INDEKSI

Considered one of the most popular Yugoslav bands of all time, INDEKSI formed in Sarajevo (now the capital city of Bosnia & Herzegovina) in 1962 and would go through many lineups as a cover band for many years before finally realizing a debut album ten years later in 1972. Only guitarist Slobodan A. Kovacevic would stick around through all the changes up to the point when an album emerged. INDEKSI began as a bunch of college students playing for fun and spent the late 60s releasing EPs, singles and touring including a two-month stint through the USSR in 1967. The same year the band performed at the first Sarajevo festival called your Schlager of the Season and continued to establish itself as one of the very first Yugoslav bands that would continue to grow in popularity.

The 60s found the release of several short EPs and singles but this self-titled debut represents the recordings from 1969-72 and was only released once in cassette form and has yet to find a reissue. This debut featured seven tracks that for the most part showcased the band's early years as a rock band with some leftover sounds from the 60s beat movement. While known as a progressive rock band for the second album, INDEKSI did feature a full blown prog workout at this early stage with the track 'Negdje u kraju u zati'ju' which at nearly 12 minutes long featured various movements as well as extended instrumental workouts, pastoral acoustic guitar with flute segments that veer into folk meets classical territory but what makes it stand out as prog more than anything is the extensive use of atmospheric keyboards.

This album was preceded by a single titled 'Plima' which was recorded in 1968 and debuted the concept of lead guitar in the Yugoslavian rock scene but overall for 1972 this album feels woefully dated in comparison to the rest of Europe reaching a crescendo in the world of progressive rock and despite Yugoslavia being one of the most liberal nations in the Eastern block still showed signs of not being up to speed with the innovative sounds coming from the Western European nations. For the most part INDEKSI's debut is a standard rock with occasional hard rock affair with a few prog time signatures added in for good measure with the only exception being the prog behemoth 'Negdje u kraju u zati'ju' which probably sounds closest to the symphonic prog coming out of Italy a couple years earlier.

This seems to be a lauded album in many circles but to my ears it sounds a bit amateurish most likely due to the inconsistency of the material being recorded over a long period of time. It's not necessarily a bad album by any means but not up to par with the other interesting bands that emerged from the former Yugoslavia such as Time, Buldozer, Leb i Sol and Smak. The band would take another six years to release its more progressive sophomore release 'Modra Rijeka' and despite its lack of albums still became one of Yugoslavia's most successful bands. Being far removed from the time and place from when this was released may give me no context as to how relevant this was during its day but as someone experiencing it decades later with a very open mind i have to say i find this a bit underwhelming as it doesn't really deliver anything substantially original to the world of rock music. Relevant for a historical perspective.