Looks like this made at least a few best of 2017 lists. And mine.
Zeitkratzer, Svetlana Spajić / Dragana Tomić / Obrad Milić – Serbian War Songs
When Zeitkratzer are greater than the sum of their parts they are capable of some racket. We're talking Biota/Mnemonist grade cacophony, augmented here by traditional Serbian songcraft. Some serious racket. But serious music, too. Even without the subject matter, which one mocks at grave peril, descriptors like "monumental" and "tour de force" squeeze out the edge of hyperbole, noise sphincter fairly trembling in baited trepidation.
Traditional Serbian songcraft, if I am any judge, delivered in principle by twin female vocal, strident, dominant, domineering, harmonizing in deep, throaty, dissonance over veritable gaggle of Zeitkratz operandi: bassclarinet, french horn, piano, percussion, violoncello, doublebass, etc. Lots of straight up classical instrumentation, smothered by someone's mother, or two of 'em, and hot diddly can these women dish. What the voices lend is what voices tend to lend: drama, excitement, palpitations, intimacy, touchy-feely sensual lubricity, and some good ol' down home flesh, and blood. Lots of blood. Sound the war drums.
The first twelve seconds are deceptive, sounding very much like intensely ripping free-jazz assault, high velocity jumble of bass-string-percussion-horn filling out out the field. And the voices commence. To sing. Or chant. Or declaim. Or whatever the hell they call it. Thirty seconds and the instruments drop out completely, cowering under the soaring vocal range, then to blast back, at the one minute mark, with notably heightened intensity, voices surging, tremelo-ing, the cacophony threatening first encounter with Biota-ic critical mass. Dialog of a cappella songchant against piles of Zeitkrazed cappella, flipping for a couple turns before the voices breathe their last at 2:43, end track 1.
The second track clocks in at just over a minute, slowly percussed ding hammered over faintly squealing winds and still more distant growls, fleshed out with the authoritative vocal insistence of "Haven't I told you my darling"? The tone is somber, if muscular, voices lapping and lolling over one another, persuasive, little doubt darling was told. At somber insistence, steady death knell is meted out for darling, setting up the thirteen minute center-piece "Assassination in Sarajevo". Here, all hell (aka World War I) breaks loose. A lone male vocal warbles and moans in storyteller mode over traditional Serbian instrumentation, stringed drone meeting winded squeal, slowly built into rich, deep-throated cluster of labored flatulence, darkly glottal gut-churn, edges acquiring industrial flavors, metal percussions, hammerings, metallic screech-scrape, the vocal all but subsumed under dense cacophonous mass.
Maybe I'm a sucker for artistic intent but the more dramatic pieces do seem those titled accordingly. "The battle at Mackov kamen" thunders in a rain of hefty tribal percussion, rhythmical chants fighting short-winded drone elements, bells and whistles screeching in time. "King Peter Song" is a dark orchestral processional, dredging up reverberant darkened bottoms, cumbersome clusters of acoustic racket, drawn out incantations coming in waves of buzzing, dirge-like, tootle-throb, heads bowed under sound pressures little given to relent. "Salute to Zivojin Misic" reprises the dialog of soaring-voice / instrumental-cacophony, but brings to bear a whole honking kitchen sink, massed and pummeling densities filling the field to capacity, the wake of each outburst of raging clamor a shambolic dis-connection of flap, flop, and shuffle.
If the remaining titles seem less drama prone, there's still plenty to get the blood pumping. "When I go to war"- full-throated dual-harmonized lament laced with lush strings and winds, warm-bloodied droning fleshbed surging in thrall to slowly ascendant ritual flavors. In "Shvabo came" skittering sticks chase weirdly dis-balanced folkish vocals, low-pitched bass gruntings lending an almost sickened texture to faintly plucked plinkety-scrap. "There is no spring without water" is pure oddity of percussive bloop-scuttle, dinky machine-like bink-bonk kerfuffle smothered by colossal voices hovering closely overhead. And as "The boat is sailing" the voices are intoning, with impassioned, plaintive, chanting declamation, strings slow in their scraping swirl of bellow and down-pitched grind, miniature mounds of steel drums coming in rolling waves, heaving stomach-churning rhythm readying the crew for imminent heave-ho.
And all throughout, throughout the unsettled heaving shebang, not infrequent bouts of chaotic skronk n scrabble rip apart the rare moments for sedate repose, wild multi-pronged wig-out scat-scuffle ever tempting free fall into massed cluster-fuck free-for all. Through it all, stern faced voices keep the multitudinous minstrels in line, unforgiving, commanding, demanding, whipping able bodies into ecstatic paroxysms of arduous frenzy, stroking the poor abused souls with sweet sultry deep-voiced caress. Love me tender, hurt me true, never let me go, to war. Not without a song.
