Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Martin Krpan
Label: RTB
Released: 1984
Running time: 38:28
Rating: 3/5
Just two years after the self-titled debut Martin Krpan, which some fondly call Bonboniera, Krpan came back with a second record called Martin Krpan 2 (call me crazy, but you can’t miss the Led Zeppelin influence, at least when it comes to naming records …), which picks up right where the first box of sweets marked out its reach and mental starting points. Martin Krpan have stayed true to the sound of the eighties and to new wave experiments, and at the same time this is the record where you could say a desire awakens to update the sonic image, to indulge in lyrical excess, and to finally lock in their status as one of the more penetrating bands on this side of the Alps. But do they pull it off? It’s certainly a listen that, almost three decades later, demands a completely different perspective than back when the lads released it.
If Klinar’s Agropop were already openly pro-Slovenian, Krpan at least in the lyrics sought some cover in metaphors, wordplay and indirectly expressed jabs, and above all leaned on the more clearly profiled musical superiority of every member of the band. The opening track Ti nisi naš is a rebellious treatise that, with the aforementioned new wave stinginess in pouring out feelings, divides the world into »ours« and »others«; with its rather dreamy piano-and-guitar metrics, Andrej Turk’s vocal sets itself up as the band’s main spearhead, but once transplanted into the less progressive, more contemporary world of the eighties, Turk’s voice shows its limits, and the thinned-out layers of production give Krpan’s sound a slightly two-dimensional look, in which Miha Stabej’s guitar never gets to open up all its registers. The follow-up, the naive disco funk ditty Mama, tata, doesn’t build on the structure with anything more concrete either. Electro drums, the hot trend of the time, add a bit more punch, while lyrically Turk plays with dadaistically simple verses and with slotting in borrowed bits – Novi Fosili and E moj Saša become a screen for riffing – and by adding a more erotic undertone of veiled sex, Martin Krpan toy with an audience that saw and sought in Fosili exactly their inoffensiveness, their conventionality and their fit for every taste. With the same ingredients, Krpan achieved a state of total sonic provocation. Well, almost…
The track Ku-ku recalls elements of the much later Miladojka, as a bit of trumpet sneaks into the whole funky structure, while Krpan carry on with their sloganeering and drown out the call of the homeland and the call-up to the army. A rather breathless tangle of vocals, trumpet, guitar and keyboards builds tension and dreaminess at once, voicing the narrow-mindedness, obedience and subservience of the nation, while Krpan, in their own lyrical way, wade more directly into post-punk waters, and the more modern color shades prove better at stretching and describing the band’s range. Oj, le naprej continues, in true Buldožer fashion, to show off Krpan’s muscular underpinnings, which under Dominik Trobentar’s production baton don’t quite breathe with full lungs; the claustrophobic production cranks up the feeling of saturation with kitsch, emptiness and loud ambiguity. Epur Si Muove is a loud question: what would the world be without us? The world spins on its own, Krpan answer. Without us there would be no differences, just fewer disturbing and nagging questions. The dance rhythm of Klinar’s keyboards builds into a synthesized symphony of harmonies, in which Turk, Serbo-Croatian style, dons more and more of Buldožer’s plumage. Tasteful? Tasteless? A matter of taste, I’d say, but it definitely shows that Martin Krpan have grown compositionally, while Turk has become the band’s limit, since he didn’t grow qualitatively along with his comrades. At least not as much as he needed to, though at a surface listen the thing still more or less works. Funk is the basic glue that livens things up and keeps them fresh, and after Sve je ljubav the tangle continues with the first more pronounced upgrades. Joining the dance are the backing vocalists and lyric co-writers, singer Deja Mušič and the then still young, still unseasoned but promising vocalist Vlado Kreslin. Kje si zdaj, with Kreslin’s rougher vocal, works fuller and more resonantly, and Krpan finally lets its balls drop. Deja’s sweet vocals round out the sonic picture with just the right dose of the eighties, and this time the naivety is less audible than before. Right after that, Krpan try their hand at the old elements, which don’t work all that well on Jodl Funk; the already-heard sounds and colorings come off as slightly irritating. That’s exactly why a bit of relief from the guest spots comes in handy before the end. La-la-la, with Deja backing up the thin register of the band’s lead throat Andrej Turk, opens the field for the grand finale with Naj, naj, on which a more confident and decisive Kreslin shows his dominance.
Maybe it’s a matter of personal perception, but despite the dry, bland, binary computer sounds, it’s clear that Krpan craved more muscle and power. They got it in the form and person of Vlado Kreslin, who put the dot on the i of the band’s musical potential, and the band’s quality level could only go up because of it. The rather mediocre second record 2 is thus a prelude and a studio experiment, one that gave Martin Krpan’s masterminds confirmation that a change was needed and swapping out the band’s vocal signature was a must. After the numerous fillers on a record this hollow in substance, you can conclude that Martin Krpan also decided to keep pace and hold the mirror up to society so high that at least some of those dancing to the naive disco funk rhythms could stop and think and listen more closely to the between-the-lines barbs and the metrics of the words, the slogans, calls and wake-up calls aimed at dreamy one-track minds.
Lineup
Tomaž Sršen – bass, backing vocals
Dadi Kašnar – drums, backing vocals
Miha Stabej – guitar, backing vocals
Aleš Klinar – keyboards, backing vocals
Andrej Turk – vocals
Matjaž Kosi – sound synthesizer, backing vocals
Guest musicians:
Polde Poljanšek – saxophone (track #3)
Deja Mušič – backing vocals (tracks #7, 9)
Vlado Kreslin – vocals (tracks #7, 10)
Production
Dominik Trobentar & Martin Krpan
Track list
- Ti nisi naš
- Mama, tata
- Ku-ku
- Oj, le naprej
- Epur Si Muove
- Sve je ljubav
- Kje si zdaj
- Jodl funk
- La-la-la
- Naj naj
