metaphorically elusive tightrope walk between humor and bitter seriousness, and its more complex compositions. In Let 2, punk and new wave basically coexist simultaneously, without canceling each other out in their contradictions.

Social criticism aimed at socialist oligarchs and autocrats is today, thirty years later, sharply pointed at the current clueless, clueless leaders, and the opening flight, driven by the repetitive meter of the opening track Let, shows that Rijeka found its answer to Belgrade’s soldiery of new wave sensations in the penetrating baritone of Prlja’s vocals, complemented by Ritchie’s thin, slightly naive guitar, Kiko’s monotone drums and the bass support of the resolute Mrle. A stronger moment on the record comes right away with the track Posljednja noć, which lodges itself in your memory with its interplay of gray monotony and the optimistic play of bass, guitar and drums. »Ljudi odlaze / zadnja frka u šarenu noć / Odlaze u noć, najmračniju noć / Ljudi prolaze / najluđa frka u šarenu noć« sings Prle, and I have no trouble picturing the gray facades of Rijeka’s high-rises and the youth gazing toward hazy horizons with anxiety in their hearts and darkness in their minds. Let 2 paint landscapes in rather claustrophobic musical pastels, and the ominousness of the high-pitched guitar squeals carries on into the chill of the track Crni dinamiti. The steel-cold echoes of a heavily distorted guitar and the clear line of bass and drums thicken nicely, despite a slightly makeshift production that aged out long ago, into something that conjures up the sonic picture of Joy Division or early The Smiths, only Prlja doesn’t radiate pathos. His vocal cords are there to voice his potent threat to the system, and instead of cursing and guttural revolt, his main weapon for settling scores is a pen sharpened with poetry, imagery and symbols. Pokušaj is an outpouring of symbolism and tons of metaphor, telling a tale of being stoned, of heroin transcendence on the cold pavements of an alienated city. As if the message of EKV had been moved to the Rijeka coast – a thought that will easily pierce and shake you.

Zora sounds rougher and harsher, the less polished part of the mosaic, and with the demo-like demonic feel of its brutally stripped-down production, it brings to the record the smell of a bomb shelter, a garage, mold, damp and hectoliters of sweat, which the then-young band oozed in order to hold up to the world, with more assured and heartfelt strength, all the mirrors that could make the hollowed-out scenery of an apparently happy and functional world collapse into nothing, into dust. Idealism or surrealism? »Ne trebam te, jer imam sve,« Prlja sows a seed of discontent into the world in Ne trebam te, and the rather dry track dehydrates the sea of hope and snuffs out the last candle of strength and resistance, while the record’s energy-vampire moment is at the same time sped up and based solely on the microphones placed closer to Kiko’s drums. Tisuče evnuha reaches juicier and deeper, a clear homage to all those who don’t have enough balls and willpower to actually live, to break free from the steel shackles of dependence – on the system, on chemistry, on people, on false ideals. Sam u vodi is a true new wave masterpiece that sends its suckers into a substrate of thick bass, crystal-clear drums and a guitar thin as a razor, while Prlja meditatively spills his anger at the emptiness and senselessness of existence, in which crowds of those who can bark like fish hurl their empty promises, and from the depths of a dark sea maddened by whale song only fragments, associations and words of repeating madness surface. An alternative gem, a true meditation before the entry into the accelerated gears of the distrustful Nepovjerenje, and I get all scowling at the track Gomile, which is the cosmic half of the track Punjeta. The rock feel is only seemingly lighter, because the message of this hymn to the working class is the same after three decades – we’re where we’ve long been, and we’re not moving forward. »Gomile umiru glasno,« he articulates how relevant today’s starved times are, and Let 2 are punkish critics who swap revolutionary saber-rattling for a call to individual responsibility and action. Before Punjeta runs out, after the claustrophobic and irritatingly draining Most, comes a plunge into the theater of existence. With the track Moram li, which is less a compact punch of music and more a recital scattered across the interstellar void, a musical impression, Let 2 burn through a dark jam session dedicated to death, dying, illness, pain and farewell, to life itself. There’s no point, deeper messages are an illusion, and the dead end of the theater of the absurd thickens toward a grand finale, and two tracks of more recent vintage are added to the whole. Let 3 leave their bloody mark on the tablecloth of the past with two theatrical musical gems – a much more polished rendition of Pere pere, which shows that the band’s core idea has remained unspoiled, and only the interpretation has changed quite a bit and crystallized – and the title track Punjeta. The anthemic ending opens all the registers, re-conceptualizing Gomile to scream out the fact that everything has stayed the same as it is today, and despite the not exactly optimistic conclusion, once you grasp Hegel’s point that things happen first as tragedy, second as farce, you can even dance nicely to our own folk stupidity and idiocy, to a tune I could easily attribute to some Drinkers, but let’s leave the associations with the home lodges alone.

The fact is that the album Punjeta is a document of a time that was survived yet necessary, of a band, really, without which the Rijeka scene would have been far poorer, even crippled. It was a necessary act, a step into the unknown, out of which something new could be born from the old covenant with punk. Here I’d agree that today’s Croatian scene can’t practically be painted in full without the image of mustachioed uncles with big cocks and not always the best-understood slogans. Let 3 are a necessary evil, well, what evil, really a necessity, that wakes the world up with obscenity and grotesqueness, in which every link of our society can easily recognize itself, at least for a moment. If the crew now says it’s necessary to go Kurcem do vjere, the world is still a stage on which Mrle, Prlja and company can show off their intelligent superiority over all norms. Without Let 2 there would undoubtedly be no Let 3, and Punjeta is really a chance to bow, at least for a moment, to the beginnings of the big Let 3 story, which in its original form won’t have a sequel or an upgrade, but Let 2, in its short period of eruptive musical activity, loudly marked the start, the primordial moment of the birth of something bigger, more uncompromising and more cock-sure brave. Despite a string of lyrics about emptiness and hopelessness, Punjeta passes the baton of fullness and musical genius to both Let 3 and the entire Rijeka music scene, which potently carries on the work of the forefathers of Rijeka punk.

Lineup

Let 2 (tracks 1 – 12):

Berislav Dumenčić- Kiko – drums

Mladen Vičić- Ritchie – guitar

Damir Martinović- Mrlja – bass, backing vocals

Zoran Prodanović- Prlja – vocals

Let 3 (track # 13):

Damir Martinović- Mrlja – bass, backing vocals

Zoran Prodanović- Prlja – vocals

Ivica Dražić- Miki – guitar

Nenad Tubin- Tubin – drums

Let 3 (track # 14):

Damir Martinović- Mrlja – bass, backing vocals

Zoran Prodanović- Prlja – vocals

Matej Zec- Knki – guitar

Dražen Baljak- Baljak – guitar

Branko Kovačić- Husta – drums

Production

Janez Križaj, Siniša Krmpotić-Krpa, Matej Zec, Iztok Turk

Tracklist

1. Let
2. Posljednja noć
3. Crni dinamiti
4. Pokušaj (Top ten version)
5. Zora
6. Ne trebam te
7. Tisuće eunuha
8. Sam u vodi (Krpa version)
9. Nepovjerenje
10. Gomile
11. Most
12. Moram li
13. Pere pere (bonus)
14. Punjeta (bonus)

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