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Mirna Bogdanovic: Confrontation
ByBogdanović's project begins as an electronic opium dream entitled, appropriately, "Melancholia." It is an anxious mashup of electronics, loops and synthesizers over a plaintive piano. Resolution is slow, evolving into a polyrhythmic dual between piano and bass, a prelude to the vocals. The product approximates something like if Peter Townsend was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing Tommy / Kublai Khan in the twenty-second century following a fever dream. It is a euphoric assault on the senses; intoxicating and nervously introspective. "June" emerges as a driven elemental rhythmic figure over which Bogdanović vocally dances with Wanja Slavin's saxophone, colliding with Povel Widestrand's multilevel keyboards, all driven by bassist Felix Henkelhausen and drummer Fabian Rösch .
Music defying description is exactly that. Bogdanović creates a tactile landscape with hard ridges and soft valleys, cloaked in a fog of scintillation. This music shimmers, multichromatic. She does this with layered voices barely covering a transformative quintet, creating alternate paradigms and universes. "Cold Lake" recalls deeply the tintinnabuli of Arvo Part, performed at eleven on a scale of ten. Multilayered and chaos complex, the piece represents a digital chorale. The single non-Bogdanović composition is Jaco Pastorius' "Rain." Undulating, the singer presents this as straight contemporary jazz pushing the stylistic envelope into the voice-heavy title piece (think the Andrews Sisters singing from the deck of the USS Enterprise). Confrontation is a drug...a potent one, but one safe for frequent consumption. This is art that asks, "What if?"
Track Listing
Melancholia; June; Never Believed; Cold Lake; July; Rain; Confrontation; Patterns; Changes; Knowing Nothing.
Personnel
Mirna Bogdanovic
vocalsWanja Slavin
saxophonePauline Peek
vocalsDora Osterloh
vocalsPovel Widestrand
pianoArne Braun
guitar, electricFelix Henkelhausen
bassFabian Rösch
drumsAlbum information
Title: Confrontation | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: Klaeng Records
Comments
About Mirna Bogdanovic
Instrument: Vocals
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