Utorak, 27. studenoga 2012.
Klub Zvonimir Rogoz, 21:30 sati

EX YU ELECTRONICA VOL. III

Diktatura, humor, agresija / Dictatorship, Humour, Aggression

One of the most quoted Josip Broz Tito sentences about movements in history becoming reactionary, while attempting to perpetuate itself, was not only a purely philosophical statement of a cigar & leisure loving leader. What the beloved Yugoslav lifelong president said was meant to be taken seriously, at least for government institutions of the time. Some artists paid their price in jail-time, some were proclaimed persona non grata, but the majority knew how to milk the snake and not get bitten. Now, when obscure records with Tito speeches are cheap collectibles on flea markets, making camp lovers happy and hipsters even cooler, one might disregard those thoughts as a useless historical relic. However, that relic in form of the time passed caused some of the most valuable movements in the history of ex-Yugoslav music, marking the era important and inspiring. Some of the musicians included in this compilation only started to make their sign on the flowering scene, some were already established names in a deep level of the underground, which was in the shape of self-released cassettes even more radical than record industry’s alternative darlings. Reactionary? Only in terms of parody, like Laibach used to do.

The first two instalments of Ex Yu Electronica series focused on more experimental & industrial pieces, this one highlights the ‘electronic’ part of the title. One must know that Yugoslavia was not like other communist-bloc countries, where it was forbidden to import records, synthesizers and similar equipment or the borders being completely closed. During 1980’s, when most of the music on this LP happens, there was a steady flow of new music. The biggest labels like Jugoton in Zagreb, PGP RTB in Belgrade or ZKP RTLJ in Ljubljana had licensing deals with foreign labels, so the most important albums were in the shops, maybe not in the time of their exact international release, but they were present. Some of the music theorists in ex-Yugoslavia marked the starting points of home grown movements calculating the time needed for records to arrive – synth-pop took a year later than Europe, new wave was faster, punk also. And industrial? Experimental? They probably would have not have happened if there was no cassette scene. That medium was beneficial to all the genres – it was faster, easy to copy, less expensive to produce, cheaper to sell and it did not need an institutional background or big money behind it. The cassettes were a much needed fix to filtered selections of producers and editors, like the digital medium of today is to the overgrown concepts of old-fashioned major labels.

Organizator: HUG Varaždin

ULAZ SLOBODAN!