Jeez.....how many electronic records have used the word Andromeda either as their title or appearing in the track listing?......Slovenian keyboard wizard couldn't care less, as it suits his take on some cosmic space prog in the year that Tito, the glue that held the unatural state of Yugoslavia together,died. A short decade later they were killing their neighbours,and best friends.
Whether Miha was seen brandishing a Kalashnikov is doubtful.Maybe he did his bit by playing some of his music at the encroaching Serbs. It would have sent some of them running for cover,or at least put some to sleep.Maybe this is how Slovenia managed to gain independence first among all the Yugoslavian states? I'd have surrendered for sure after five minutes of Embrio!......of course I jest, its rather good I suppose as music to play while you're doing something else. Fans of Vangelis,and Jean Michel Jarre will love it.
Irrelevent fact time: Did you know that our closest neighbour in the Galaxy, Andromeda, is on a collision course with our very own Milky Way? Don't worry it'll take a few billion years,and when it happens we,or our planets inheritors,unless its a smoking barren rock by then, probably won't notice a thing,as the space between the various stars and planetary systems are so vast the two Galaxies will just merge.....which by pure chance is the title of fellow Yugo-Synthesist Laza Ristovski's debut electronic album,also featured this month on this very blog.!
Now wasn't that interesting? I just couldn't think of anything interesting to say about this particular Yugoslavian nugget.
Nothing against Miha,its just that i couldn't be arsed to form an opinion beyond labelling it background music. Tomorrow I will have a different opinion I'm sure, 'cus it certainly ain't crap despite what this blurb sounds like.
Tracklist:
A1 Embrio 5:55
A2 Simfonija C Mol 5:33
A3 Apokalipsa 6:22
B1 Andromeda 7:22
B2 Wizard 5:23
B3 Pegaz 5:50
Where I come from, the name Lazza is short for someone called Larry,which is shorter for Lawrence. And Larry isn't too common a name in the crazy,wild wild world of rock and pop and roll,but if you put a clever eastern european twist to it, you can still be cool after all.Even if it doesn't stretch beyond the borders of your own particular Yugoslavian republic.
The keyboardist in not-famous Tito-Prog combo , Ipe I Laza,which was named after....er...himself(!?), this Serbian Keith Emerson had a go at spot of solo electronica.....again very much in the style of the British Electronic Underground of the eighties.
Yugoslavia fancied themselves as having their finger on the pulse musically, and no end of Punk and New Wave non-entities spewed out endless drivel post Tito. I, personally, would rather shove a dildo made of razor wire up my arse than listen to another new wave/punk band strutting their stuff.....it really has been done to death.
So, Prog is the real punk, and Laza,can we call you Lawrence(?)....no answer....no,wait....he's dead!....well,he realised this early on,not that he was dead....tut!.....that Prog was the new anti-punk, with this insipid electronic wallpaper that he churned out in the 80's,and,somehow, beyond!?.
Tracklist:
A1 Beyond The Horizon 7:54
A2 Shadow Dance 8:30
B1 Kaleš Bre Anđo 2:50
B2 Domina 6:55
B3 Poncho 7:10
Staying in the Balkans, in tribute to the area that fucked up the 20th century and sent millions to their deaths because they couldn't live with each other!? Wiping out the British working class on flanders fields during the first world war, after some idiot Bosnian shot an Austrian prince.
They didn't even do Communism right!
Yugoslavia couldn't even be descibed as being behind the Iron Curtain either!? Everyone went there for their holidays when I was an aspiring adolescent, Even the Yugoslavian Prog Bands went to London's fancy studio's to record their albums that would only be heard in.....erm...Yugoslavia!
I see they hail from the same town as Laibach, which is the germanic name for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia;which,by chance, is the only country I have been deported from.....i think I told you this story before earlier in the blog.To keep it short, i absent mindedly stored some methadone pills in my passport, which i gave to the border gaurd,who knew exactly what they were.As they were my junkie girlfriends stash, I gallantly handed her over to the authorities.I didn't want this episode to bleamish my 'Straight Edge' credentials....in hindsight I should have driven off and left her there. Many years of shit followed.
Actually that holiday in other peoples misery was rather good.Lots of opportunites for me to pose in front of battle scarred housing,and no tourists to spoil things either.The civil war had only just ended, but there were still dangers from armed militias.The Army wouldn't allow us to go to Sarajevo without an army escort.But i didn't have time for that shit, so tried Slovenia instead...and we know how that turned out?
Well before they started killing each other, the Yugo's music scene was full of Western facsimiles, endless New Wave crud, and post-punk nonsense, but during Tito's reign, there was Prog! And they all went to London,recording in Abbey Road, and George Martins Air studios.
Ipe I Laza utilised Trident for this bizarre prog rock outing. The yugo-Alan Parsons Project as ordered by President Tito,a couple of years before he shoved off to Dictators Valhalla to be alongside thee ulimate dictator....God. I don't know if there will be Prog Rock allowed in eternal Paradise, or does that sound like the kind of thing that would constitute a 'Hell'? For me a continuation of Top Forty radio into the after-life should be the definition of 'Hell'....but...you get used to anything,and ,maybe, even start to enjoy it after a few millenia....yes even..er..well, i was gonna name someone from the top forty, but couldn't, and i'm proud that I couldn't too.
Not even gonna google the fucker.
So there!
Tracklist:
Odlazak
A1 Noć U Paklu 5:52
A2 Ko Sam Ja? 7:39
A3 Intro-Mental 6:12
Povratak
B1 Poslije Svega 5:56
B2 Top Hit Lista 2:59
B3 Ljubav 6:01
