ROJSTVO IDOLA

As an ethnic folk album the music of ‘Rojstvo idola’ is generally emotive, well-crafted and fundamentally not much of a departure from their previous releases. From a progressive music perspective however, the fourth Sedmina album is a bit of a step backwards.

The lineup here is largely the same as on the previous ‘Onkraj Reke’, and is centered around the husband-wife pair of Veno Dolenc and Klarisa Jovanoviæ. On their third album there seemed to be a more distinct separation of the vocal duties between the two of them, and there were as many solo performances as duets. Here this seems a little less pronounced, with Jovanoviæ leaning more to a complementing role backing her husband.

The tracks here are much less distinctive than on previous works of the group, most of them being very slow, moody, almost glum in many places. There are a few interesting exceptions, most notable “Druidi” with its complex blending of Mediterranean, Celtic and southwest Asian rhythms and instrumentation. The traditional folk tune “Igraj v kolu, jabolko” gets a decent treatment, but like the band’s third album one of my complaints is that they just don’t seem to take full advantage of the vast array of instruments and musicians at their disposal in the studio. Besides the vocals you can hear acoustic guitar, woodwinds (mostly flute), and also some clarinet. The strings are quite muted throughout, and the addition of a cello is a great opportunity lost as its not used to full effect anywhere really, except on the opening “Zapuščena” and “Druidi”.

A couple tracks (particularly the wandering and unfocused “Ptica”) seem to lumber along spreading a cloud of gloom in their wake but without any redeeming hope or humor. That track especially in the middle of the album really seems to bring it down to a place where there is no real recovery.

These are a collection of earlier recordings, and I believe most of them were actually recorded earlier than those on the previous release ‘Onkraj Reke’, which itself was a collection of tracks recorded several years before their release. These on the other hand were released on cassette under the band name Duma, and I believe represent the first published works of Dolenc and his then-new bride Klarisa Jovanoviæ. I can say with confidence they got better.

This is not a bad album, but the bar for these guys should be kept high and this one album doesn’t quite rise to that level. This one is definitely for collectors, and probably of some interest to most prog folk fans, but I wouldn’t go too far out my way to find it. Since it has value and interest beyond just collectors I’ll give it three stars, and recommended for Sedmina fans and for the curious.

peace