Artist: Melodrom
Label: Nika Records
Release: 2006
Right after Melodrom’s second album, The Guide, came out, some people talked about how sonically removed it is from the self-titled debut. In reality, it’s pretty far from that. It’s a seemingly spontaneous record that really just builds on everything that came before, whether that’s the debut we just mentioned or the various musical creations Melodrom have made working with Laibach and DJ Umek. Whatever shift you can feel is mostly audible in how the music has developed, and that’s completely natural: every (musical) work needs time to grow, and Melodrom are definitely still growing. So, a perfectly logical next step.
This sonic move forward, which is unmistakable on The Guide, actually feels like a step back in time, to the eighties, to a darker kind of electro pop rock that some have even labeled goth. More specifically, the album sounds a lot like, in a good way, the work of Videosex, who in their day also plowed a thoroughly unique furrow on the (wider) local music scene. How much of this is down to The Guide‘s producer, Iztok Turk, who was himself once a member of Videosex, is a question that doesn’t really matter, because, to borrow a line from Tom Waits, “if you borrow something, it implies you’ll give something back someday”, and if anything on this album was borrowed, they’ve already paid it back with interest.
The Guide has an even darker mood than its predecessor. It’s packed with electronic touches that would normally liven the music up, but here they carry it into a kind of laid-back intimacy, the kind that usually sets in after sunset. A variation on the musical theme also keeps coming back throughout the album, making it feel more like a single symbiotic organism, similar to what you hear mostly in classical music or jazz, where a shifting theme is present the whole way through. Maybe the two albums differ most in precisely this energy, this flow, which is more consistent on The Guide. It’s a far more conceptual record, which is no surprise, since the previous one, Melodrom, was almost a compilation by nature, a collection of songs from different, unconnected periods. This time the band made something with a purpose, to be released as a finished whole, and that’s exactly how it sounds.
There’s no song like September here, but then the first album had nothing like it either. What you do get are 13 completely different, equally distinctive and high-quality songs, which only confirm that the desire and need to evolve and look for new, less-trodden paths can only be welcome and, in the end, absolutely essential for staying creative and growing as a person.
So, a logical next step. If they ever feel like heading off in a truly different direction, Melodrom could always team up with someone like Tomaž Pengov or Zlatko Kavčič, but this path is perfectly fine for now, and there’ll be plenty of time for the others.
Lineup
Mina Špiler: Vocals
Matevž Kolenc: Guitar, programming, backing vocals
Miha Žargi: Bass guitar
Polona Janežič: Piano, keyboards, backing vocals
Matej Nolda: Drums, backing vocals
Guest musicians:
Jelena Ždrale: Violin and viola (#3, #6, #12 and #13)
Boštjan Gombač: Singing saw (#13)
Gašper Adamič: Backing vocals (#1)
Production
Iztok Turk and Melodrom
Tracklist
01. Start The Fireworks
02. Taking Pictures
03. Anything Goes
04. I’m Taking Pictures
05. Marching On A Globe
06. Revolutions
07. Blow On The Dice
08. Kinematics
09. Counting Days
10. Stereotypes
11. Lovers’ Anatomy
12. Overboard
13.
Running time: 48:43
