Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Cerkno / C.M.A.K. / Slovenia
Concert date: 10.03.2018
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: 0.00€ (free entry!)
If this writer’s planned trip to Zagreb and the Toto show there fell through at the last minute, then just one day later three women from Zagreb rolled into Cerkno’s temple of rock’n’roll, C.M.A.K. We’re talking about the alternative rockers Žen, who played Cerkno as part of the annual »Deuje Babe« festival. Žen are Eva Badanjak (guitar, synthesizers, vocals), Sara Ercegović (drums, synthesizers, vocals) and Ivona Ivković (bass guitar, synthesizers, vocals). Last fall the girls put out their third studio album »Sunčani ljudi«, and since 2014 this return visit to the Cerkno club C.M.A.K. was their second overall.
As usual, gigs at C.M.A.K. are normally slotted for a late hour, and this time wasn’t much different. A decent crowd, somewhere around 70 people, welcomed the up-and-coming trio, who logically built the set around the new studio album. Žen are musicians who know exactly what they want. Their musical vision is firmly chiseled, and the eclecticism that runs through their original music proves it, making them downright special and unique in the alternative rock underground. The new album has taken this compact, clearly expressive artistic format even further in terms of maturity and made it stronger, and on it the band proved that in its healthy evolution it keeps widening and strengthening its musical character. The band remains firmly focused on building hypnotic moods. In that sense minimalism is the essence, yet it demands a seriously well-judged arrangement of the building blocks of that very sound, and on stage a mighty precise performance as well. The girls are armed with synthesizers and extra »floor helpers« (pedals, effects pedals, pedal boards). There’s an Apple laptop too. There’s plenty of memorizing sound loops, layering one sonic stratum over another, the music floats on rustling synth sounds, and at its core are the guitar, bass guitar and drums. Žen use vocals more as an additional instrument. The lyrics certainly carry a rich message, but they’re woven into the music in a way that makes them work primarily as one more building block of a predatory atmosphere.
The girls have it all figured out. Being perfectionists, they brought along their own sound engineer, who delivered outstanding sound in the room. Combined with the backdrops behind them and just two spotlight glimmers of modest strength, their gig went by almost like watching a movie. You closed your eyes and got blasted somewhere beyond reality. You peeled off the ground and flew away, hovered, drifted. Seriously. The girls played top-notch. They’re incredibly tight with each other, they pick up on and feel each other extremely well. Rhythmically, Žen have it all sorted. An extremely warm, thick-wound and organically penetrating bass line, the compact rock ring of a semi-acoustic guitar and razor-precise dictation of the rhythmic structures all came together in a glow of extraordinary precision and unbelievable coherence. Add the deft »whispering« of musical landscapes with synthesizers and sound loops, and perfect hypnosis on the wings of Morpheus is here!
The gig flew by in a flash, precisely because of the exceptional conviction with which Žen delivered it. An hour and fifteen minutes. Short and sweet. A band that knows exactly what it’s doing, what it wants and what it’s creating. With that kind of energy and character, they can be a shining example to their musical peers.
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