KRUSHEVO (WITH MIROSLAV TADIC)

This is the first album in series with Vlatko's collaboration with classically-trained guitarist Miroslav Tadic. Collaboration (and album itself) was (and still is) a huge success in countries of former Yugoslavia (and not only there), partly because of Stefanovski's comeback to the musical scene, and partly because collaboration of these two skilled guitarist turned out to be a perfect amalgam of something completely new on world-music scene.

It's absolutely unnecessary to describe Stefanovski's astonishing guitar technique(s) because thousands of pages of reviews worldwide described him (with lots of "oohs" and "aahs") already as extraordinary virtuoso, but the name of Miroslav Tadic is the new boy in progressive rock town. He is an extraordinary technician as well, and it's really difficult to imagine any other world-class guitarist that will fit in the picture better. Tadic proved he is the perfect man for making gorgeous tapestries among Stefanovski's expressive solos. He (Tadic) is one of those rare musicians who is capable to create lovely, dreamy, floating (but not "new-agey" and dull) backgrounds using unusual chords and chord progressions without sounding "avant-guarde" or "dissonant".

To be very honest, this album is got almost nothing to do with progressive rock. Why? It's without any doubt progressive (and "progressive" if you want) but you will find "rock" (in widest possible context of that term) only in traces. Okay, Stefanovski occasionally uses E-bow on his dobro (He's plays classical, acoustic C&W and dobro guitars) and you may spot few blues-like string bendings, but that's about it.

So what's going on inside the sleeve?

Well, all the compositions are instrumentals, guitar duets. No sign of percussions (except for the guitars themselves), no sign of keyboards, bass or any other instrument from the rock heritage. Just loads of reverberation.

All the tracks are old Macedonian folk songs, just adopted by the duet. To understand why is this album considered progressive, and not the sheer world-music piece, you must know that Macedonian folk music itself is almost prog. It's full of irregular time signatures and strange shifts in tempo. Time measures such are 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, 5/4, 11/8 and even 13/8 are not unusual, and Stefanovski-Tadic interpretations hitted the bull's eye.

One must know that this album is not just an exhibition of an ultra-fast outstanding technique, it is technicians delight though, but emotions are the strongest aspect of this fine work.

Performances are soulful and passionate. However, I focused this review more on technical and theoretical side of playing simply because if someone tries to describe the passion, world will fail him.

I'm giving five stars to "Krushevo" for two reasons:

1) Because it IS a masterpiece, 2) and I think this will became a new chapter in music history. Time will tell.