Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Urban Bolta
Location: Orto bar / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Interview date: May 23, 2013
At the end of May, Top Stripper opened for house band C4 at Orto bar. They’re a young hard rock crew from Ljubljana who stepped onto the scene a few months ago with quiet but determined steps and their debut »High Heels Avenue« (Rockline review here). Since the release, they’ve thrown themselves into gigging, and thanks to their distinctive style and likable overall image, they’ve quickly built a reputation as a very promising band in the underground. After the show, we sat down in a relaxed atmosphere backstage at Orto bar with Jaša Saban (vocals), Jure Demšar (lead guitar), Miha Majcen (drums) and Rok Rožmanec (rhythm guitar). Over the course of the chat, the guys revealed that they dare to dream, but still keep both feet firmly on the ground.
Rockline: Hey, Top Stripper! A few months ago, when you released your debut »High Heels Avenue« and presented it at Orto bar, it looked like you’d come out of nowhere. Before that, you were basically invisible in the Slovenian rock underground, even though you’ve been around for years. So how did the band actually come about?
Jaša: About four years ago, Jure, Miha and I got together, we invited Rok to join the project too, and we started jamming just for fun. New songs kept coming along the way, and when we had enough of them, we recorded an album and put it out. At first we had no end of trouble with bass players, but now we’ve finally found one we click with.
Miha: Rok and I had already played together in a band called Rockolution. Things started to creak there, so Rok invited Jure to get together. That gave birth to a new, separate band, and at the start we played covers. I saw huge potential in the new project, especially because of Jure’s guitar genius. When the band really got on its feet, Rok and I left Rockolution and devoted ourselves completely to Top Stripper. It took a while to shape our own songs, and the recording itself was a real struggle too. We had a few gigs fall through, the disk we were recording on died, stuff like that, but in the end we pulled it off and here we are!
Rockline: I get the feeling you really hit suddenly – with the February gig at Orto bar – when the rock crowd hadn’t known you before.
Jaša: It may seem like we showed up overnight, but we know full well that behind the finished album there are years of jamming in a basement. Once the album was ready, we decided to promote it, to show what we’d made and put ourselves out there, and we started playing live more regularly.
Rockline: Since the band’s very beginning, were you chasing the goal of releasing an album and everything that comes with it, or did it all just happen spontaneously?
Miha: Yes, and so far we’re very happy with the results of our work. We’re trying to gig as much as possible in the »underground« and collect as many different experiences as we can. We know we still have lots of shortcomings, and even from a purely technical standpoint we have some mistakes to iron out before we might reach the point where we’re ready for bigger stages. Until then, there’s still plenty of work ahead of us. We have to get better on every possible level, write new music, keep moving forward…
Jure: Since you mention our technical side, Miha, it’s actually true that only when you pick up new musical and technical knowledge do you realize how much you still don’t know. Once we got to that realization, we’d already taken a step forward. And until we nail the rhythm we’re after, we can’t be happy with ourselves. If you threw us on some bigger stage right now, we’d burn out. We’re not up to it yet, but we’re definitely trying. You’ve got to take small steps and learn as you go. Even though we’ve played Orto bar, we’re still nobodies, if you know what I mean. Mileage counts for a lot.
Rockline: So you’ve got the album release and months of gigging to promote it behind you. Are you already thinking about the next career moves?
Miha: We didn’t have any concrete plans for June, but now we’ve got an invite from Cvetličarna, where we’ll play before Janez Bončina – Benč, and we’re also arranging an open-air gig at Metelkova in the second half of the month. We dreamed about going on a short tour, with Zagreb, Rijeka, Trieste and Koper in the mix, but college exams are in the mix too, so that plan went down the drain. Then summer will come, and our plan is to play some motorcycle rally, and if not, we’ll work on new original music. With the new gig season, new club shows will of course come too: Jedro in Medvode, then Metelkova, Rdeča Ostriga in Škofja Loka, Mostovna, Kult in Bled, Down Town in Kranj, there are quite a few options open. And with the new year, maybe we’ll kick off that Croatian mini tour I mentioned…
Jure: Even if we don’t manage to land a tour, we don’t see it as a minus, maybe even as a plus. Now that we’ve written and released these few songs, everything has kind of stalled, so it’ll do us good if we manage to create some new material over the summer. Lots of bands going through the initial phase of their first album think they’ll live off it for the next ten years. That’s not how it works, you’ve got to move on, and I sincerely hope we’ll write some fresh material soon.
Rockline: How does your original music come together? Does one band member bring a riff or an idea to rehearsal, or are the songs the product of the whole group?
Rok: It’s hard to generalize, because every song of ours has its own origin story. Usually one of us brings an idea to rehearsal, and if the rest of the guys grab onto it, a good composition might come out of it, but of course plenty of ideas also end up in the trash. Sometimes an idea sits for a while and only then do we build on it, so time plays an important role too.
Rockline: So the songs are the work of the whole band?
Rok: Depends on the song, but usually, when developing ideas, every member really does leave their mark on the track.
Miha: Ideas usually aren’t a problem at all. Some of us have musical training, some don’t. The ideas themselves are never the issue, at most it’s that part of the band disagrees about one of the solutions. Sometimes it takes a while to get on the same page and find a common ground in the song that we all like.
Jure: We really don’t lack ideas. The hardest part of writing songs, especially if they run longer than, say, three minutes, is composing all the parts into some sensible, coherent whole.
Jaša: Like the others said, everyone contributes their own suggestions, and it takes time to reach some kind of consensus. A song has to be played through, songs keep coming, and there’s no worry that we’d stay stuck on this one album as a band, things are moving forward. We need to hang out, because as a unit we’re very productive, and I believe the summer ahead is the right time to build on our body of work.
Jure: Don’t sound so optimistic, or we’ll end up not doing anything! (laughs)
Rockline: You play a very interesting style of music. There are lots of hard rock bands out there, but with your debut »High Heels Avenue« you immediately presented yourselves in a totally distinctive way on the Slovenian scene. You play a version of hard rock closer to the American take on the genre, and there’s a lot of blues in your music. How did that come about?
Jaša: Blues was always the central part of our music, we built everything on blues. We feel it, but since we’re hard rockers at heart, we decided to blend the two genres.
Jure: We all feel the blues, and on the other hand it just rocks. Blues stands for a whole range of emotions, it’s juicy, it makes you think of sex, it’s music that lets a person unwind. We went with a style that’s close to all of us. We don’t care if we sound like somebody, who they compare us to and so on, we like what we do and we’re sticking with it. We don’t know any other way.
Miha: Besides, we’ve been together for a long time. Despite all the hiccups we’ve been through, we tried to polish every song as much as we possibly could. I’m not talking just about some chord progression, but about an aesthetic arrangement with a good riff that fits nicely with the vocals and all the other lines. It was important that we put a huge amount of time into the making of every song.
Jaša: We’re not satisfied with a song just being a song, we keep reworking it, we want to hear the whole picture in it, we want everyone to like it, everyone to have had a hand in finishing it. Only when we can all identify with a song do we know we’ve shaped it into its final form. Blues and rock’n’roll, that’s simply home for us.
Jure: Our music isn’t a first-take thing. I believe and hope it never will be. Some musicians, for example, put a lot of attention into building atmosphere, but we want to get to that goal with a simple lineup – two guitars, bass, drums, vocals. Especially vocals. That’s why our music probably won’t appeal to everyone. It carries a lot of messages and atmospheric twists, so you can’t call it typical party hard rock. It’s not exactly radio stuff, but personally I couldn’t care less, as long as we keep doing what we like.
Miha: We actually ran into the problem of writing music that was too good to even play…
Jure: Hey, you can’t spill everything now… (laughs)
Miha: So we had to figure out how to actually perform it. Riffs and all the other elements only really come alive once you play them well. Of course we wanted to study every element properly, and that was the main reason that held us back from recording for a while.
Rockline: It’s 2013. Hard rock is enjoying better times than, say, a decade ago. You’ve just released your debut and in doing so stepped right into the middle of the scene with a big stride. What’s the response been like, how’s it all going? How does the scene look through your eyes?
Jaša: There are lots of new bands, lots of good bands, I think the scene is thriving. These bands need to be given more chances to show what they’ve got. There’s too little of that. But I definitely think the scene is still on the rise, bands are making good original music, so they’d deserve to have the scene lifted to a higher level with more exposure, up and out of the underground.
Miha: The hard rock scene will never be as popular again as it was in its golden days. Maybe that’s exactly the opportunity, or the message, that you have to find something new. Through our music we want to look for something new, although we don’t plan any radical changes anyway – we like the music we play. The music market is the sixth biggest market in the world. And within that market there’s room for hard rock too, even this mini segment is still much bigger than any of us can imagine. With lots of hard work, I believe you can get to the point where all those drops of sweat pay off. With quality, a good performance, a message and something unique, you can get to the point where one day you set off on a European or American tour. We dream about that, but at the same time we’re aware of where we stand today. Our first goal is to raise the quality to a really high level. We’re enjoying ourselves along the way and already having great moments.
Jure: A style, whatever it is, regardless of all the prejudices in the world today, can only be honest if it comes from the heart. If some music is made out of a bare need to be listened to, that’s usually crap. But if a musician feels what they’re doing, even if their music isn’t mainstream-minded, sooner or later they’ll find a target audience that will embrace them. As long as you’re honest, anything is possible.
Rockline: And so we’ve reached the final question, the closing thought. Is there anything you’d like to tell our readers?
Miha: We’re active on Facebook, where you can contact us for gigs. We want to grow our fan base as much as possible so we can be in direct contact. It’s hard to promote yourself through other media, where money is king. Sadly we’re not at the stage where we could invest a lot in our promotion. You can get the record from us for the symbolic price of three euros, and T-shirts are available too. Thanks to everyone who has embraced us so far. There’s been a noticeable improvement in how people approach us, and we appreciate every bit of goodwill and support we get, because it gives us fresh momentum.
Jure: We’ll gladly take any offer. Be good, and see you again soon!
Rockline: Thanks for your time, and all the best on the road ahead!
Interview by: Urban Bolta
Photos: Karin Zelko
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