01. Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow’s Dawn (16:05)
02. Curls Upon the Neck, Ribs Upon the Mountain (14:29)
03. No One’s Footsteps Deep in the Beat of a Butterfly’s Wings (3:14)
04. Tiny Dewdrop Explosions Crackling Delightfully (11:53)
05. Hope in an All-Sufficient Space of Calm (3:45)
06. The Hangman’s Shadow Fifteen Years On (18:57)
07. For You, This Eve, the Wolves Will Be Enchantingly Forsaken (5:20)

“Širom fashion maximalist avant-garde soundscapes from antique acoustic instruments like the balafon and hurdy gurdy. Their artfully rootless roots music makes an impassioned statement both aesthetically and, more opaquely, politically too.” — Uncut

The Slovenian avant-folk trio Širom are back with a sonically and thematically expansive 5th album; a thrilling follow-up to their widely praised 2022 release The Liquified Throne of Simplicity. Navigating almost two dozen instruments (some of which they’ve handcrafted), and hypnotic compositions that often exceed ten minutes in length, Ana Kravanja, Iztok Koren and Samo Kutin court patient, deep-dive listeners via intricately woven atmospheres, rhythms and sonics.

In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper is arguably the sharpest evocation yet of the group’s highly collective music process, enveloping rustic melodic folklore, outernational textures, non-linear song structures and dissonance, and a buzzing ambiance that can at times feel like an ecstatic ritual.

Few experimental ensembles from the last decade have created an ouevre as singular and unmistakable as that of this far-sighted trio from the disparate landscapes of Slovenia. Širom truly sound like no one else.
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It’s just after eight on a lovely early summer’s evening in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital. The city’s increasingly metropolitan skyline can only be viewed in glimpses from here, for we’re a mile or so away on the edge of a forest. This far from the urban racket, the only audible sound is the expectant buzz from the some of the city’s sizeable experimental music tribe, with a sprinkling of tourists wondering what they’ve let themselves in for. The Širom machine, a home-made contraption criss-crossed with strings, taut with percussion and pumped full of air, is about to be cranked up again. Slovenia’s best and most singular band are back, with a very fine record to play you.

Not that they’ve really been away. They tour regularly at intimate venues they could sell out many times over, and peel off for an almost constant stream of personal and side-projects: Terry Riley’s In C with Ana the night after Širom’s appearance, a stunning solo show from Samo in late June on homemade bass harp and what sounded like a bag of hammers being dropped from a great height, a new LP from Iztok’s industrial/sludge/doom outfit Hexenbrutal, among many others. They don’t believe in rationing themselves, and are driven by an unshakeable belief in what they are doing. They are available and approachable, have plenty of edge but no side. Paradoxically, they’ve rarely received as much love at home as they have abroad. Slovenia much prefers reserve and faint praise, meaning that it has never really reckoned with the fact that Širom are its most successful musical export since Laibach.

When we spoke to them ahead of the release of their third album nearly six years ago, they obviously had no idea what lay in store for them: appearances on notable international end-of-year best-of lists (e.g. #11 at The Quietus), praise from fellow drone enthusiasts Lankum, Thurston Moore slipping into their sold-out Café Oto show, a deliriously reviewed performance at Le Guess Who?. Bafflement and joy have continued to flow in equal measure, although I think we have finally learned to stop asking them whether their music is improvised and, if not, how on earth they manage to remember it all when they step on stage. They just do. Širom are much more than the sum of their technical idiosyncrasies. Your only task is to listen to the music.

What remains of that Širom and the peak they reached with The Liquified Throne of Simplicity (2022)? That record had a heavier groove than their previous work, and was a kind of rural Slovenian kosmische that indicated where they might go next. The question is worth asking because they seem to have ended up somewhere else entirely here. They do, however, remain supreme creators of mood and landscape; their song titles continue to delight, sounding like those moments of clarity you have when dozing that you can’t quite capture upon waking; and you’ll still have trouble humming any of the tunes.

Or maybe you won’t. Because the band are more melodic and (dare we say it) accessible here than they have ever been. The insistent grooves and trademark texture are still present, but there’s a new-found sense of linearity that largely replaces the stacks of sound and detailed collages that have characterised their work to date. There is suddenly more air, allowing a string of sublime melodies, in ‘Curls Upon the Neck, Ribs Upon the Mountain’ and ‘Hope in an All-Sufficient Space of Calm’ in particular, to flourish. Everyone’s still speaking, just not at the same time, but the drama level remains high. The resulting sense of space, of emergence and arrival, is certainly something a Tim Hecker or indeed Park Jiha fan would instantly recognise, and is perhaps most evident on ‘The Hangman’s Shadow Fifteen Years On’, the standout track for this listener and one of the best things they have done.

Where has this shift, which still yields an immediately recognisably Širom, come from? They were recently asked about their sources of inspiration; this being them, it wasn’t other bands or musics, but nature in its wildest form (Samo), painting and an ongoing process of self-exploration (Ana), and the hope that human beings could at least begin to recover their sense of solidarity with and respect for others (Iztok). There also have been one or two changes in the band’s personal dynamics, as Iztok points out. For sure, this is as close as Širom have ever got to a state-of-the-world, state-of-their-lives record.

The sun has just set as they finish with that very un-Širom thing: an encore. Just over half the set has been from the new record, which is what people have really come to hear. ‘We don’t want to play something that sounds like it already exists,’ said Samo a few years back, and they still don’t. File this under contemporary classical, imaginary folk or rural underground, file it under Slovenian, file it under anything you want. People will find this wonderful album regardless. Or perhaps, more probably, it will find them.

1. Wilted Superstition Engaged in Copulation (20:06)
2. Grazes, Wrinkles, Drifts into Sleep (16:02)
3. A Bluish Flickering (18:39)
4. Prods the Fire with a Bone, Rolls over with a Snake (18:43)
5. I Unveil a Peppercorn to See It Vanish (3:40)

The Slovenian “imaginary folk” trio’s most epic and transportive album yet. Powered by acoustic and often handmade instruments, these expansive compositions echo the borderless, collective spirit of groups like Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society and Art Ensemble of Chicago.
 “Episodic, dreamlike voyages” – The Guardian

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A well-placed crossroads to central Europe, the Balkans and the Adriatic, Slovenia has a rich atavistic topography of mountains, deep forests and karst landscapes to arouse both escapism and inspiration. Drawing on this geography of contemplation and psychic energy, from a country previously swallowed up by Yugoslavia and before that, reaching back centuries, the Roman, Byzantine and Austro-Hungarian Empires, the Slovenian trio of Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin conjure up an extended album of intuitive transcendence and reflection on the unique sounding The Liquified Throne of Simplicity.

Finding a home once more with Glitterbeat Records’ adventurous, experimental, mostly instrumental, platform tak:til, and following on from the debut I (released in 2016 on the Radio Študent label), the much lauded I Can Be A Clay Snapper (2017), and the equally acclaimed A Universe That Roasts Blossoms For A Horse (2019), Širom’s fourth such inventive and illusionary album incorporates some aspects of the former whilst expanding the inventory of eclectic instruments and obscured sounds. For the first time the trio also ignore the time constraints of a standard vinyl record to fashion longer, more fully developed entrancing and hypnotizing peregrinations. This new, amended, approach results in 80 minutes of abstract and rustic folklore, dream-realism, explorative intensity and cathartic ritual. And within that array of realms there’s evocations of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World experiments, visions of Samarkand, the esoteric mysteries of Tibet, an unplugged faUSt and pastoral hurdy-gurdy churned Medieval Europe.

These off-the-beaten-track performances converge history and geography with untethered fantasies and ambiguous atmospheres; all of which are made even more so fantastical, and even symbolic, by both the poetic, allegorical fabled track titles and the softly surreal illustrative artwork by the small village-based painter Marko Jakše, whose signature magical, if solemn, characters and landscapes adorn the album’s cover and inlay.

Music, in part, as a therapy The Liquified Throne of Simplicity offers a portal to other musical, sonic worlds: an escape route out of the on-going pandemic and its demoralizing, mentally draining effects and the crisis it has sparked in Slovenia, with certain far right groups especially taking advantage to ramp up the discourse of nationalism. More than anything, it was a therapeutic chance to mend disconnection and isolation. Yet though it was a bleak long winter, lockdown nevertheless gave the trio time to create and learn, as Ana, the trio’s multi-instrumentalist and amorphous aria voiced siren, describes: ‘For me drumming in winter was like a good drug. It gave me inner peace and meaning to just drum a few hours every day, to forget about a crazy everyday life and to be somewhere else…’

During the darkest days of the Covid miasma the trio took to walking across the remote parts of their homeland, making a reconnection of sorts with their surroundings but also in a quest for inspiration. Another important motivation was found in exploring, studying and researching an ever-growing list of exotic instruments, in repurposing an assemblage of found objects and in constructing new effective devices such as acoustic resonators (made out of a spring and frame drum). Introduced to the already worldly sound ensemble is the shortened Balkan region mandolin/guitar-like ‘tempura brač’, the Middle Eastern ‘daf’ frame drum, the ‘ocarina’ vessel fluted wind instrument, the ‘lute’ and the North African three-stringed, skin-covered, bass plucked ‘guembri’ (signature instrument of Morocco’s spiritual Gnawa music). That’s all on top of the repeated hurdy-gurdy playing and use of the lyre, viola, three-string banjo, balafon, ribab and mizmar.

Širom arrived at such polygenesis, otherworldly music via disparate but intersecting roads. Both active in the Slovenian underground scene, Iztok (with the DIY club Ambasada ŠKM Beltinci) and Samo (the Čadrg Records Festival) both organized shows for each other’s emerging projects (Čarangi, Salamandra Salamandra, Hexenbrutal). Gravitating towards new horizons, painter and violinist Ana formed a kalimba duo Najoua with Samo. At a balafon making workshop that Samo organized, he and Ana and Iztok improvised together for the first time and discussed meeting again to play on homemade instruments. At last, during a shared Najoua tour with one of Iztok’s bands, ŠKM Banda, the idea for Širom took hold.

In the spirit of goodwill and for good mental health, as the lockdown in Slovenia passed Širom shared this new album with others on a national underground tour; playing six acoustic concerts in special locations across their native country, like a remote village, pastures and in an old stable. This mini-tour, documented in the Rural Underground tilted 35-minute film that will be released a month before the album, can be seen as a further illumination on the process and inner workings of a most hypnotizing mysterious trio.

From the epic, almost primal, tubular and cattle bell ringing, Gnawa scratching, viola frayed fantasm opener ‘Wilted Superstition Engaged in Copulation’ to the almost Oriental dulcet shivered creeping drama of an acoustic Swans, ‘A Bluish Flickering’, attuned diverse tunings, rhythms (the poly and non-binary) and various rubbed, frayed and driven textures soundtrack an eventful age whilst probing uncharted musical worlds. By instinct, and in parts by coincidence, Širom once more entrance with their vague undulations and illusionary echoes of places, settings, time and escapism on another highly magical album.

Širom:

Ana Kravanja: viola, daf, ocarinas, mizmar, balafon, ribab, various objects, voice.
Iztok Koren: guembri, banjos, tank drum, bass drum, percussion, balafon, various objects, Chimes.
Samo Kutin: hurdy gurdy, tampura brač, lyre, lute, brač, chimes, balafon, frame drum, ocarina, acoustic resonators, various objects, voice.

01. A Washed out Boy Taking Fossils from a Frog Sack (2:43)
02. Sleight of Hand with a Melting Key (15:16)
03. A Pulse Expels Its Brothers and Sisters (9:26)
04. Low Probability of a Hug (7:50)
05. Same as the One She Hardly Remembered (8:28)

 

Slovenian ‘imaginary folk’ instrumental trio return with a kaleidoscopic third album. Handmade and global instrumentation meets fearless sound exploration

There’s a sequence in Memoryscapes, a lovely short film, in which Širom set about fashioning music from a pile of pots, pans, saucepan lids and empty cans of supermarket lager on the kitchen table. It’s the band in microcosm: cracked, insistent beats, rhythm chasing rhythm, a deadly serious playfulness, and the intimacy of close friendship undercut by the sense of emergency of a flashing torch. Širom are all about the head and the hand, and the dark that always pushes against the light.

We’re around another kitchen table now, and the three members of the band – Ana Kravanja, Samo Kutin and Iztok Koren, in any order you like for this is a collective endeavour – are gently fending off any question that attempts to reduce their music to type. It’s not the first time they’ve had to suffer a conversation like this since their highly acclaimed second record, I Can Be A Clay Snapper, became one of tak:til’s first releases two years ago. ‘Imaginary folk’ is Samo’s preferred description, but the word ‘preferred’ is doing some heavy lifting here. You get the sense that the band don’t much care for labels. ‘It’s also good not to know everything,’ he says. ‘We don’t want to play something that sounds like it already exists.’ (Although fans of psych, outernational field recordings, folk horror, Don Cherry’s Organic Music Society, Rileyesque minimalism or mutant country might find a home, however fleeting, in Širom’s world.)

The band are more than happy, however, to bust two myths that seem to have grown up in the last couple of years. First, this is not Slovenian traditional (or traditional Slovenian) music. It might be produced from and by each of the three landscapes in which the band were raised – the Karst, the hills of Tolmin, the eastern plains of Prekmurje – but unpicking what came from where is an impossible endeavour, as Iztok points out: ‘We know the impact of the landscapes that have influenced us could be measured, but practically it’s impossible because there are too many variables. Nevertheless, it is important that we ask ourselves this question, because it is like a compass – it gives you direction, but it doesn’t say what you will find at the end.’

That quest, which starts with every song, and feels renewed each time it’s played and listened to, leads us to the second misconception: that Širom are an improvisational band. For sure, improvisation is an indispensable part of the initial songwriting process; but it’s an expression of their collective manner of working rather than any musical statement per se. These are precisely crafted songs, each one months in the making, in preparation for the time when the mics are switched on and they can finally achieve what they need to without resorting to overdubs of any kind. Keen-eared listeners will hear a continuation of the last song on Clay Snapper in the first song of the new record: a nod, perhaps, to the fact that they began work on the new record immediately after the last.

But whatever has gone into the music, from the band’s home landscapes to their previous and in some cases still current musical projects (classical, hardcore, flatlands post-rock), Širom sound like no one else – and that’s the point: ‘When we make music, it’s like making a new world,’ says Samo. The world of the new record – A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse – is indeed subtly different to that of the last: the viola still teases and tugs at the percussion (or is it the other way round?) and the banjo still periodically tries to break free and set up on its own, but there’s a glimpse of electricity (that rarest of beasts in the Širom catalogue) in ‘A Pulse Expels Its Brothers and Sisters’, courtesy of Samo’s homemade tampura brač, more vocals, albeit as unsettling as ever, and a new sense of spaces being prised open. What remains is that strange and unmistakeable Širom groove, which exists to be broken down (as Ana suggests), and the dark joy that runs through all their work.

01. Just About Awake (Malodane budnost)
02. Boats, Biding, Beware! (Čolni, čakam, čúvaj!)
03. Everything I Sow Is Fatal (Vseje usodno)
04. Maestro Kneading Screams of Joy (Maestro mane vriskanje)
05. Ten Words (Deset besed)

Hailing from Slovenia, Širom play vividly textured and (mostly) imagined, instrumental folk musics. Handmade and global instrumentation meets fearless sound exploration.

The 3rd release from Glitterbeat’s new label imprint: tak:til

Slovenia’s miniature, but incredibly diverse landscapes, echo through its distinctive cultural, historic and linguistic traits. When thinking about Širom’s geographical trajectories, as well as their musical ebb and flow, one has to consider the abundance of water that can be found in the individual regions where they come from. Cascading mountain stream lilt, lazy lowland river meandering and the mysteriously vanishing waters of Karst are most certainly inscribed into Samo Kutin’s, Iztok Koren’s and Ana Kravanja’s childhood memories and subsequently, their remarkable musical art.

“In the process of making the second album we decided to shoot a film,” Samo Kutin explains. “The idea was to visit the places we come from, the ones that are more difficult to access, to see how environment in which we grew up in and the memories it awakes, affect our musical improvisation. The film called Memoryscapes is a kind of a document of this experiment, but the experiment itself certainly influenced the creation of the second album.”

Watching the trio experiment and jam on ribab, frame drums, balafons, percussions and various other unusual or homemade instruments in the sinkhole Bukovnik in Karst, on the snowy mountain top of Kal above the village Čadrg and in bright yellow turnip rape fields in Prekmurje, the soundscapes they create symbolically depict the essence of Širom. The search for idiosyncratic sound where no one else is looking. A passion for exploring diverse sonic qualities as well as examining the constantly changing relations between the material (everything that produces sound), the environment, human experience and musical intervention.

But the journey towards I Can Be a Clay Snapper began with a rather different chord. Before plunging into improvisational and complex compositional musical waters, Ana and Samo cite punk rock as the starting point of their music ventures. While Ana was busy playing bass guitar in a punk band in Ljubljana, Samo, along with his twin brother Jani, formed numerous local line-ups including the punkish Štrudls; the more acoustic Migowc and Čarangi; while eventually morphing into the experimental collective Salamandra Salamandra, which still enjoys a somewhat legendary status amongst Slovenian music aficionados.

“As a schoolboy I experienced a strange feeling of shame when listening to music, so I just didn’t. Later, when I indulged myself in music, I realized that this was because it was a very powerful medium for me,” admits Iztok, who cut his teeth in noise, metal and post rock bands such as ŠKM Banda and Hexenbrutal.

Samo and Ana first met at the improvisational music workshops, conducted by the leading Slovenian “improv-man” Tomaž Grom and Japanese improvisational percussionist Seijiro Murayama respectively. Other shared influences include classical minimalism and global musics. The couple eventually formed the kalimba-based duo Najoua.

Iztok lent an ear, liked what he heard and invited Najoua to join his band on a European tour, during which time they decided that the three of them should collaborate. But at the beginning it was not a smooth ride, as Samo recalls: “It was not easy to create music that would satisfy all three of us, but that’s kind of crucial, since it is this intersection of different personalities that created Širom. It is through conflict that new ideas emerge.”

The band’s emergent sound oscillates between a wide array of acoustic folk sounds and contemporary post rock meditations, often drifting from improvisation to structured composition and then back. It is described by the members themselves as imaginary folk or folk from a parallel universe. “Our music creates emotional landscapes. When I was still painting every day (Ana holds a degree in painting) I was trying to paint my dreams but that didn’t work out,” Ana remembers. “I discovered that by using an abstract image I can draw nearer to what I felt in my dreams. Our music is based on a similar principle.”

According to Samo, the guiding concepts of their music-making are: “To play on acoustic instruments, to work with repetition and a common sound. Each of us can play a simple thing, but the overall result is that a complex thing comes to life. The quality of sound depends on the combination of the instruments and that’s why we modify and prepare instruments or create our own.”

As an avid sound-seeker, Samo began to develop an interest in building instruments out of everyday objects like drawers, computer boxes and other “junk” (as he lovingly calls his creations) as well as re-tooling the ones he brought back from his globetrotting adventures that have included personal encounters with local musicians in India, Morocco, Mali, Greece and elsewhere.

Ana, who also nurtures a very personal relationship with music paraphernalia, adds: “There is a different attitude at play if you make an instrument yourself. It already tells you a story. If you buy it, it takes longer to get to know it, to tame it.”

In the little village of Lesno Brdo, tucked in the rolling hills ten kilometers south of Ljubljana, Ana and Samo organize music performances and festivals on a farm they rent, and divide their time between music making and vegetable farming. A close connection with nature is also important to Iztok who now resides in the capital city. “It’s a sort of a contact with the past but it also has its own life in the present.”

Fearlessly textured sonic landscapes – both linked to and unbound by – the past and present, geography and tradition, the real and imagined. Hypnotic, otherworldly and epic.

Širom’s music moves like the restless waters of their homeland. No matter how hushed or slow it may seem, it is never ever standing still.

Širom are:
Iztok Koren – banjo, three string banjo, bass drum, percussion, chimes, balafon, various objects
Ana Kravanja – violin, viola, ribab, cünbüs, balafon, ngoma drum, mizmar, various objects, voice
Samo Kutin – lyre, balafon, one string bass, frame drums, brač, gongoma, mizmar, various objects, voice

All compositions written and arranged by Širom.
Recorded without overdubbing, Lesno Brdo, Slovenia, February 2017.

painting Marko Jakše
photo Nada Žgank
translation Gregor Zamuda
design Eva Kosel
recorded by Iztok Zupan
mixed by Chris Eckman
mastered by Gregor Zemljič

siromband.si
sirom.band@gmail.com