Artist: Electric Venom Agency
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2010
Duration: 47.30
Rating: 3/5
A new quintet that has shamelessly gone for the tactic of vaulting to the top of the Slovenian mainstream scene goes by the name Elctric Venom Agency. Shortened to E.V.A., it’s a market move with which the band, for all its trivial, predictable, mass-friendly accessibility, tries to sell the stature and voice of singer Eva Moškon.
Behind all the frills that, in sound and look, separate Elctric Venom Agency from any hint of rebelliousness, there’s some quality musical material taking shape, which luckily defies the analytical eye of music critics. There’s no arguing with the highly listenable, rhythmically seductive design of the songs, which owe a lot to the dance beats of old-school disco, with late-seventies funk elements woven in, and where Eva Moškon’s vocals carry themselves more than confidently as she chases lively vocal lines. And yet you wonder why the band needs two guitars at all, since there’s as much room left for rock music as the volume of an average ant’s brain. That doesn’t mean the guitars aren’t audible. But one is plenty. You don’t have to guess that the two guitars mostly use clean effects, coaxing out natural tones that never take the initiative on the album. The guitar accompaniment is often backed up with wah-wah, the kind the band’s funky orientation (again) demands. Instead of the expected submission to rock sounds (two guitars!), synthesizers take the lead in the background of the soundscape (read: behind Eva’s vocals). Something that was rediscovered in the early nineties in a far more colorful, penetrating and convincing way by a band like Jamiroquai. And if, with a bit of obligatory imagination, you mix a pinch of the electro prosthetics of, say, Britain’s Hot Chip into that approach, it might even smell like a decent approximation.
So the band has created music that draws heavily on what its members listened to back when they were kids. Something we’ve all kind of forgotten about today, and something that can therefore instantly grab attention because it sounds “fresh” and “different”. That’s a smart move, and I’d even say a move that’s been expected for a whole decade when it comes to debut albums by new acts. Of course, the level of uniqueness and recognizability of your own authorial character drops accordingly. You have to take that on the chin. So, no surprises.
Luckily Eva didn’t go for a solo career, which would only have worn us out further with the already overcrowded view of sterile musical faces of “solo acts” on the Slovenian “mainstream” scene, which nobody will ever dare say out loud is completely worn out and doomed to an eternity of extreme boredom. So what we have here is the music of a project that a band can present live. And that band, if it intends to stay active, can keep developing and offering new musical information along the way. Don’t expect miracles.
What’s real and what isn’t is hard to tease out of a project that’s been greased with every impregnating agent and ointment imaginable so it can dig itself irreversibly into the Slovenian mainstream scene and become: loved, desired, generally accepted, revered and (if need be) idolized. So, nothing new for Slovenia, we can say. The circles of financially backed conformism are closed, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. And the room for inspired, creative bands with a recognizable sound to break through has shrunk even more.
Luckily, the album “Pridi greva…”, besides its calculated push to the top of the mainstream, doesn’t hide its musical qualities. In the Slovenian landscape it matters, even though this release, with its arrival, diverts the attention of the uninformed, approval-hungry conformist majority and eats up space from the one-of-a-kind acts, because with its quality it defends Slovenian musical colors with confidence. We mustn’t forget that quality (!!!) Slovenian mainstream has shrunk a lot. Sometimes looking for quality among commercially successful acts in Slovenia is like looking for a needle in a haystack. If we widen the horizon of the quality Slovenian “mainstream”, we’ve got, say, Jadranka Juras, Tinkara Kovač, the good old Janez Bončina Benč is still holding on too, having just released a new album, and last but not least, the arrival of Electric Venom Agency also justifies, with its debut, a fight for its spot in the (quality) Slovenian “mainstream”. The role of the media has been abused, and today there’s a feeling that Slovenia has no real “mainstream”. That’s down to the media playing a backwards role and music critics not doing their job. That’s why E.V.A.’s arrival can strengthen the quality core of bands and artists who “float” at the top, so that in the medium term the good gets sifted from the bad even up there, and we finally get a real sense in Slovenia of what real “mainstream” music is.
Lineup
Eva Moškon – vocals
Luka Vehar – guitar
Andrej Pekarovič – guitar
Mitja Kavčič – keyboards
Piero Malkoč – bass guitar, moog
GUEST MUSICIANS
Gašper Peršl – drums (tracks: 1,3,8,9,19,11,13)
Žiga Brlek – drums (tracks: 4,12)
Katja Koren – backing vocals
Bernard Pajk – bass guitar (tracks: 4,10)
Sašo Vollmaier – piano, clavinet (tracks: 1,2,11)
Production
Drago Popovič
Track list
1. Misel nate
2. Najine 3
3. Se zgodi
4. Pridi greva
5. Choice
6. Slikar
7. Play
8. Babji žur
9. Nov plan
10. Lepo mi je
11. Na glas
12. Utopija
13. Blizu
