Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Interview date: 08.12.2006
Sveti Lovrenc na Pohorju isn’t exactly the kind of place that gives me hope anything musical is actively going on there, yet that’s exactly where a driven quintet of music enthusiasts called Marzla Vada comes from. They’re not out to convince you they’ve discovered anything new. They just pour you a glass of clean water and let you know they stand more than fully behind everything they’ve done, played or said. Last year the record Med Venero in Jupitrom came out. A pretty full, juicy homemade product, both in look and in style. More than the name, it was the video that grabbed me. A bunch of silhouettes of naked girls. An eclectic vision of ear-friendly pop and funk, tied in with eroticism… It would be really nice to find out their main arguments, the ones they could use to stake out their path firmly in advance. Plenty of Slovenian bands dream only of a record and the odd local gig. There’s usually no vision. Is it the same with them? To get answers to my questions I went to see Marko, the singer, a solemn poet, open-minded and almost always in a good mood. He’s tied to music through his day job too, since you may recognize him as the record seller at Müller on Čopova in Ljubljana. After the workday was over, he carved out some time for us as well. We sat down for tea in one of Ljubljana’s bars and got to chatting.
Sandi: Hello, Marko. We sat down in a bar finally also so we can get into the whole Marzla Vada story. First off, sincere congratulations on the release. You got through the early troubles and put your debut on the market. I’m basically interested in the concept of the record itself. What was your original idea, the one you also started out with as a band?
Marko: Well, I don’t know if there was any big idea at the start. We basically started from zero – nobody really knew anything. It was about hanging out beforehand and listening to records, and then we said “Why don’t we play too?”, but that was a long time ago. And… Then we just hung out, and through that hanging out we got to the point of making a band. At the start we were learning, of course, right. Gradually the learning and playing covers started getting on our nerves and we decided to go with original material. Although before the record came along we played a ton of covers – we were like a jukebox. And we were looking for some experience. We played three-hour gigs with little breaks in every pub around. Racking up the mileage, you know. In between we also quit for two years, then got back together. I don’t know… But songs kept getting written the whole time. And once it got to the point where we could start thinking about a record, we got a bit more serious about reworking the songs and so on, and started looking for people to do it with. Somebody advised us to contact Žare (Pak, author’s note), saying he’d do that style of music best for us. I called him and he said he’d seen us at a gig – we’d actually won some rock contest in 2006 or whenever, I don’t know, it was so long ago – and that he liked us. Then we agreed to meet for coffee, we gave him a demo, and he called us back and said he’d do it. Right on… We obviously had money problems and couldn’t pay him anywhere near what he usually gets, so he took it on anyway… He kept saying, what was it, that it’s not a project, but that it’s complex music and that’s why he decided to work with us.
Sandi: Given that the record was self-released, you had to raise the basic funds yourselves, with some help from sponsors too.
Marko: Yeah.
Sandi: The record has seen the light of day. How’s the promotion going now? Are you happy with the first reactions to the record, and is your hard work gradually starting to pay off?
Marko: No, no… I mean – financially it’s not paying off, because the situation in Slovenia (you probably know) is really screwed up. Especially when it comes to authorship. And we’re such a small band that we hardly put ourselves out there with all those covers we played back then, so now we don’t play a single cover at gigs. We play a whole set of our own original music and that can be pretty tiring for the audience, because they don’t know it. On top of that there aren’t enough established clubs for you to know exactly where things are happening, because we always have to hunt for gigs everywhere. We go play where they give us a bit of money and proper conditions for a gig – so you can actually hear things and it’s not all kind of shot to hell, the sound has to sound good. That’s basically the biggest condition – that it sounds the way it should, because we’ve got a machine with us too and it’s fairly complicated. Especially for the kind of sound we’d want ourselves.
Sandi: With the debut you’ve set out your sound, which flirts on one side with pop rhythms, on the other with a rock foundation, with funk and the like in between. Is the picture you’ve built already complete, or is it still an inner evolution and progression, in the sense of searching for your own voice?
Marko: No, no, no… We’re still searching. It’s still just the first record, and given that we’ve been active for quite a while and this is only the first record, you can’t say on a first record “That’s it, this is it!”. On the songs themselves you can hear they were written in different periods, right. Still, at our core we were more of a rock band. We ended up with this pop sound partly thanks to Žare, since he’s a commercial producer after all. He makes modern sounds, right. And… Even though we were rock-oriented, we didn’t want to sound like old-school rockers – Majke and Laufer are all cool bands. I like listening to them – but still I didn’t want us to sound like that. Some of the starting points were more rock too, but we came to a joint conclusion that maybe we’d go for a slightly more pop production, which suited us at the time. Now… As far as the sound itself goes, it’s far from being shaped. The second record, which we’ll definitely still record (regardless of the reactions or whatever), may go even more pop or electronic… As we develop personally, the music develops too. We’re not limited to having to be a rock band or a pop band. Maybe… Right now I don’t see us as a rap band, but – maybe at 50 we could be a rap band and it would work for us then. I don’t know! It’s all a matter of the moment and the decision. It’s not all so strictly defined, you know.
Sandi: The record is called Med Venero in Jupitrom. What does the title symbolize? What’s the basic philosophy you wanted to express as the common thread in your lyrics?
Marko: You know how it is – I didn’t really pull a common thread through it, because every song was written separately and we really gave each song its own attention. We didn’t want to do that thing – three songs for the single and the rest just filler, you know. We tried to make a whole, complete record. In the end it turned out slightly conceptual – personal doubts and so on – although at the start I didn’t pay much attention to that. Med Venero in Jupitrom is a line in a song called ‘Letnik ’73’, because most of us were born that year and it seemed cool to us, and it’s also interesting that Earth sits between the two planets. Hard for me to explain, because I feel like… Whoever wants to listen can listen and pull out their own interpretation while they’re at it. Even I don’t remember exactly what I wanted to say with a particular song at the time (laughs).
Sandi: After all… Speculation – Earth between Venus and Jupiter – and Mars is in there too. It could also be the inner struggle each individual fights within themselves.
Marko: Totally! That’s also part of the theme of growing up and inner doubts. Definitely. I wrote about that too.
Sandi: These are mostly songs that were written over what period of time?
Marko: Definitely a period of five years. Which is interesting on one hand, but on the other it’s a bit demanding for the production itself, because after five years the performer’s taste changes, the playing style changes, since you’re constantly progressing musically in that time. On some songs Žare had a bit more of a hand in it and tried to give advice, on others we just left it as we had it back then, so the record is, you could say, varied. Someone else would say scattered… I mean… Depends on how you see it. I can say that to me, more or less, it’s interesting at its core. We got a little sick of it, since we played it so much and overlistened to it a lot. We tried to make it so that it’s still listenable in ten years, when you put it on. That it’s not just trendy, but still has soul ten years from now. That’s how we thought it should be.
Sandi: We’ve touched a few times on influences already, the musical influences that have shaped you and still do, as they do for any musician. What are your direct influences?
Marko: We got into music as friends – even though the lineup changed along the way – the members who joined, we still had to feel them out too, right? Four of the five of us are from Lovrenc, three of us were even schoolmates, and we didn’t hang out or… I don’t know. Everyone listens to totally different music. So it’s hard to say we have a common denominator, some shared bands. There’s… Maybe we all think Pink Floyd are cool, but it’s hard to find anything Pink Floyd-ish in our music, because they’re such a huge band I couldn’t say we took anything from them. From ex-Yugoslavia: Azra, EKV, there’s Floyd’s, Doors’… Okay – that’s from when we started. Now, for me, you know I went to see Tool, when we were at the gig together, and they’re a cool band to me. Music in general matters to me and it’s hard to limit myself to one. Goldfrap are cool, Massive Attack are excellent, Moloko great, Miles Davis… There’s a million kinds of music! I really don’t know what to say, you know.
Sandi: One common denominator on the Slovenian scene I could pull out is KUD Gas. On one song you go funky. Besides, you have KUD Marzla Vada, which you can use to push the band’s promotion?
Marko: No, no… KUD Marzla Vada only serves us for bureaucratic reasons.
Sandi: The band wasn’t conceived as a KUD from the start?
Marko: No, no, no… First we were a band. Because of publishing and bureaucratic stuff, since we didn’t want to hand all the copyrights over to certain labels, and some of them had no interest in us at all, we then went, of course after consulting other people, and founded the KUD. We didn’t need it for anything other than that we had to have a (self-)label. Through the KUD we could launch the CD on the market, right. With KUD Gas… I find it funny… We’ve been compared to everyone, but you’re the first to bring up a comparison with KUD Gas… (laughs). No idea…
Sandi: I meant because of the record’s promotion and the KUD of the same name, which can hide a whole machinery that pushes the band forward.
Marko: We don’t have any wider machinery. We do everything, more or less, ourselves. Except distribution, which Nika handles for us. And even there we do quite a lot ourselves on the side, because labels today are so-so… If you’re not one of theirs, nobody’s going to stretch themselves much. We make the videos ourselves too. We wanted someone else to make one for us, but the prices are – three million tolars; if we paid two million for the whole record; and for a video someone wants three million… Doesn’t make sense to me – excessive. And I wanted us to have one really professional video. Not just that there’s a picture, but an idea too. We try to go more on the idea, because we can’t buy the picture. Quite simply… With money we could buy a picture too.
Sandi: Since you mention video – you’ve gotten quite a lot of airplay. Besides ‘Poglej jih’, are you working on getting another video out there?
Marko: Yeah, well… I don’t know if it was played that much. Some local TV stations played it, and I think MTV played it a couple of times in Alternative Charts. What bugs me is that they wouldn’t play it on Charli TV, because there are flashes in it, which got on their nerves, and we didn’t want to change anything. If it’s not cool with you, just don’t play it! We really don’t plan to adapt to everybody! We plan to keep going, yeah. We wanted to work with a proper director, because given that we do absolutely everything ourselves, we don’t feel most capable of shining at everything, but they’re simply too expensive or they make things complicated. It’s hard to find a compromise with these artists. They all have their tricks. So… We made it ourselves already, and the BBC and the others we asked for permission to use some footage gave us permission. We’ll pay for the minutes, which are theirs, and then we’ll be able to air it. It’s planned for the end of December or the beginning of January. Not fixed yet.
Sandi: Can you tell our readers which single it’ll be this time?
Marko: That’s also a pain. We wanted to go out with the second single, but since that video offered itself and was made in free time – ‘Poglej jih’ – and he also got used to this technique of making videos, and of course you can see it’s a first record and there are no big connections yet – we were deciding whether it should be a single and the video would come out two months later or whatever, or whether it should just be a single. Now they’ll come out at the same time. It’s called ‘Vonj po življenju’. The question is just how much radio stations will spin it, because we’ve learned a little about what radios like, but we don’t adapt much. You have to a bit. You can’t go through the wall with your head, especially given that you intend to record another record… I can’t give radio a seven-minute song, because nobody will play it. I’d gladly give it, but that’s just how it is… You have to adapt a bit.
Sandi: How about gigging? Given that you have a record out, nobody can say you’re unknown and that you’d need demo recordings. Are any bigger gigs, tours, festivals opening up for you? Abroad?
Marko: We’d like that. Basically a gig is the point of every band – that’s the essence. I’d like as much playing as possible. I’d rather not say anything about abroad, because that’s easy to talk about, but hard to pull off. We play, right. In November and December we had a gig every week. Sometimes we don’t have a single one for a whole month. Sometimes we have five a month. Some people already invite us, some we have to arrange ourselves through connections and the like. We try as best we can! We’d play anywhere we’re invited. Call us and we’ll come! The place just has to have a sound system good enough that we sound the way we want. That’s the only condition… And some costs have to be covered, of course.
Sandi: And one last question, which I always ask: short-term and long-term plans for Marzla Vada…
Marko: We still insist we’ll record one more record after all and that’s our goal, and whatever happens – let’s say we’ll definitely promote this record for at least another year, right. Releasing a record and replacing it after a year with another one you go record right away… That’s too big a cost. 2007 is coming, sometime in 2008 we’d like to record a second record. If something happens already this year – thank God! We want to play as many gigs as possible. A single will fly out too. A video as well. There won’t be just two, right. We’ll see! We’re open. When we went into making the record we didn’t expect as much radio attention as we got, that we’d be Popevka tedna, that this or that, so we’re pretty satisfied. There’s a whole year still ahead of us for this record – maybe something good will still happen!
Sandi: Lots of luck and success to all of you on the planned path, and thanks a lot for the interview.
Marko: Thanks to you too. Great!
