Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Dan D
Label: ZKP RTV Slovenija
Release: 2013
Running time: 75:21
Rating: 5/5
»Damn it all! There are more and more of you!«
Dan D are one of the few Slovenian bands, actually the only one, to have won a firmly anchored status as a mainstream rock act in Slovenia’s middle-of-the-road music entertainment park, and to have earned the room to keep maturing artistically exactly as their own talent dictates, on the principle of strict originality, with nobody, no contract and no corporation, pressuring them about when to put out a studio album. Until recently Siddharta also stood credibly on that path, but the album »VI« confirms that the band is crumbling artistically. With Dan D it’s different. They get down to making a new album when they feel 100 percent that the time is right. Four years have passed since the last, artistically most mature one, »Ura letenja za ekstravagantne ptice«, and four more will pass if the band’s inner feeling says so. And that’s the only true guiding principle every artist should cling to.
When you’re at the top, setting yourself artistic challenges is a must if you want to stay on the scene and keep your credibility. Plenty of big names give in and rest on the laurels of old successes, serving up »hollow scraps« of their former inventiveness, while others quit in despair because they can’t see a new peak above the top. The Dan D story, thankfully, is different.
»Tiho« is more than just a recording of the »unplugged« version. The songs on it have gone through a total adaptation, a complete reconfiguration, a restructuring. Even the »Tiho« cassette, a manifesto of the summer pre-tour preparations that you could pick up during the »Tiho« tour (the »logs« went in no time, and it’s an open question whether any leather »pouches« are left), with its mix of brand-new songs and re-dressed classics, makes a great introduction to what audiences could enjoy on the »Tiho« tour. In that sense, a live album wasn’t even all that necessary. Dan D lived through the »unplugged« experience, and people bought the »Tiho« cassette. And yet. The material is far too good to live on only in the memories of those who caught a piece of this Dan D tour.
The songs are turned upside down with such striking force that, until Tokac jumps in with the verses, they come across as completely new, untested musical adventures. And that’s the answer to the thought developed in the first paragraph of this review. Dan D set themselves a new creative challenge, pulled it off skillfully and came out of the baking of this new experience richer and even more mature. The repertoire consists of completely new songs that took shape last summer on the plains of the vast Šentjernej field, when the band was reworking the arrangements into the »Tiho« version, and we’ll hardly ever get to hear them in an electric version. Their time and space of artistic creation is defined, and makes sense, only in the context of »Tiho«. They slot into the repertoire fantastically, in fact they drive it, giving it extra meaning and a new artistic value. The opener »San San« is instant proof that Dan D still have their creative potency, as if their career were only just starting. The original’s spiked-up rocker is rocked on »Tiho« into a seductively oriental experience where belly dancers and cobra charmers share the floor, enriched with a bit of the adventurousness of Page and Plant’s »No Quarter«. The next one, »Počasi«, only deepens that experience. But things swing in different directions. In »Za naju punca«, where Tokac is charmingly, genuinely cracking himself up mid-performance, the Greentown Jazz Band could join the accompaniment without any trouble if you picked up the tempo a little.
In the new setting, the standard elements of Dan D’s music show up in a completely new light. Other qualities come to the surface and leave behind a unique new experience. Sprightly, joyful arrangements with an organic-sounding, playfully shimmering colorfulness, where the nuances of the building blocks (acoustic guitar, exotic plucked instruments with various numbers of strings, percussion, brushwork, tapping on kitchen objects, vocoder and winds such as the tuba) blend seamlessly and play off one another, tied together by the soft-gliding warmth of »fretless« bass lines, create a whole new ambience, and Tokac’s full-toned vocal figure cuts right into it. His unique interpretation captivates with a sensual, passionate approach to the verses. Especially striking is the undulating skip between moods that his vocal delivery colors, as it moves from pinpoint eruptions of fervent delivery (»Tvoje je vse« and/or the exit into »Pozitivne misli«) to a subtle softening of falsetto into an almost-whisper effect (»Daj mi daj«). Above all, though, you’re won over by the manly, velvety, throaty approach, turned to a pleasant frequency. One of the most intense moments of this release is the ballad-tinged version of the deliberately fragile, tender »Daj mi daj«, where Boštjan’s vocoder whisper joins Tokac’s sensual sophistication.
The swing-cabaret »Plešeš«, »Pozitivne misli« caught in an almost Hawaiian rhythm, »Polna luna«, a cheeky country-gallop take on hedonism (the connotation of depravity in the message is deepened even further), »Moj problem«, which catches fire especially well in its new look, and the culmination of all these qualities at the peak of the release, the title track »Tiho«, add up to a landscape of a picturesque fold-out that never stops thrilling, with its sparkling inventiveness in solving all sorts of arrangement challenges, the fascinating chemistry between the building blocks of the stage interpretation, the feeling of events unfolding spontaneously and a note of authenticity in the heritage of this release. You can’t offer more than that. So you’ve offered the most.
The new songs »Čuti se kot konec sveta«, »Rekli so« and »Kamn« (with verses this deep, even stones would weep) are a masterly summary of the pulse of our age of total moral devaluation, brought on by the absurdity of material greed in the doctrine of the capitalist philosophy of appropriation, which has pushed the planet up against the wall of existence. Symbolically, these are the album’s most melancholic, inward-looking moments, bathing in the pain of truthfulness of Tokac’s inexhaustibly sparkling poetry for new times.
The recording of the last date of the »Tiho« tour, on November 30, 2012 at the Lokalpatriot club in Novo mesto, is also a manifesto of the band’s joyful realization that they can share the magic with the audience on such a fascinatingly intimate, as yet undiscovered experiential level of new musical horizons, fed and fired up by the audience’s positive feedback. The crowd follows the shifts in mood almost hypnotically. It goes silent in moments weighed down with pain, like the ending of »Kamn«, or sways along with Tokac, gloriously, into singing the verses (»Pozitivne misli«, »Čas«). All of this is the foundation that fueled the members throughout the tour to deliver a better experience from gig to gig.
Tokac’s joyful remark that this is the last concert of the tour is a realization of great relief, since the band was showing signs of visible wear from the grueling run of 16 concerts across October and November 2012. Both concerts at Lokalpatriot, including the one captured on »Tiho«, were in serious jeopardy, because Boštjan Grubar had to have emergency appendix surgery after the gig in Murska Sobota. It all ended well, though Boštjan spent the days of both Lokalpatriot shows shuttling along the »Lokalpatriot – hospital« route.
»Tiho« is not just a manifesto of extraordinary artistic maturity and the wisdom of a challenge effectively carried out and a goal of original musical vision achieved. As a live document it’s an artistic one-of-a-kind that delivers an unforgettable experience to Dan D fans, putting the band’s household-name standards into a new, totally different arrangement outfit, while the writing of new songs adds proof that Dan D are independent, self-made types, driven unstoppably onward by the »perpetuum mobile« of musical expression of an original artistic character. For a band at the top of the Slovenian rock mainstream this matters hugely, because it keeps Dan D from accidentally losing their developmental vision and starting to »drag« themselves along on the laurels of the past. In an ambience where you can hear a pin drop, only the best can play without any “fuš”! And Dan D are definitely among them.
Line-up
Tomislav Jovanović “Tokac” – bisernica, mandolin, wooden spoon, harmonica, agogo, def, spoon
Marko Turk “Tučo” – ukulele, bisernica, mandolin, slide, hat
Boštjan Grubar – melodica, cabasa, maracas, vibraslap, zill, twin shaker, thunder drum, bells, Malaysian angklung, empty bottle of Cviček, vocoder
Nikola Sekulović – semi-acoustic fretless bass, spoon, wooden spoon, eggs, cooing, nerves
Dušan Obradinović “Obra” – bottles, cohon, conga, tarabuka, assorted bells, shaker, cymbals, djembe, baritone horn, grater
Track list
- San San
- Počasi
- Rekli so
- Plešeš
- Pozitivne misli
- Polna luna
- Čuti se kot konec sveta
- Moj problem
- Kamn
- Voda
- Tiho
- Čas
- Love song
- Tvoje je vse
- Daj mi daj
- Jutranja
- Za naju punca
