01. Ljolo (03:20)
02. Questions (04:5)
03. Facci Sognare (03:53)
04. Zlatko (03:44)
05. Prepih (04:19)
06. Gesualdo (05:14)
07. Minus (03:59)
08. Prepad (03:42)
09. Brzice (04:35)
10. Kaneda (04:22)

An irresistible splurge of sax, krautrock grooves and heavy modular doom that should excite fans of Bent Arcana, Holden/Zimpel and The Comet is Coming.” — Uncut

“Blend of disobedient free jazz with krautrock” — Louder Than War

Kimatika, the 3rd album by the Slovenian audio-visual trio Etceteral, is a visceral plunge into the raw undercurrents of futuristic jazz, motoric propulsion, free improv and elastic compositions.

A growling baritone sax weaves through pulsating electronics and restless drums; the bass frequencies dense and cavernous. It is an arresting and thick tapestry of texture and tension, where noise and polyrhythms collide with urgent, melodic riffs.
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You’ve been around the block a bit, but not much gets you excited these days. There’s the dusty box of Warp’s finest up in the loft, and the free jazz CDs you’ve accumulated in your middle years standing idle in the kitchen, so where is it all going? The good times seem to be receding further into the past with nothing new to replace them. So far, so 2020s. Sometimes, oftentimes, you prefer silence. Perhaps now’s the time to take that long-promised trip to Slovenia. Green, peaceful (but occasionally combative), and home to one of Europe’s most intriguing musical experiments.

Over the last half-decade, Etceteral (Boštjan Simon on baritone sax and electronics, Marek Fakuč on drums, Lina Rica on visuals) have been busy staking out a space that lies somewhat on the edge of Slovenia’s prevailing musical landscape. Jazz for the jazz heads, sure, and more than enough for lovers of baritone sax groove, but listeners whose interests run primarily to the electronic will immediately recognise one of theirs. Like tak:til’s other Slovenian act, they move easily between composition, improvisation and in-studio interaction; unlike Širom, they are a strongly urban proposition, their clatter and ring the sound of traffic, space travel and the last thing you hear on a bleary Sunday morning in Berlin. Not for them the analogue purism of the country’s legions of jazz musicians either. Etceteral are very much their own thing.

Rhizome, the band’s second album (and first for tak:til), was released in late 2022 – and hit hard. A tour de force of futuristic jazz, motoric propulsion, free improv and (frankly) techno, it starts by placing Boštjan’s sax to the fore, all melody but with clear nods to Sun Ra’s cosmic preoccupations (most notably in the aptly named “Uy Scuti Space”), veers into more recognisable European jazz territory with “Brasshopper”, which showcases the band’s enduring mastery of pace and colour, then sets the whole thing alight with “Rome Burns”, a track of such pure techno energy that it suddenly vaults the whole enterprise somewhere else. If you didn’t get the memo about this superb record (2022 was a busy year after all), contact the Glitterbeat office. They will be glad to set you right.

It might have acted as the template for the new one, but you get the impression that Etceteral aren’t much interested in templates. Kimatika continues the quest upwards, but, as Boštjan points out, “the main focus this time [was] on composition, not so much on improvising and interaction. The pieces feature a lot of rhythm machines and prerecorded sequences, that we play with and against. The sax, foggy sometimes, like a vocal on some shoegaze records, was a choice in the mix.” For sure, the sax emerges rather than leads on much of the record, further loosening the ties that bind the band to jazz, although the writing process still involved staking out the ground by “trying to find workable riffs using drums and sax only.” After that the band built a structure around those riffs before recording live in a real studio for the first time.

The emphasis on composition rather than improvisation (“Me and Marek were less free to meander around”, as Boštjan winningly puts it) has yielded a record with even more layers and textures than Rhizome, but one on which clarity is not sacrificed for a moment. This ability to create immediacy from complexity is perhaps what sets Etceteral apart from their like-minded peers, aided by production work that remains as clear-sighted as it was on the previous record. But there’s another, more crucial factor at work here: the band’s determination to make something that is as fun to listen to as it obviously was to make. There’s a hilarity that runs through it from the off, with the electro squelch of opener “Ljolo” suggestive of a 70s US cop show (the 2070s, that is), and continuing with “Questions”, where Bostjan’s widescreen jazz talents make their first appearance, albeit buried slightly deeper than previously.

The first handful of tracks are urgent, frenetic even, but never too much, and as the landscapes widen, giving visual artist and crucial third member Lina more than enough to work with, the record loosens up. Hilarity intact, it lands for four glorious minutes at “Prepih”, Etceteral’s new seminal track, which introduces the funk that converses with Warpian bleep for the rest of the record. By the time album closer “Kaneda” comes around, you’ll be up and dancing; then you’ll flip it over and start again, to find out precisely how they’ve managed to pull off another great album so recognisably them yet so radically different.

Unless you’re lucky enough to catch them in Ljubljana or perhaps Berlin, in full effect with Lina’s visuals and a frankly astonishing drummer who’s even better live than he is on tape, this record is your best bet. But you could just hop on a plane and find out why this tiny country keeps producing underground sounds that are the equal of any on the planet. It’s time to make new memories, and leave the past where it belongs. 

01. Meadow Sage (04:48)
02. Gologlavka (03:34)
03. UY Scuti (02:32)
04. Brasshopper (05:13)
05. Rome Burns (05:10)
06. 95959595 (04:08)
07. Dunno (04:19)
08. Ton 618 (03:21)
09. Ave (04:05)
10. Idler Idol (04:28)

Etceteral are a Slovenian experimental trio (saxophone & electronics, drums, visuals) who create a propulsive, polyrhythmic futurist jazz. It is a sound marked by abstract modular explorations, hypnotic drumming, ricocheted horn textures and crystalline production. 

 

Interzones between Dub, Krautrock, Afro-rhythms, free improvisation and quantized electronic music are brightly lit on this thrilling second album. 

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The idea of musical elasticity is central to Rhizome, the sophomore album of the Slovenian audio-visual electronic jazz trio Etceteral, the newest member of the Glitterbeat family, who debuted in 2020 with the album Ama Gi for Kapa Records. Following a series of domestic and international gigs, the band consisting of Boštjan Simon (saxophone, synth, electronics), Marek Fakuč (drums) and Lina Rica (visuals) returned to the studio, taking their ambition to meld audio and visuals to a whole new level on their debut for the tak:til imprint.

On Rhizome, the band explores the interzone between groove-driven contemporary jazz, quantized electronic music, abstract modular explorations and free improvisation. Like rubber that is able to stretch and be returned to its original shape, Etceteral expands its arrangements to the point of no return, pushing its sonic architecture to the maximum without ever letting it collapse onto itself. “I like to think in terms of sonic rubber bands. We can stretch our music both rhythmically and harmonically, change tonality and return to the main theme through a different key. This process opens up new space for discovery. We recently listened a lot to Joshua Abrams and Evan Parker, musicians who know how to make their music airy and spacious,” says Simon.

Given carte blanche to self-produce their second album, they centred it around the concept of rhizome – a continuously growing horizontal underground stem which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals, or in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, “a nonlinear network that connects any point to any other point”. “A rhizome can virtually take any form, choose its path on the go. Just like with our music, its representation isn’t based on an ideal form. The album is like an inquiry on where we are currently situated and where we are going,” says Simon. The sophisticated songs of Rhizome are interconnected in their structures, growing from the inside out. With its interlocking synth sequence, saxophone ornaments and hip-shaking syncopations, the opening earworm Meadow Sage sets the pace of the record, boasting an ambitious and adventurous sonic character. “While the first record reminded me of Morphine, the new one reminds me of Chick Corea,” says Rica with a grin.

New songs took shape organically through jams, the only exceptions being the intermezzo Ton 618, a nod to exploratory modular techno, and the IDM-inspired coda Idler Idol, both arranged as links between adjacent songs. “We had a list of things we wanted to do on the new album. We gradually implemented our ideas, creating a sort of puzzle,” says Simon. The interplay between synth sequences, the kick drum and saxophone represents the foundation of Etceteral’s sonic realm. Their sound palette consists of the iconic synth Dave Smith Evolver, a saxophone with a MIDI controller, sound effects and drums. “My synth offers a lot of options to play with parameters, and I also use my saxophone to control various effects, trigger envelopes and pre-programmed sequences. The same is true of Marek’s kick drum,” says Simon.

Etceteral’s idea of musicality stems from the deviations and imperfections which are a result of this loosened approach. It is not as much about default properties of certain machines as it is about what a musician can get out of them – almost like an exorcism of an imprisoned sonic demon. “If you subordinate to the machine, everything becomes too angular. We wanted to keep things open,” says Simon. There is always a more or less straightforward sequence helping Fakuč to lock into a groove without relying on a metronome. “The Polish avantgarde jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stańko explored this on his stunning album Fish Face already in 1973,” says Simon. “Our premise is the same. You have a certain sequence to which you can improvise rather freely,” he adds.

In Pygmy traditions, one of the band’s reference points, every singer or musician follows a single theme or rhythm which is then unified into polyphony or polyrhythmic patterns. “You start with a single element, and then things start to grow outwards, which is way more exciting than having static structures,” says Simon. Etceteral build their sonic architecture from inside out, never fully defining the outlines of their songs. Even though their sequences are quantized, Fakuč only rarely uses click tracks, rather opting for a more instinctive approach to electroacoustic fusionism, which results in a spontaneous flow and jazzy vibe. “People who play jazz probably wouldn’t consider it jazz, while electronic producers would probably categorise it as such,” he adds tongue in cheek.

The new visuals were designed during the recording process using three different direct audio outputs. Rica would project her visuals in the rehearsal room while Simon and Fakuč were improvising, creating a virtual space between musicians and images. “When I look at visuals, I become dizzy, looking for a potential creative loop where images influence the music making process, and vice versa,” says Simon. Rica’s visuals direct the viewer’s gaze, simulating a state of trance. “It’s about a multisensory ride through the synergy of images and sound,” says Rica, whose visual language is based on geometric and biomorphic abstraction, graphism and constructivism. “The process of animation is more complex and subtle than before, the real-time generative animations are responding to three different audio inputs (snare, synth and sax) without any latency. The visuals are more colourful now and it’s altogether more saturated and a bit more psychedelic than on our first project Ama-gi. The abstract images in motion take various associative forms open for different readings,” concludes Rica.