The transfiguration of folk tradition through the mesh of electronics is nothing new. Folk, country, blues roots have always fueled new languages and sound forms: it has already happened with classical music, with pop-rock music, with new age and even with synth-pop.
Gordan are a pan-European trio that draws from the oral tradition of Balkan music for a cultural and artistic operation that is not at all conventional: an alienating reading of tradition, infected by powerful sounds of drums, feedback and voices, where the only liturgy to be respected is truth, rather than purity.
The band consists of Austrian drummer Andi Stecher, bassist and skilled electronics and noise/feedback manipulator Guido Möbius and the unique voice of Svetlana Spajić, singer and performer Serbian, already known for her collaborations with Marina Abramovic, Robert Wilson, Anohni Hegarty, William Bansinski and recently involved in the excellent Lenhart Tapes album “Dens”.
The structure of Gordan's second album is apparently rough: a contamination between world music and experimentation, rich in that tension more perceptible in a live dimension than in a recording studio. The eight tracks are like laboratory material in constant decomposition and transformation. The lashing almost post-industrial sounds try to divide silence from noise, giving life to a palpable and at times disturbing tension, a mix of sacred and profane that finds exegesis in the dark and ritual prayer of “How A Mountain Fairy Divided The Two Jakšić Brothers” and in the even more radical marriage between noise, dark and free-jazz of “Selo Moje”.
Gordan's music does not aim to be perceived through body language, it is instead visceral, devoid of any ornamentation, it is an ancient and primordial sound that shakes like a big Bangbetween obsessive rhythms scratched by feedback and noise (“Šara”) and ancient ceremonials as bare and harsh yet magically enchanting as Laibach (“Barabinska”).
Gordan's album is a multi-voiced dialogue on death, on the inevitability of time, on the chaos of the human condition. A powerful expressive burden entrusted to the microtonal singing of Svetlana Spajić, a voice that, in keeping with tradition, eschews technical perfection for an authenticity that digs under the skin (“Ne Spominji Oči Plave”, “O Nikola”).
In this context the enthralling sound almost jars. groove rhythmic, instrumental and vocal of “The Bell Is Buzzing”, the only moment of crossover between past and future: an overflowing and atypical almost pop song that deceives and captures the senses, leaving the listener in an uncertain oblivion.
25/08/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
