Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Martin Krpan
Label: Jugoton
Released: 1982
Length: 44:38
Rating: 3.6/5
Mention the name Martin Krpan and everybody thinks of the brawny Krpan who hauled salt on his Kobilica and dealt with Brdavs by lopping off his head, saving the imperial court from ruin and enslavement. Others think, at the same time, of one of the bands where Vlado Kreslin pulled off a flawless vocal turn, and where a still-young Aleš Klinar, among others, showed off his remarkable talent. Out of curiosity, and because greatest-hits compilations alone won’t get you through knowing the groups that make our music world worth mentioning and getting to know, I dove into digging through the dusty archives of the past. If Fran Levstik’s literary hero could haul salt across guarded borders all the way from Vrh pri Sveti trojici to Vienna, his Slovenian rock namesakes deliberately ignored every border and every commandment of genre and gave birth to a debut that is anything but pure or single-minded. The elusive shape of the record Bonbonjera a.k.a. Martin Krpan I flirts with jazz, prog rock and fusion substrates à la Frank Zappa, and the whole thing doesn’t allow a single gram of half-heartedness. The instrumentals are top-notch, and what’s surprising is that the stereotype that Kreslin’s voice is the only possible voice for the band turns out to be completely wrong. Martin Krpan, by the way, are the product of a merger of members from the defunct groups Na lepem prijazni and Srečanje, who got going at the tail end of the seventies, and the first real step toward more explicit musical activity only came in 1981, when Tomaž Sršen and Aleš Klinar were joined by a gang of three talented musicians – guitarist Saša Bole, drummer Miro Križaj and vocalist Andrej Turk. At a time when Yugoslavia, despite socialist repression and the semi-permeable, army-guarded, then hermetically sealed borders, was slowly letting in the odd foreign influence of »corrupting« music from the West, the smuggling evidently worked pretty well. Martin Krpan skillfully worked new wave influences into their sound and, despite a slight archaic whiff, served up a more experimental sound that has me putting them next to Buldožer after a single listen. On top of that, the debut has plenty of Cobham-esque Spectrum, Frank Zappa, the theatricality of ex-Genesis man Peter Gabriel and what have you, which makes listening anything but easy, yet all the more adventurous, and the record, despite three decades on its shoulders, still sounds relatively fresh and attractive.
And that’s true from the very first bar of Prva, where Klinar’s keyboards and Matjaž Kosi’s synthesizer share the stage first, tastefully backed by drummer Miro Križaj. The suspense is broken by the entrance of Saša Bole’s unmistakably proggy guitars, which, in their rather restrained distortion, also flirt with more classicist influences. The instrumental intro hosts the band’s veil of dreaminess, and the musical breadth and virtuosity they show off right away carry on with the lyricism of the provocative Slovan Karantan. The lyrics display the national consciousness of a people cheated out of land and existence, torn between images of the servile Carantanian and the dominating master who seemingly offers a plebiscitary choice between heaven and hell on Earth. Andrej Turk sings it in a very tuneful, melodically flawless way, yet beneath it all you can feel a deep cynicism and mockery. Doblekar’s production is refined in true Buldožer fashion, and the middle finger raised high to the sky is shown by the even sharper Happy End. The need for metaphor smuggles the theater of the absurd into a jazz-fusion world of apparitions, and the Camus-style estranged strangers shake hands with an almost pop-punk dance of donkey-like caricatures of the herds of people who, more often than not, walk onto thin ice like asses. The Krpans drown hope in the metaphors of too many vignettes and the vocal excesses of a complex sound. The record is complex from the first moment on, and it keeps getting more complicated. Layers pile up automatically, with an extreme aesthetic sense for building things up and provoking. I wonder whether the authorities who approved the release back then actually listened to the record and really heard it, since beneath the pretty contours of the music there are plenty of counter-political slogans, poetic literary peaks and defiance of the system’s commandments? Thank the gods, apparently not, because otherwise the whole picture would have been worn down, pruned and robbed of the edge by censors in many places, the edge that Martin Krpan’s debut, despite the kitschy colorfulness of its sonic fan, undoubtedly radiates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuCfewg72Q8
Celofan, with its Sisyphuses and psychedelic outbursts of slightly old-fashioned music, is only the outer plaster, wrapped around a story about how we try in vain to love people for who they really are, because what we always get to see and feel is only superficiality and surface. There are plenty of allusions, illusions, sex appeal and playful harmonies woven together with a flanger-drenched bass, piano and saxophones, and deliberately, despite all that fullness, the track stays empty. Then Cicibanove igračke cut loose in a full-on metallized stampede. We remain small and insignificant, full of sugary bribery and empty faith in ideals even today, while the relentless guitar cannonade and outstanding arrangements give the story about growing up a multidimensional potential that is neither dreamy nor needlessly reined in, and Martin Krpan play with form and melodies as if on a bet, picking different melodic and rhythmic patterns. The confusion is only apparent, because every part works both deliberately and instinctively. With its ominous nod to Jackson’s Thriller, Eho grows into a jazz-rock fusion canon of harmonies about the pointlessness of founding new classes and striking a balance between being and annihilating, existence and emptiness. The echoes are a prelude to the bluesy Po ruski. A sexy intro of bass, organ and guitar soon speeds up into a whirling Cossack dance of funny synths and vocal backing, though the track has precious little to do with Mother Russia. This sub-Alpine instrumental homage to the expanses beyond the Urals comes off a bit naive, but not at all half-hearted. Martin Krpan take themselves damn seriously on this one, I think, and so Paranoja squeezes out the symphonic part of their baroque side. In the days after Blackmore’s obsession with the rustic, only repetitions and approximations are possible, never mind jazz-fusion experiments with classicism. Still, with Martin Krpan’s debut we’ve got a decent piece of work to measure up against. The slightly irritating thin tenor, or rather pale baritone, of current lineup member Miro Senica doesn’t quite win me over this time, but the title track Bonbonjera, with its melos devoted to Cankar-style world-weariness, lyrically puts the cherry on top of an inventive instrumental that grabs you in one go. Despite their youth and inexperience, Martin Krpan show they carry something more than just potential in their bosoms. The Krpans go from mere possibility to action. Metaphors become a tool of the theater of the absurd, and an easy escape from it is not to be expected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U19GxAS0y7g
The debut from the lad out of Vrh pri Sveti trojici shows a great desire, skill and ambition for setting new benchmarks on the then-sleepy Slovenian music market, and at the same time shows that, despite everything said and written in the gravitationally heavy vocabulary of the great Buldožer, there was room to move. If Buldožer, just a couple of years earlier, could serve up a whole shop window of the bittersweet, to many, malt of Izlog jeftinih slatkiša, Martin Krpan started out less punchy – with just a tastefully designed and arranged box of refined chocolates, Bonbonjera. There was plenty of room for improvement, but the ice was nicely broken this time. With the resolve and strength of only the man who cut off Brdavs’s head. Martin Krpan put their first statement out there for listening, after which there could be no way back. Excess and provocation had to go on. And they did, but in a more polished form, friendlier to many ears …
Lineup
Saša Bole – guitar
Aleš Klinar – keyboards
Miro Križaj – drums
Tomaž Sršen – bass
Andrej Turk – vocals
Roman Vlah – clarinet, saxophone
Matjaž Kosi – synthesizer
Production
Braco Doblekar
Tracklist
- Prva
- Slovan Karantan
- Happy End
- Celofan
- Cicibanove igračke
- Eho
- Po ruski
- Paranoja
- Bonbonjera
