Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Stroj, The
Label: MKC Maribor
Release: 2013
Rating: 3.2/5
The Stroj isn’t a band, it’s a collective, an organism, a sprawling tissue of an idea that has been spreading out from the Laško area since 1997. Sure, in all that time the building blocks of the The Stroj elemental have gone through metamorphoses, but whoever left was always replaced by someone new. After the news that in 2007 most of the original members walked out, reportedly over differences in vision with the mastermind and creator of The Stroj’s aesthetic, sound and direction, Primož Oberžan (they reportedly founded a more orthodox, less electronics-friendly outfit, StrojMachine), the media declared the band dead. But out of the ashes of the supposed destruction a new tissue grew cathartically, a reborn The Stroj more focused on new times and new directions. After the 2006 album Cona, with Metafonik, their fourth record, The Stroj recalibrate for new times, weaving into their musical expression a finesse and ornamentation that were previously unthinkable for the band. As a project, The Stroj stay true to the principle of eternal upgrading, and the raw muscle power has been refined here with more sonic and visual inserts of more exotic-sounding liquids and solid materials. The steel, unchanging thread of development stays faithful to a consistently still-complex rhythm, to multilayered structures of frequency-wise split rhythm. And already after the celebration of the 52nd anniversary of the Sputnik 2 launch, with a nod to the legendary Laika, the single Laika and a more electronic expression set off changes that could not be stopped or reversibly steered against evolutionary necessity. The new modus operandi became receptive to electronic manipulation, which gives the fourth album Metafonik what you could call a completely different expression from the one before 2007.
For now I wouldn’t judge which is better – the steel analog lungs of the more old-school StrojMachine, or this more digitized, industrialized foray into the realms of digitization that the once so organic The Stroj allowed themselves – but I’ll admit I’m approaching this record with a healthy dose of caution and analytical conciseness. It has to be said that the record was made during a time of big changes, signaling humanity’s leap from an age of prosperity and permitted naivety into a colder age of crisis, grayness and a recessionary emptying of souls, which inevitably brings a draining of life, blood and organic feel in musical expression too, if it wants to resonate with epochal shifts. Still, rather than a restrained, refined aesthetic of retrofuturistic gallantry, I personally expected even more revolt, rage, decibels of orderly noise and cataclysmic prophecies of disobedient rebel proclamations. Like in Mad Max, where in the wasteland of creative saturation with production givens there’s precious little revolutionary going on these days, real rebellion is missing, the kind that, whatever the consequences, could be embodied by some Slovenian Mad Max (Janez, or whatever native name suits you better). Rebels with balls are missing, so I was hoping Metafonik would serve up something refreshing.
With the opener Zombie Hunters the album heads in a completely different direction. Instead of the primal echo of revolt and chaotic regrouping that has permeated the Slovenian national soul in recent years, The Stroj lean closer to deconstruction, destruction and a militantly orderly rhythm, one you could equate with the military anthem of some echelon of terminators. Besides the pounding, newly built tools, instruments and gadgets, the sonic story also adds some playing around with keyboards and electric guitars, sirens and whatnot. You can barely smell the sweat, effort and suffering, since it all sounds simple and effortless, and the modern-day soundtrack to the mental reprogramming of the masses hurtles into your ear a bit too fast. After a whisper of crickets, a more sinister layer of hissing whistles creeps into the story, and the rhythmically suspended sound of Voyage Extraordinaire doesn’t skimp on tastefully woven-in, well-dosed masculine vocal phrases. The orchestration is downright danceable, and the repetition is meted out more sensibly than in the past. The title track Metafonik is closer to the old expression, as there’s far more banging on steel structures and other solid materials. The sinister fiddling with the knobs of a radio receiver resonates as a response to the saturation of our shallow consumer world with all those multiple calls for even greater consumption, hypnosis by ads and hidden commands that the modern-day army of zombies benevolently obeys. A cleverly constructed manipulation, I must admit, and in the seemingly cold play of knobs and materials there’s a great deal of storytelling going on. Spirits is a proper industrialized horror flick, which you can read as the dominance of fear, blackness, screams of hopelessness and endangerment spilling over all the delicate texture of a mimosa-sensitive humanity that can’t manage to move toward the light. Everything is closer to cataclysm and annihilation, The Stroj warn sonically, and there’s less and less time for recapping and searching for the right ideas. The track Mirror Clock Sytem speaks about exactly this beautifully, counting our time down to zero. The gorgeous electro demonoid sentiment continues with an otherworldly excursion into Hangar, where little life remains, and with an unearthly play of frequencies (as if bending a singing saw) The Stroj prove themselves in one more element we haven’t gotten from them so far – melodicity, though it’s closer to what usually hums in the background of some futuristic computer game or sci-fi cinematography. You have to persevere and find contact with the light. That’s the mantra that can lead us once again to a state of complete fusion with our own self. Hang On sounds like consolation, and with the bursts of a typewriter and the gentle ring of glass, steel and warmer-sounding rusty vessels you can easily sway toward a more positively tuned rapture, which is followed by the static-overloaded Samogon, a spark of self-preservation and mechanicalness. With the addition of electrified strings, low-frequency finger contact and the lowest-tuned piano key, a Blade Runner-esque play of electronic additions unfolds, pouring a good dose of gothic feel, darkness, hopelessness and nihilism into the whole, part of which is also the center of modern-day indoctrination of meaning and importance of the NWO, Berlin. In the game with the whale song The Stroj return to full revs, again giving more impulsive drive toward dancing, though the level of order is so purified, so crystalline, almost militant, that you could hardly surrender to it completely. Triton hints at the reason for the aversion. After the cataclysm, of which we are all a part, precious little life is left in the gears.
Binary code has replaced screams from deep in the lungs, and analog warmth has finally been replaced by the cyborg embrace of rational cold, which doesn’t kill musicality – what’s more, The Stroj have gained a new expressive module that gives them far more room to play, to pump life juices, though sometimes more can be less (and vice versa). Metafonik breathes on artificial lungs a bit too much, forgetting (perhaps on purpose) its true mission. The Stroj were always a machine, an organism, and at the same time, with their anarchic streak, carriers of change, carriers of the voice of revolt, of rhythmic (r)evolution, which the purified, nice-sounding form doesn’t have at its core. Metafonik is a gorgeous, properly executed soundtrack, but it tells a rather sinister story, robbed of soul and organic feel. It’s not a complete deviation from what The Stroj had in mind on past projects, but the once genuine uniqueness and futuristic sound got drowned out during production tailoring by the sound of a pretty but, from numerous other electro wizards, already-heard predictability. Maybe the whole would be better understood if they hadn’t skimped on the backstory, on contextual stuff that isn’t all that apparent on the first, second, third, even tenth listen, but the absence is the artist’s decision, the decision of the project’s creators and executors. Personally, I think the album is a quality piece of work that leaves plenty of room for improvement on a fifth record, which, I hope, we won’t have to wait seven years for, and which I also hope will serve up more noise, more revolt and its very own pair of fat chrome balls!
Lineup
Dare Hriberšek – percussion
Nina Orlič – percussion
Žiga Miklavc – percussion
Matej Voglar – percussion, hang
Stane Špegel – electronics
Matic Kadliček – percussion
Fabijan Purg – percussion
Primož Oberžan – percussion, effects, samples, theremin, projections
Production
Aldo Ivančič
Tracklist
1. Zombie Hunters
2. Voyage Extraordinaire
3. Metafonik
4. Spirits
5. Mirror Clock System
6. Hangar
7. Hang On
8. Samogon
9. Berlin
10. Triton
