MENT in Ljubljana turns out to be a festival of contrasts – from ascetic, almost mystical concerts in chapels to the club chaos of electronic music – which, with extraordinary sensitivity, intertwines the contemporary experimental scene with the memory and tradition of Central and Eastern Europe.
Juli Deák breathes. She breathes slowly, evenly, in long, sometimes monotonous phrases. And we breathe with her. The difference is that she blows air into a transverse flute. Looped (just by herself, no electronics), circular lines create a minimalist shell that draws you into the vortex of her story. The sound system is minimal – just two microphones attached to the instrument and the sound resonating in a small chapel (built in 1489 but remodelled in the Baroque style in 1747). The repetition resonates endlessly, carrying through the interior. It reminds me of Colin Stetson at Igreja de St. George in Lisbon or La Bertucci at Silo City in Buffalo. But Juli Deák does not have the reverberation of a large hall or additional microphones at her disposal. There are moments when she draws an additional voice from the depths of her lungs, creating a mad polyphony, a bass undertone. Minimalist, looped phrases flow across the surface, and we listen intently to the successive pieces. There is a certain despair and elation in this. I am sitting a few metres away from her – she moves within a metre, bending down and lifting up with her flute, as if to make it resonate more strongly. Everyone listens intently. A sparse sound, one instrument, no unnecessary effects.
A moment earlier, I listened to Valentina Magaletti. Over the past year, I have seen her several times – with Moin, with Holy Tongue, with Hani Rani’s elaborate arrangements, and twice as many times in various projects on albums. This time, she is playing a special concert at MENT, and I think to myself: how else can solo percussion surprise me? From the very first minutes, however, it is clear that – as she said earlier in an interview conducted by Lucia Udvardyova – she likes to surprise herself. The transition from Juli Deák’s flute performance to Megaletti’s explorative percussion sets a completely different tone for the evening. So she starts by playing on the stage floor (it reminds me of Han Bennink at the Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf). Valentina hits the floor with a stick and a small cymbal, uses a microphone that picks up the reverberation, and the sound system carries it around the room. Later, she reaches for bells, a vibraphone, and finally sits down at the drums. Her musical ritual is a kind of exploration of percussion instruments. Focused, measured, contemplating the instrument. Megaletti does not try to tame it; rather, she seems to want to dialogue with it.
The sound also carries when Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko sings songs from the album “Гільдеґарда ” (Hildegard). It begins with silence in the huge Šiška Cinema Hall (unfortunately interrupted by bass beats during the soundcheck in the lower Cathedral Hall), and the tension gradually builds. Together with Heinali, they change the order of the songs on the album – their music evolves, as do the gradual synthesiser bands – and Saienko’s vocals in “O Tu Suavissima Virga” build. It begins with silence, which builds in tension until the second track appears – the ecstatically unfolding “O Ignis Spiritus”, in which Saienko practically screams in the finale, and the sound of the buzzing synthesiser transforms into a polyphonic-sounding organ. The air at Kino Šiška is filled with a dense, synthesiser wave of sound, a journey through space and time – contemporary and archaic at once – that calls for remembrance.
“We are skipping a very valuable piece because we are pressed for time, but let’s not skip the memories,” says singer Svitlana Spajić at one point in Stara mestna elektrarna. Together with the band Gordan, she performs mystical Balkan songs, sounding like a prophetess who either enchants or curses the audience. And we listen, spellbound, to her extraordinary vocals against the backdrop of Andreas Stecher’s steady, trance-like percussion and Guido Möbius’ bass phrases, full of distortion. We are on a contemporary journey into the Balkans – trance-like, a little industrial, a little like an underground club, and a little like a contemporary guitar-electronic troupe leading us. One that remembers and reminds us with its music.
Later, Irena Tomažin plays with her trio in the same chapel as Juli Deák. When she sings in English, she sounds more bluesy, and the effects created on the prepared hurdy-gurdy by Samo Kutin, known from Širom, add a strange, unique background to her compositions. When Tomažin switches to Slovenian, the sound changes completely – it takes on a mystical quality, and I feel that she is more present. We move from blues landscapes to Slavic forests and the Balkans. Dunjaluk also takes us to the Balkans – a duo of guitar and voice performing sevdah songs, mournful melodies. Guitarist Luka Čapeta brings to mind Rafał Rogiński – the way he arranges songs so starkly – and his poignant, electrified melodies blend perfectly with Dunja Bahtijarević’s voice. Dominik Prok also plays the guitar, but an acoustic one, and in a completely different way – freak folk, songwriter style, he carries it around the chapel, and gives the impression of playing with sound, songs, how we perceive them, and at the same time he brings directness and sincerity to it, singing the verses at the top of his voice.
Attending MENT – it’s my second time – is largely about walking. Kino Šiška – Stara mestna elektrarna – Metelkova – Zamek, manoeuvring between locations, crossing the centre widthwise or along the Ljubljanica River. One day at the cinema, between concerts, I met Chris Eckman, founder of Glitterbeat Records, which is based in this city. We knew each other before, but now we finally met face to face. Ljubljana is a great place to meet people. The showcase format doesn’t kill the vibe here – it’s closer to a house party than nervous networking. Even if you don’t plan to talk to anyone, sooner or later it will happen. I talk to Eckman about walking. Ljubljana is perfect for that. He recommends Tivoli – neither a forest nor a park, towering over the city. The park, because it is in the middle of the city, seems to be absorbed by it; the forest, because it is vast, and when I walk through its nooks and crannies on a festival Saturday, I feel like I am in the mountains. The pubs look like mountain huts.
Another day, I met Iztok Koren from Širom, with whom, paradoxically, we don’t talk about music, but about urban wanderings, and he recommends cycling around the Slovenian capital. Ljubljana has something of a health spa and mountain resort about it. It’s an amazing sight when, at the end of Cankarjeva Street, I see the towering International Centre for Graphic Arts among the trees. Or when I pass Vurnik’s house on Miklošičeva Street and see the panorama of the Kamnik Alps stretching far away on the horizon between the buildings.
Bands also show their strength at MENT – the aforementioned Holy Tongue focuses on trance. The bass pulsation and spatial electronics take the lead, to which Megaletti adds all kinds of percussion instruments. Again, she does it in an unconventional way, not only responsible for the rhythm, but also for musical ornaments, filling the space with the sound of his instrument.
The Czech group Ida The Young plays at the Gromka club – the most classic rock band among those I see at this year’s MENT. A bit of shoegaze, a bit of folk, guitars create dreamlike walls of sound and trance-like songs, through which Iris Hobson-Mazur guides us. I had already forgotten about places where you can only pay in cash, but here, in the punk cradle of the city – a former garrison where clubs were established, surrounded by abstract installations – there is no escape. I order a burger, and Philip, who came here from Vienna especially for the festival, saves me with cash.
Each location is a different city: stately in the palace, more modern in Stara mestna elektrarna, punk in Metelkova. This results in some striking combinations – such as a concert by Anatolian blues-rock band Meral Polat in the nearby Gala Hala, which I manage to get into before a queue forms at the entrance.
The Irish sextet Madra Salach, whose inspirations include Lankum, John Francis Flynn, and Lisa O’Neill, also fits in well with this city at night and its unpredictability. They sing both other people’s songs and their own – the latter coming across strongest. The dark harmonies blend well with Paul Banks’s guitars and vocals, whose manner reminds me of Grian Chatten from Fontaines DC. The Irish band has just released its debut EP, yet it has an extraordinary stage presence. Sujevera also catches the eye – dense, electronic noise with an electric harp in the foreground, played by Urška Preis. It’s hard to find a melody here – it’s more of a spacious, sonic backdrop, a narrative musical spectre that draws you in.
The chaos culminates in Aya’s concert on the festival’s last day. She creates a kind of sonic rubbish dump – an attack on the ruins. The stage is covered with foil, which she walks on, looking at the spotlights hanging from the ceiling, as if looking for a way out of the story recorded on the Hexed album – a story of struggling with addiction, building identity, and confronting oneself, expressed through chaotic and raw sounds. Club destruction, attack, frenzied dancing.
There’s a lot of variety here, I think, when I compare this sonic, club apocalypse with Milan W’s subtle concert – poignant, slowcore and lyrical songs in avant-pop form, with a trance rhythm and synthetic beats in the background, drawing you in endlessly.
I think it is full of contrasts, but it is not a superficially created showcase of proposals collected by Music Export Offices, as Bob Van Heur, creator of the Le Guess Who? festival, noted during a panel discussion one day. The festival in Ljubljana has its own curatorial concept – both in the panel and concert sections – which is why it is becoming increasingly prominent on the European map. Its programme is designed with locality and context in mind. In one of his speeches, Miloš Hroch discusses the hegemony of Anglo-Saxon music and how streaming giants perceive the Central European market. Spotify divides the continent’s music markets into scaled, emerging and major markets. Central and Eastern Europe most often falls into the first category. I feel that the Ljubljana festival is gradually changing this perception of the region. Perhaps not in the mainstream, but in the way many people think about Europe. Or maybe it is creating a completely new centre – with a different perspective. Isn’t how it was MENT to be?
