Label: Zavod Orbita
Album length: 40.39 min
Release date: 11.10.2019
Production: Samuel Blues & Miha Erič
Genre: instrumental / blues
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Samo Pivač a.k.a. Samuel Blues, the sharp singer-songwriter from Jesenice, and Miha Erič, Slovenia’s lord of the blues harp, known for the lasting, indelible mark he left with Prismojeni profesorji bluesa, have known each other for ages. Plenty of jams over the years were nothing out of the ordinary, and it was only natural that sooner or later they’d join forces in a process of creating and recording a joint document.
And so »Transformator« was born. As its title hints, it’s an object that’s supposed to transform something. It surely has to do with gathering experience and, as a result, a string of (at least partial) transformations, a kind of ripening, but you’d have to ask the two musicians about that. Anyway, let me wriggle out of the philosophical debate. A good 40 minutes of music lie ahead. This is a fully instrumental album, commanded by the elemental sound of Samuel Blues’s guitar, with his signature heel-stomping rhythm, plus the endlessly varied, familiar character of Erič’s harmonica shenanigans.
The first 10 to 15 minutes still feel fun and give you that sense of the big good-time vibe of the happy hours the two spent together while recording, but we quickly realize that for the rest of the record they’re actually “chained” to pretty much the same expressive trick, and they stick with it all the way through. So. The format of the songs has a direct link to Samo Pivač’s solo albums. The tracks were most likely written very quickly, even through spontaneous jamming, and recorded that way too. Very fast, the live-jam way, nailed in the first take. All of that is great, desired, welcome, and it’s exactly what adds that extra dose of sonic and expressive appeal when we’re talking about albums like this.
The catch comes when you realize the album is very predictable in its motifs and, as a result, weak, or rather poor, in ideas. It feels like Miha in particular doesn’t even want to “solo” and explode the way he did back when he was with Prismojeni profesorji bluesa, like he isn’t looking for other solutions in his harp playing. There’s so much room in the songs to fill with inventive instrumental inserts, and it even goes unused. The roles are split about evenly. But Erič often takes the part of maintaining the accompaniment (phrasing) with the harp, which lets Samo step into the spotlight with his guitar at those moments. And that’s where it stays. Samo Pivač is simply not Tilen Stepišnik, and so »Transformator« is nowhere near the constantly entertaining variety of ideas and genres of the duo Smet, in which Miha plays with the aforementioned guitarist. That means Pivač is, technically speaking, simply too weak a musician to afford himself an adventure into an instrumental album. True, Samuel Blues is once again rudimentary, primal and as honest as can be in everything he touches, and he approaches it with his usual fire, but it would have been better if, while playing guitar, and despite this being a duo album, he had worked lyrics into the songs and added his vocals too. That would have broken up the monotonous repetition of phrasing in the songs, which are doomed from the start to one or two phrases, and raised the album’s dynamic level. The album would have gained the charisma of his usual singer-songwriter aura, which makes Samuel Blues so convincing when he tackles things the “hermit” way. As a lone rider, that is, a solo performer. After the predictable mold of basic blues tonality, which only occasionally drifts off into the realm of tacked-on “arabesques” (Čoban, Balkan Ekspress), and once we’ve enjoyed the flageolets as well as the deliberately struck dissonant note (in the doubling of the shared phrase) in the (far too long) Ptiči, you simply come to the conclusion that the album runs out of ideas after 15 minutes. The feeling that the record could have offered more interesting substance is definitely there, and yet. Both musicians were brave and bold enough to take on this project, which on the flip side brings plenty of lucidity, mocking gallows humor and even satire. Selected tracks could work as the perfect soundtrack for a spaghetti western, a Chaplin burlesque, or the cartoon »Courage the Cowardly Dog«, if anyone remembers it from Cartoon Network.
The fun is here. How demanding a listener you consider yourself to be is up to you, but one thing is clear: this duo is a must-check at their joint live shows. The musical ID card of »Transformator« is thus a manifesto of the big shared good time of both musicians, and also a good enough compass for what you can expect on stage from Miha and Samo.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Lajna II
2. Balkan Express
3. Termostat
4. Hlad
5. Maksimum
6. Ptiči
7. Ovce
8. Čoban
9. Bojler
10. Amper
11. Štrom
Lineup:
Miha Erič – harmonica, lap steel
Samuel Blues – guitar
