Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: World Within
Label: Self-released
Release: 2012
Runtime: 44:19
Rating: 4.5/5
World Within are a Slovenian band from Domžale. They’ve been around since about 2007, but these guys are no rookies. They’ve got plenty of mileage and experience from other musical projects. One of those was a band called Stator, which became World Within after guitarist Anže Črnak (Dandelion Children) and vocalist Jan Jenko came on board.
»Lucidream« and World Within themselves are an absolute one-off on the Slovenian scene. Based on everything they are, you could still file them under alternative flavors of rock music (Jan Jenko’s vocal approach tips the scales that way). But of course, we need to dig properly into what’s behind all that and what the band actually brings us with their debut, which clearly shows a streak of originality.
Imagine it’s the eighties and your instrument collection includes the most modern technological achievements the industry of the day had to offer in synthesizer development. You’re inspired by the strong influence of post-punk bands like New Order, Mission and The Sisters Of Mercy, and on top of all that you try to mix in the noise of riff-heavy guitar distortion. The feel of the new wave movement, especially the genre sub-drawer we call »technopop« and/or »synthpop«, can’t go unnoticed through all of this, particularly because of the use of synths, with which bands like Yazoo, The Human League, early KajaGooGoo, Thompson Twins, Ultravox, Depeche Mode and others once twisted the basic look of punk’s starting points into something new…
»Lucidream« is an incredibly dynamic and highly fluid album. It gets through to the listener’s soul and body with remarkable ease. World Within build on clean melodic lines. Their starting point is, of course, creating a dark atmosphere, typical of most of the bands mentioned in the previous paragraph. The main driving engine is Jan Jenko’s radiant vocal performance. He’s a true vocal chameleon when it comes to bringing lyrics to life, because under his touch the verses become real. The voice is extremely sensual and covers a wide range of articulation and tonal color. Jenko mostly stays in the mid-to-low range of male registers, and listening to it often sparks an association with The Sisters Of Mercy vocalist Andrew Eldritch. The vocals’ main job is to feed the listener with emotion, and they never get pushy or annoying, never sound pretentious or overbearing in a way that would cost them points for hard-earned authenticity.
In the backing, the band has placed the guitar phrases of both guitars on a footing that’s completely equal to the keyboards. This weaves an exceptionally colorful tapestry of sonic landscape that plays off the lead vocal brilliantly. Both the contrast of moods and the dynamic development of events are outstanding on this album. The rhythms are simple but energetic, high-octane, fanning the flames of the infectious quality of the sextet’s music itself. The culmination of all the building blocks working together is mostly a highly vibrant state of mood that’s dark but has a clearly crafted hypnotic element, which sucks you in right away and carries you off to a parallel world. You can’t call it anything other than the World Within world, and in this case a parallel world of lucid dreams. Not just the substance, but the title and cover of the album too fit this image perfectly. The band also made an exceptional cardboard sleeve for the CD’s »jewel case«, which only speaks to the sextet’s creative perfectionism.
The production is outstanding, and plenty of well-known bands around the world can only dream of one like it today. Plenty of those established bands have labels paying for pricey producers, and yet their final products don’t rise above mediocrity. World Within did the job themselves with top marks, though of course under the watchful, mentoring eye of experienced producers Peter Penko and Jure Kalas.
World Within build the mood in their songs gradually. The listenability is outstanding, peaking in a crescendo in the catchy choruses. And that goes from the beginning of the album to the end. Tracks like Mind Scar, Solution, or toward the end Balsamour and especially the closer A Void practically compete with each other in their chorus melodies over which one will take the crown on the album. All four songs are excellent candidates that could be picked in a heartbeat as the lead (hit) singles from »Lucidream«
»Lucidream« is definitely a special album. Set within the Slovenian scene, it’s one of the definite creative high points in music. On a global scale it doesn’t bring a musical revolution, but in an age of a whole swarm of hollowed-out releases, stripped of any tangible musical substance, it very successfully dodges the danger of boring you with potentially trivial predictability. It fuses the genres described above into a musical vision all its own, and with that World Within have carved out their recognizable little corner under the open sun, which gives them such a solid platform for further artistic blossoming. In this day and age »Lucidream« sounds incredibly fresh and witty, and those two things alone stubbornly push you to hit the »play« button again once the album runs through its short but tightly packed running time of a good 44 minutes.
An album of great hypnotic power in creating a parallel world, which needs to be combined with stage projection for a full live presentation. That calls for a separate new script, and let’s hope the band is preparing one or already has a clear answer.
At the same time, let’s keep our fingers crossed that the band manages to break through to a visible spot on the international scene. The debut »Lucidream« is undoubtedly an outstanding album. As a studio debut it has an exceptional musical character that feels real, full of melodic payoff and high catchiness, it carries an outstanding sonic production, and gives the impression that World Within are a band that knows exactly what it wants and fully grasps every musical chapter, every musical challenge, once it takes it on.
Lineup
Jan Jenko – vocals
Anže Črnak – guitar
Gašper Mandelc – guitar
Uroš Makarič – keyboards
Grega Lebeničnik – bass guitar
Damjan Lebeničnik – drums
Production
World Within, Peter Penko & Jure Kalas
Track list
1. Mind Scar
2. Solution
3. Disease
4. Stereotype
5. Repulsive Desire
6. World Within
7. Other Me
8. Never Mind
9. Sin
10. Balsamour
11. A Void
