Location: Gala Hala (Metelkova) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 26.01.2007
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: €8.00
On Saturday, January 27, we witnessed the second, encore show by sold-out Melodrom. True, they haven’t exactly been out on a big promo tour, so the reason for all this buzz probably lies somewhere else. At the end of last year they released their long-awaited second album, The Guide, along with a proper art projection: twelve visual collages with music added. One song for each collage. Now, since we’re talking about a gig, which means mostly about the music, we can say it’s very much in their trademark dark style, with an added freshness and polish that slowly but surely places them more and more in a musical niche all their own. A niche that needs comparisons to other artists less and less as a crutch and stands more and more on its own two feet. It’s increasingly just Melodrom. Needless to say, then, that the hall was completely full for the second time, if not sold out, then very close to it. Yes, Melodrom have become one of the biggest and brightest stars in the local music sky.
The show was announced for 23.15 and it really did kick off a few minutes after. With a short instrumental intro the band launches into an adventure that focuses mainly on songs from the current album, The Guide. Every song is played superbly and almost too precisely. If the gig had been recorded and the crowd noise erased, probably nobody would have noticed it was a live show! The dark atmosphere kept building the whole way through, with exclusively electric instruments and special effects. The songs that worked especially well were the ones where the gentle, subtle vocals, standing for that natural, organic sensuality, went up against the “synthetic”, “machine-like” relentlessness and won big. The whole concert could have been a slice of some film about some counter-culture, set without any trouble in the year 1982, or just as easily in 2982. Maybe even David Lynch could have shot it, though for one of his films the crowd was a bit too foggy.
In a ninety-minute show they walked through the entire latest album, plus all the major hits from both records. So we heard everything from “September”, which really does stand out the most in the band’s whole body of work, to “Prenzlauer Allee”, “Zasebne Sobe”, “Revolutions”, and maybe the most current one, “Counting Days”. Once again they proved that which song is or will be a hit largely comes down to internal selection, because played live they all get that real energy of their own that makes every last one of them exceptional. Every track could squeeze out its five minutes of fame. The crowd’s reaction backed that up too, as the loudest applause didn’t always go to the best-known songs.
If at moments it seemed the show could just as well happen in some hall with seats, the very next moment made it clear that this would absolutely not be it. Maybe you could add just a film projection to this mostly calmer music? That wouldn’t work either. Really, nothing was missing. The sounds being created softly painted their own movies in your head, and Melodrom know it. They pull this off with a complex yet minimalist image that doesn’t irritate, because it simply isn’t interested in that. No, Melodrom let you find them yourself, wherever you want to find them, if you want to. And they make an excellent guide to a visit with feelings woven from autumn leaves and a wind that carries a scarf along with it. That’s how it is, and that’s how it should be.
