Dark 2020 made concerts impossible, so music lovers were left to devote themselves more to listening to albums at home. And especially in these rainy and gray days of December and January, the atmosphere is right for a new detailed listen to the works of Nikola Vranjković, one of the most important Serbian rock authors, so that the listener completely sinks into his layered compositions and forgets about today. To make things even better for the fans of the former leader of the group Block Out, Vranjković tried his best, who gave them a kind of best of for the holidays - recorded live.
It was also logical, because Vranjković's concerts are a unique experience and it was time for them to be recorded on some edition, and he could not have chosen a better moment. Now that there is no concert, fans of his music can still play the album "Biological Minimum", close their eyes and in their minds move to the rows in front of the stage where the Serbian rocker and his supporting crew create their magic.
Vranjković is known for very long concerts, at the end of which there is never enough music for the audience, so it is not unusual that the "Biological Minimum" edition was published on as many as three CDs under the Multimedia Music label, and in question is a recording of his traditional December concert. held in 2019 in the Kombank hall.
"Given that this year, for objective reasons, we are prevented from holding our traditional New Year's concert in Belgrade, let this triple album pass the time until the next concerts," said Nikola after the release of the album, on which his works were found which he released with Block Out, as well as tracks from his last solo releases "Bremeplov" and "Veronautika".
Twenty-seven songs, i.e. 198 minutes of music on "Biological Minimum", in addition to Vranjković, were played by Danilo Nikodinovski (guitar, minimoog, theremin), Milan Vučković (guitar), Ivan Mihajlović (bass guitar), Ivan Zoranović (keyboards, guitar, vocals). , Vladan Božilović (drums), Andrej Mladenović (percussion) and Ivan Petrović (acoustic guitar), and the album can be purchased through Vranjković's Facebook and Bandcamp pages, on the publisher's official website and can be listened to on all relevant digital music platforms (Spotify, Deezer , Apple Music...).
The famous Serbian rocker spoke to "Vijesti" on that occasion.
How was the idea of a live release created and implemented? Did you record more concerts or just that one, since I guess it's no coincidence that your traditional December concert was recorded, did you have any special preparations for that?
In the last few years, we have recorded almost all of our performances. There was an idea to select the best recordings and release a live album. Somewhere in the middle of April, it seemed to me that nothing would come of the big concert in December, so I listened more carefully to last year's recording of the concert from the Kombank hall and came up with the idea to mix only that concert and that in its full length of over three hours. It took a lot of time, but it paid off in the end. We didn't have any preparations for the recording for the simple reason that our whole system is tied to a lot of our equipment, so we are ready to record at any moment with a little more time for sound rehearsals.
You have a very devoted audience and on this release she was recorded with her choir singing as another member of the band, which somehow is at every one of your concerts, which adds a special emotion to the recordings. Was that also your motivation when working on this edition, did you think about it at all and does it mean anything to you that it was also recorded?
Those are perhaps the most precious moments from the concerts. Many of those songs that people sing in chorus have probably never been played on any radio or television. It is a great recognition and tells me clearly that everything I have done in the last thirty years has not been in vain. I didn't think about it, nor is there any special moment when I ask people to sing in a choir or, God forbid, raise their hands and the like. These are spontaneous things and that's why I like them even more. They used to happen before, mostly on songs like "Two thousand and a half years" or "Tezak casel pakla", and now it happens in almost every song with a medium or slower tempo, from "Meeting" to "Two Words" and yes I'm not enumerating. It's a nice feeling indeed. We all feel proud in the band.
You rarely sang in Block Out, now I assume it's natural for you, but did you initially think about hiring someone else to sing and how did it feel when you took over the singing, did those songs somehow become even more yours in the performance meaning?
It honestly seemed to me that I sang too much in Block Out at that time. I sang on the albums "8 i 30", "I don't want to leave", "Inaccessible fields", "Monastery", "Vertical view", "Armature", "Hell's hard case", "If you have with whom and where ", "The day that never came", "Sink", "Andrej" and not to mention. It was never a problem for me in the studio. Live is already more complicated with the amount of things I would have to play and push on the pedals while singing and playing at the same time. That's why today, when I sing, Milan Vučković often takes over to play some difficult phrases, because I can't look at the guitar and adjust my hand. In any case, we have solved those problems in a satisfactory way.
In the last seven years, I haven't thought about another lead vocalist, because even when I have any kind of problem, Kiza Zoranović comes to my aid, who also knows my lyrics better than I do, not to mention singing. Kiza is also a prompter and a conductor and a center half and middle midfielder, in addition to playing and singing backing vocals in our band. It's true that some songs, especially those that I rarely or almost never performed live with Block Out, got some new energy. Maybe it's simply a matter of honesty, because it's really easier for the person who wrote the lyrics to sing the lyrics.
You released a live album right now in the period when there are no concerts, is there any symbolism there, is it intentional?
It was simply my idea that if there was no longer a traditional December concert in Belgrade, to which people from all over the world regularly came, we should still enable the audience to somehow share with us the standard three, three and a half hours of mutual enjoyment in December. . The album was a little late and came out at the last minute, I scheduled it for the first of December, but we didn't manage to finish everything in the agreed time. We realistically didn't know until the end of November whether there would be a concert or not, because things changed from day to day, and the simplest information about the health situation in the country seemed occasionally to be intercepted and corrected by the counter-intelligence service of an enemy country. We were literally served with semi-information, so we didn't even wait for that official announcement about banning concerts, but we decided to stop thinking about that topic this year and it was honestly easier for us.
How did all this with corona affect your work, everyday life, psyche? Are you working on new study material?
This has been going on for a long time. Sometimes it throws you into depression, nervousness and bad mood, and sometimes it forces you to work. I worked whenever I felt I had the strength to finish something at least halfway - either as a text or as music. I felt for the first time in my life that I didn't have the strength for some things. That is perhaps the most dangerous. I used to manage to force myself to work, even the most nonsensical sketch of a new song, just to feel that I wasn't completely numb. And luckily I didn't. (laughs) I'm not quite. I have already done a few new songs and I am very satisfied.
What is the biological minimum from the title, are our lives reduced to that?
I sincerely hope they haven't come down to it yet, but I fear we are rapidly heading towards it. We go as if we don't care that something like that happens. It's as if we're waiting for someone else to fall from Mars and say to us: "Hello, citizens, do you really not notice what the air you breathe is like, or do you expect someone else to free the poor, beautiful mountain streams from concrete monsters and pipes that like they make electricity". I live in Zrenjanin and I often feel like opening the window and screaming in anger when I turn on the water from the tap. But in that city, no one ever seriously rebelled because several hundred thousand euros are spent every month on buying bottled water, nor did it occur to anyone who should be dealing with it that there is a cistern with drinking water in the center of the city from which people would could pour drinking water into their buckets for free or at a symbolic price.
"Biological minimum" is a phrase that has often appeared in the media in recent years when it comes to minihydro power plants. That is the permissible level of water that the power plant must leave in the river so that the river can at least continue to live as a zombie or as someone with 90 percent disability. These are such terrible things that it is unimaginable to me that someone who is involved in politics anywhere in the world and fights for the development of his country can support the construction of those facilities. There are excuses when it is clear even to small children that it is a crime against the living world in that river and all around that river. It's all very painful and sad at the same time. If someone tries to give you a counter argument in this case, it is best to smile and leave the room. Everything is clear there. And all that I have listed will be some of the minor problems towards those that will really come if we do not wise up and begin to understand what our priorities as human beings really are. I'm a pessimist, but that doesn't stop me from hoping.
Some songs in which you describe social circumstances are still just as current in that sense, as if nothing had changed, which could also be said for some of your statements. As countries on the periphery of global capital flows, can we even hope for anything better? Or maybe the problem is not in global systems, but in us, because you once said that, for example, the problem is not in the EU?
We are certainly partially responsible for the creation and maintenance of such a system, and if many people really did not like it, they would probably change something. Currently, work is being done rapidly to create a superficial, uninterested man for whom every illness, death and accident is just another headline in the newspaper. Those with a little deeper feelings still feel anguish and sadness when they read something like that, but they also quickly turn to the next page of the newspaper. Sometimes it seems to me that it is completely unnecessary to write down and document various events and the feelings that go along with them, and sometimes it may be the duty of everyone who has a talent for such things. It's not too much of a problem or a shame to be somewhere in the minority, and the question is whether you even have the right to insult that majority in any way because you think that you are relatively normal or educated, and they are not, but the problem is still obvious when you look back and remember some of the old times and their heroes who were not disputed by the minority or the majority... Cunet Gojković, Oliver Dragojević, Arsen Dedić, or Džonij Štulić and Vlada Divljan...
Not to list now until the day after tomorrow. I am not sure that people in those old days would have ever known about these artists and their wonderful works if they had not been represented in the media on television, radio and in the press. How do we even think of reaching new Bajag, Rundek, Balašević or Darkwood dub and Goblin if such new artists are not given even a shred of media space. The answer is simple: someone does not want such artists to appear again, because such people, by their very appearance and interpretation, make people start thinking about normal, ordinary human needs and things. Stories about how the market dictates everything are nonsense because then tomorrow we can easily introduce porn magazines into schools instead of physics, mathematics, art and music textbooks... In our country, when someone says EU, they mean Germany and France, not Bulgaria and Romania, just like when they say Zvezda, people think of the football club, not the water polo or athletics club Red Star. That's strange.
You once stated that there are artists who helped you to survive and bring some important roles in life, apart from I assume the mentioned Tarkovsky, who else had a decisive influence on you?
In one period it was Roger Waters, Jimmy Page and Tommy Iommi, in another it was Joe Strummer and Mike Jones, or Ian Curtis, Victor Tzoi or Michael Gira.
Vain, powerful people suppress what they do not understand
Earlier, when we talked, you said that rock is actually folk music, but that it cannot reach the people because, in short, of the cultural inquisition that creates little monsters through TV, and that has been the case since the 90s until today. Who do you think is behind it and what is the goal, is rock 'n' roll the main target of that inquisition (why?) or did it just get killed along the way? It would also be said that abroad (outside ex Yu area) it is not much different, do you agree?
I would say that somewhere abroad it is much different, and somewhere even worse than here, if it is even possible for it to be worse. I have no idea. It is possible that there are simply untalented, vain, powerful people who, out of fear of not understanding someone's message, decide to focus their powers on removing or at least suppressing something very valuable that they cannot approach from any side. And it is possible that something is happening that I I don't understand because I'm an old man, and it's quite natural and in accordance with the times in which we live. It seems to me that right now the most important thing is that we manage to survive.
Bruegel on the cover, Tarkovsky in the poems
The cover of the new album reminds of "Hunters in the Snow" by Pieter Brueghel, does it have anything to do with the fact that this image is also present in Tarkovsky's film "Mirror", an author you know you particularly like?
That with the cover happened very spontaneously. Marko Prokić, the designer who did the cover, already had a finished cover made mostly from photos from the Kombank hall concert taken by Nemanja Đorđević, when my friend Miroslav Majkić - Gos'n Bandar posted a new picture on his Facebook page. I looked at that picture for a long time, because no other picture has ever told me so many things at the same time as this one at first glance. I saw a hundred things in a few seconds, including Brueghel's painting. I called Prokić to go and look at the picture on Bandar's page. When he looked, he said to me: "It's obviously just being set up for you. This must be the cover image on your album". We still have to ask Bandar if he is willing to allow us such a thing. Bandar was very surprised and did not hide his delight at all. Thus ends the story of the cover image.
Speaking of which, apart from "Andrej", is there any other song that Tarkovsky influenced, which is why you love him so much? In his works, as with many other Russian greats, you can feel that "Russian soul", do you think that we as Slavs can feel it and understand these works more than Westerners?
It exists in "Armchair", in "For Life or Destiny" and in a few other songs. In particular, I have always been fascinated by the pace at which the stories in his films unfold. Uphills, downhills, flat sections, and then some sudden holes that you can't jump over. I often tried to make the first encounter with my imagined song in my head a completely relaxed, floating feeling, to try to hear what else it can offer outside of music and lyrics, if I make it well and record it. Various scenes from his films often helped me in this, and I know almost all of them by heart.
I think that works like "Sacrifice", "Stalker" or "Andrei Rublev" can be equally felt and understood by everyone on the planet. And as for the West, every third person has a Slavic surname. We as Slavs feel that Russian soul more and it is felt more in Dostoyevsky. This is about something else. Tarkovsky seems to have always tried to convey to us what remains behind the truth, behind justice, behind fear, behind love, behind hope... It is paradoxical that today, when technical possibilities have been brought to perfection, this is simply no longer possible.
Bonus video:
