PAVILJON G

This album brought S VREMENA NA VREME closer to classic rock outfit. Nikola Jager on drums is now full-time member, while V. Djukic switched to bass, thus providing a strong rhythm section. Traditional instruments that made a characteristic music style of the previous releases (prim tambura, sargija, and flute...) were gone, while electric solo guitar is now more frequently used.

The best tracks on "Paviljon G" ("Pavilion G") are a heavy, almost metallic, rocking of "Rok kriticar" ("Rock Critic") with bitter lyrics against rock journalists, and a country-rock beat of "Maskenbal" ("Masquerade Party") with funny, humoresque lyrics and chorus sounding like satirical giants BULDOZER. Two nice ballads, electric "Jesenje svitanje" ("Autumn Dawn") and acoustic "A sta sad" ("And What Now?"), are just nice and easy to listen to, but not on par with earlier compositions. "Ajsa" ("Aisha") is a sort of folk-rock but not very progressive one, utilising their obligatory images of Ottoman Balkans story telling. The remaining tracks are rather weak with banal lyrics and even trendy reggae attempts, except that "Ostrvo" contains a very good solo on electric guitar.

Ljuba Ninkovic proved on several tracks that he is a skilful guitar soloist. However, I can assume that he overtook the control of the band, pushing Sarvan and Djukic brothers behind, and tried to bring it as close to mainstream rock scene in ex Yugoslavia as possible. Even "Rok kriticar" hit the charts in the former country. On the whole, the album suffers from uninspired composition and arrangement, sub-standard lyrics, even though the musicianship and production were quite good. The fact that the band split after this release, with Ninkovic forming a rather mainstream AOR rock band TUNEL in the 1980s, says enough of the crisis documented on this album.

Out of prog context, "Paviljon G" may be estimated as average work, but here it is not enough good to be considered "good".