Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Štefan Kovač Marko (ŠKM) Banda
Label: god bless this mess records
Released: 2014
Runtime: 52,11
Rating: 4/5
The esteemed quartet from Prekmurje, Štefan Kovač Marko Banda, ŠKM Banda for short, are back after three and a half years with their fifth studio record, which the guys have titled »Panontikon« in tune with their geographic roots.
The new album builds on the signature traits of its predecessors. ŠKM Banda once again do their thing with incredible effectiveness in their recognizable style, which often rests on long, post-rock-flavored, ambient, gazing-into-the-distance passages. At certain points these slip into a rough, smeared-out but still hypnotically drawn-out »noise« landscape (the endings of Potovanje and Jutranja), which is of course a trick for livening up the otherwise considerable motif repetitiveness found in every single track on the album. Already in the opening two tracks the quartet builds a instantly recognizable core, a juicy, organic sonic backdrop, while serving up the music in a positive, even cheeky spirit. It’s a welcome counterweight to the proverbial melancholy that so often accompanies the work of Prekmurje artists. The atmosphere of »Panontikon« is easygoing throughout, packed with relaxedness and a lively playfulness. That premise of mood is interrupted by the third track, Diabolog, a companionable dialogue between xylophone and kalimba. Artistically the track is nothing special, but it’s a very welcome change of mood on the album.
The core of this defined expressive groove of musical visionarism naturally includes fragments of jazz, alternative rock, even blues, which proves that ŠKM Banda are a crew of clearly profiled musicians who understand music in layers, and who package those layers extremely effectively and without genre baggage into their ideas. Besides the aforementioned kalimba and xylophone, the band enriches its sound with the organic color of instruments like banjo and ukulele, as well as violin (Večerni) and cimbalom, which give the highly ambient track Tolažba a special place on »Panontikon«. The album also carries a weighty note of trip-hypnotic, trance-like gazing, which the band develops mainly by staying mostly within harmonies aimed at making use of the middle tonal registers. The sound is strictly organic and tightly condensed. Longer repetitive passages are then skillfully livened up by the rhythm section.
ŠKM Banda are a traditional band. Given that they get compared to the post-rock character, and given that the band reaches this expressive sphere strictly organically, without any cosmetic prosthetics like pedal effects and other sonic »anomalies« (loops, sampling, distortion effects, etc…), the sensible parallels are with the pioneering work of ancient acts like Penguin Light Orchestra, rather than with modern approaches in the post-rock genre. Mike Oldfield would surely have been thrilled by the content of Tolažba, back when he was making his famous work full of »rustling« motif repetitions and one of the most important albums in the story of rock music, »Tubular Bells« (1971). The album’s longest piece, Jutranja, is really a continuation of what Tolažba says, as the two tracks are very compatible and related in their main motifs, so the transition (the brief pause) between them on the album is almost imperceptible.
You can’t overlook the strong folk note that »Panontikon« carries too, which has been a constant of the band’s expression since its very beginnings. It’s an inherited musical perception, shaped by living and creating in the middle of the »Pannonian expanses«. The touch of traditional Prekmurje melos is tangible throughout Panontikon« as well. The tracks string together, one after another, remarkably bold feelings, generated by the titles of the individual pieces, and so it’s really not hard to identify with what’s in them. ŠKM Banda achieve this with nothing but straight-up playing, backed by an incredible bond, a kind of chemistry between the building blocks of the instrumental soundscapes.
ŠKM Banda prove with their fifth studio album that they’re one of those Slovenian bands that can boast a distinctly artistic voice, completely one of a kind and fiercely self-made. The band develops its artistic brilliance from record to record, and keeps adding pebbles of new musical adventurism, the likes of which they’ve never tried before, to their colorful mosaic of homegrown musical expression. The band also confirms its artistic sovereignty by recording the album the way you’d play a live show. In one go. As a quartet. »Panontikon« is yet another exceptionally beautiful instrumental record . With this new album, ŠKM Banda will stay the band that keeps ruling the Slovenian underground, while remaining tagged as the best-guarded musical secret in the country.
Lineup
Mitja Sušec – electric and acoustic guitar, ukulele
Iztok Koren – electric and 12-string acoustic guitar, banjo, kalimbas
Jernej Koren – bass, percussion
Jernej Sobočan – drums, xylophone
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Dani Kolarič – cimbalom (Tolažba)
Miha Kavaš – violin (Vračanje)
Production
Štefan Kovač Marko banda & Plueg
Tracklist
1. Pomlad (06:11)
2. Potovanje (05:21)
3. Diabolog (03:41)
4. Tri lejta (04:22)
5. Večerni (05:18)
6. Tolažba (04:59)
7. Jutranji (09:04)
8. Sprehod (05:11)
9. Vračanje (06:53)
