There aren’t any good music venues in Podgorica, and it’s such a small city that there isn’t really a viable audience for much music at all. However that doesn’t stop a few enthusiastic promoters from trying their luck and bringing interesting acts to town (frequently from Belgrade, which is the cultural hub for Montenegro as well as Serbia). Last night OpenSound took over Caffe Berlin for a concert by Ivan Čkonjević, a Belgrade-based guitarist, which meant a drive up from the coast in pouring rain and mountain blackness.
Čkonjević has a familiar technique if you’re into experimental music – the guitar is sawed at with bows and metal, rather than picked with fingers, then processed via various boxes into layers of sound, which are built up over extended time periods. Despite his youth1 he generates real atmosphere in each 20-minute piece, framed by video projections on a small screen. In somewhere as small as Caffe Berlin it’s an intense experience (especially if you’re standing right next to the speaker, as I was), and it’s probably the best place to hear this kind of music.
Apart from the front line of listeners, most of the people in the bar were treating this as just another night out, so there was a constant background hum of conversation. It enhanced rather than undermined the experience, as if the music was being projected onto a screen of murmured words. Although this is the sort of music that you actually have to listen to if you want to get anything out of it, the background noise played nicely against the guitar drones that Čkonjević deals in, as if the guitar was part of the conversation. There were no fireworks, but it was a most excellent set that built and built and built until you couldn’t be sure if he was playing anything or just digging deeper into the sounds that were already rattling around the room.
You can find Ivan at Myspace and Last.fm and – bonanza! – download his new album Plavi bicikl pod oblacima rdje2 at Noecho records. The MP3 is available for free, although you can make a donation by PayPal if you’re so inclined – and please do, as this is about the only way I can see a way forward for the music industry – direct payments to artists and labels. Support the New Balkan Noise!
- Or perhaps you’re starting to get old when experimental musicians start looking young [↩]
- “Blue bicycle under the cloud of rust” if you’re interested, although I’m not entirely sure that’s an accurate translation… [↩]
Tags: Ivan Čkonjević