Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Uroš Planinc Group
Label: Multi Records
Release: 2010
Length: 36:15
Rating: 4/5
This marathon-length album review was born out of deep respect for the music this band plays. If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, just read the first and last paragraphs and that’ll be enough to get a concise idea of what to expect from Uroš Planinc Group. So, let’s get going.
Well, how about that! Instrumental rock? In Slovenia? What’s that? There’s a bit of it, sure. It languishes, pushed out to the fringes of society. Dreams of a brighter tomorrow. And keeps at it, never gives up. Slovenia is simply known as a country where only yodelers and punks thrive. Uroš Planinc spent the early part of his musical journey in the band Levitan. We met in February 2005, after the band’s gig at Kud France Prešeren (Ljubljana). A lot of water went under the bridge before fate brought us together again. In 2010 I get to watch Uroš on stage with his own band Uroš Planinc Group, on the stage of the now-defunct Rock Cafe club in Postojna. Fully in instrumental territory. Even in Levitan he stood out with his talent for virtuoso guitar playing. And he obviously realized that his road leads into the league of solo guitarists!
As a guitarist, Uroš surely grew up under the influence of pioneering, groundbreaking instrumental rock albums, like “Surfing With An Alien” (1986) by Joe Satriani, or its later (expanded) variant “Passion And Warfare” (1990) by Steve Vai . Some of the chosen guitar phrases don’t hide those influences, and neither do the solo spots. But watch out. When we talk about Uroš Planinc, we’re not talking about a replica or a rough knockoff of something already invented and heard.
So what we have here is a young, promising “vocal guitarist” (damn, first time I’ve ever used a label like that!), who uses Slovenian for his vocabulary. That’s a big advantage of instrumental rock. You can do exactly what you want. If a rock band has a singer and that same band uses Slovenian lyrics, a lot of bending over backwards is needed before Slovenian becomes even halfway acceptable and listenable in rock. Here, though, the guitar just speaks Slovenian all by itself and the problem is solved.
There isn’t a lot of material on the album in terms of running time, but it’s concentrated, tightly crafted and juicy! What makes this album special is that it isn’t necessarily melancholic. I’d say that, for a Slovenian album, it carries mostly bright moments, which is nice proof that we Slovenes aren’t necessarily just grumblers with a self-destructive streak. What surprises most is Uroš’s relentless teasing with witty, fun tricks that he works into the track arrangements throughout. There’s no shortage of mischief, joie de vivre and a hunger to grab life with a big spoon on this album, if anything, quite the opposite. There’s one track that’s especially experimental and so really stands out on the record. I’m talking about The Frog, where the band slaloms around in a deliberately goofy way. The track is perfectly set up to develop into unimagined jazz rock fusion tangles, yet even at this point of the album the band keeps total control and stays unpretentious. The stumbling, broken-up rhythm is a blast, with Uroš’s guitar vividly morphing into a frog’s temperament!
And right away the hard rocker Return To Mother Earth is with us. Its lead guitar phrase practically begs for comparisons with the revolutionary arrangement ideas of his colleague Joe Satriani from almost 25 years ago! And the sudden switch to a dreamy, calmly guided tempo after two and a half minutes, underpinned by lazy chord picking and a sound effect, even calls back to the pioneering days of the almighty Frank Zappa and his album “Joe’s Garage” and/or his student Steve Vai and the album “Passion And Warfare.” The rock ‘n’ roll-minded Mountain Boogie is shod with (as the title says) a sped-up boogie drive. Uroš’s shenanigans are strapped onto it, generated by the genius of his lightning-fast, expressive and delicately sensitive artistic mind! The man weaves his spells as if a monster were playing the guitar, but through the prism of the listener’s ears. So Uroš keeps the listenability high throughout, with a tight interplay of tones that holds onto exceptional melodiousness and broad musical accessibility for the masses. Yes. Even in the commercial sense. And that’s a big quality that opens doors wide for this musician and his band. Abroad rewards such acts far better than the home country does. And with further growth and honing of the basic musical direction, there’s no reason to doubt success.
Often the lead guitar phrase is beefed up with chunky keyboards, which frequently stick dutifully to a Hammond sound. Earlier we talked about mischief. The wound-up, rock-flavored XYZ is the right title for it. If you’re in the car when it’s playing, make sure your foot doesn’t punch through the floor of the car while pressing the gas. Here Uroš and the band are basically driving a rally.
For all their accessibility and melody placement, the man’s solos keep the album’s course of events unpredictable throughout. The element of spontaneity is among the best things you can milk to the fullest when dealing with instrumental rock. There’s a gentle waltz in Brazil Cafe, which, with its warm Hammond sounds and guitar playing, evokes Santana’s commercial work. This very track is the ideal example of unpredictable development, as not long after it transforms through a salsa rhythm.
The Hammond touch and the rocky texture of its sound are put to use by the crushing, accented riff of Just Do It. It’s a dark track, and what stands out is how well the guitar patterns and keyboard parts interlock. These feelings are then absolutely underlined and showcased by one of the album’s loveliest tracks. That’s Daydream. It opens quite shyly with piano, through an innocent interplay with acoustic guitar that turns melancholic toward the end, with perfectly added classical piano lines. Enjoying this track literally gives the listener goosebumps, because it unexpectedly breaks into an erogenous ambient ride, delivered by the excellent, rock-accented middle section of the song. The intro and outro on keyboards bring in jazzy feelings.
After the perfect and wonderfully tripping experimental interlude The Frog, which still hides plenty in reserve and at the same time stirs up many spirits, pushing us to wonder what else unexplored lurks in the creative inspiration of Uroš Planinc Group, we return to familiar tracks. The album’s finale smells of funk. Here again is the extremely mischievous Mind Jogging, bursting with sparkle and excellent teamwork from all the building blocks! Alongside Daydream, the album is closed by one more outstanding track, For Nina! A track that is the fruit of the guitarist’s love for his partner, it opens with an interesting melos that might fleetingly and quite unintentionally even blast us back to the very motif of the Weather Report track Black Market , but only for a few seconds, at the start and at the exit. It’s built on a funk rhythm. The rhythm section gratefully spreads its wings here too, and again the central dialogue of guitar and keyboards stands out, picking through individual motif collages and a very compatible flow.
The album’s downside is the weak use of the rhythm section and, in part, the production. Even though the bass guitar is well awake throughout the album, it could use a bit more of the available space and fill it with a few adventurous tricks that would widen the band’s expressive range. What goes for the bass goes even more for the drums. Not only are they far too inactive, failing to use the enormous room for creating transitions and thereby lifting the album’s dynamics, they’re also tuned miserably in the production. Especially on the faster tracks they sound boxy, dull and too quiet. This shortcoming in using the rhythm section is especially glaring in, say, the experimental The Frog, where the otherwise sparkling and wittily conceived track could have gotten even more out of it!
On the other hand, the sound of Uroš’s guitar is incredibly pleasing, keeping a lively character on the album of “Gibson Les Paul” origin, while in places it can get arbitrarily thinner and so “bend” even more softly through the seasoned and lively solo escapades.
This is an album for guitar rock fans! And what to say about the future? With their debut, Uroš Planinc Group have shown that they’re an extremely talented young instrumental rock outfit who, with this album, aren’t just laying foundations for their own solid continuation of a developing musical vision, but for the entire genre on Slovenian soil, which gets yet another firm foundation from which it can finally begin to develop (and with it the very history of the genre on Slovenian soil). So the cornerstone stands. It doesn’t bring a musical revolution, but for Slovenia it’s an exceptionally nice and important addition! It’ll be well worth watching the band’s next moves with great curiosity. The album “Uroš Planinc Group” offers a satisfying harvest of starting points for development. With it the band has defined a flinty foundation of instrumental rock on which it can freely build its creative self going forward. It delivered a set of 10 tracks adorned with exceptional variety, high melodic compactness, a touch of unpredictable turns and, what’s essential: freshness and great perceptiveness of musical creativity of its own authorship, which preserves and expresses recognizability! Already now we can say that the album “Uroš Planinc Group” has far exceeded expectations. This is a standout achievement on Slovenian soil that must by no means be neglected and/or overlooked. Don’t you dare stop now, guys!
Lineup
Uroš Planinc – guitar
Jalen Plut – keyboards
Blaž Bizjak – bass
Črt Krevh – drums
Production
Uroš Planinc & Tomaž Dolžan
Track list
1. Return To Mother Earth
2. Mountain Boogie
3. The Walk
4. XYZ
5. Brazil Cafe
6. Just Do It
7. Daydream
8. The Frog
9. Mind Jogging
10. For Nina
