As I am heading to “North” Macedonia tomorrow, and I am in dire need of a rest, I leave you with a Bandcamp article on old and new post-punk from the Former Yugoslavia. We’ll see you soon! https://daily.bandcamp.com/label-profile/doomtown-records-label-profile
Marin Škrgatić was a singer and bandleader of Croatian extraction whose work here should have been given a wider audience during the 1970s. If you can believe it, according to Everland Music’s Bandcamp site, some of these songs were too progressive, if such a thing could ever exist. The tracks are not only influenced by prog, but you can hear jazzy and operatic elements in some of the tracks. This is an undisputed gem of Yu-Rock.
The Ansambl Mileta Petrovića were a band out of the former Yugoslavia (namely, the area of Niš, Serbia) who were around from the early 1980s until around 1991, before the erstwhile Communist union fell apart and hell broke out everywhere. Radio Martiko document some of their finer moments on this album.
Zoran Simjanović was a film music composer, film music editor and soundtrack composer from Serbia in the Former Yugoslavia. While talking with my girlfriend, we discussed the passing of actor Branko Cvejić, and she made mention that he starred in the TV series Grlom u Jagode. The soundtrack was quite popular in its day, and Simjanović composed this slice of Yugo-nostalgia.
Pablo Esparza of The World website writes on one of the oddest phenomena which happened during the heyday of Yugoslavia – the Yu-Mex scene, complete with charro costumes.
Igra Staklenih Perli were one of the greater monster progressive/psychedelic rock bands to come out of Yugoslavia (the band themselves were Serbian) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and though some of their work could be seen as taking cues from legendary western groups like Pink Floyd, I hear elements of Can, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, about the only metal period I like short of Black Sabbath. The only gripe I have with the album is the low mix. Music like this should be listened to at high volume, so the punch…
This is one of the coolest archival recordings I’ve come across in some time! Serbian bassist Miša Blam (Serbian bio only) is a name known to jazz aficionados because of his work with legends like Chet Baker and Sal Nistico, but this album is a minor disco classic. A lot of jazz-funk was popular throughout Yugoslavia (think of musicians like Igor Savin, Josipa Lisac and the legendary Janko Nilović), but this album was limited to 1,000 copies. Everland Music has preserved a classic of the genre, and are owed a debt of thanks for this re-release.