As I’ve recently exhumed the musical archives of the two bands I worked with back in the 1990s, Ground Zero and Juice Connection (described in more detail here and here, respectively), I decided to also come up with a short “retrospective” of the band we founded at the beginning of the 2000s, SUR.

The group SUR started to take shape at the end of 2001, when Stojan Kralj and I were writing music for the dance theatre performance Lust by Sebastjan Starič:

Together with lyricist, dramatist, theatre actor and former Ground Zero vocalist Marko Djukić we got an idea for a more “poppy”, “trip-hoppy” project with (preferably) a female vocalist. The idea gradually came to life. As it soon turned out that the collaboration between lyricist Djukić and the first vocalist, Urška Samec, would unavoidably be severely impeded due to insurmountable creative differences, Neža Trobec joined the band and we started tinkering away. Initially, SUR was exclusively a studio project with a few full members and several guest musicians. The material was recorded in our home studio, and in May 2004 we self-published our first (and quite successful, relatively speaking) album, entitled “Na jug” (Southbound):

In 2005 we started working on our second album, “Druga stran” (The Other Side), which was released in July 2007:

Both of these albums also saw the light of day in a “tangible” form, as CDs.

In 2009 we released a digital EP called “Kadar mesto spi” (When the City Sleeps):

This was in fact an “unintended” release, motivated by a successful prank we’d miraculously managed to pull: thanks to a bizarre twist of events, the track “Prav ti” from this album had appeared at the 2008 Slovenian Eurovision Song Contest – quite unsuccessfully, of course, in terms of votes… But qualifying for this type of contest with a song written in a relatively complex time signature (verse in 6/8 and chorus in 2 x 10/8 + 8/8 + 2 x 6/8) must be a special achievement in itself. The track was obviously an experiment in the “peculiar pop song format” that we found extremely entertaining… And, to our surprise, the shenanigan worked unusually well.

After our first album had been released, we adapted most of the material for live performances and performed at quite a few concerts. Ultimately we also released a collection of live material, played in Kreatorij DIC in Ljubljana in 2005. Most of the tracks on this album, called “aLiVE in 2005“, are live versions of the material released on the 2004 album “Na jug“. Jure Praper’s instrumental composition “Eqsqueezeme” has never been released anywhere else, and this is its only recording in existence. The studio version of the live track “Ples vampirjev” later appeared on the 2007 “physical” release “Druga stran“. At that time the band lineup was as follows: Neža Trobec – vocals; Monika Fritz – backing vocals; Jure Praper – guitar; Gregor Karer – bass guitar; Martin Smerdel – keyboards; Andrej Hrvatin – percussion; and myself on drums:

Live performances have not become our main focus, though, mostly due to impossible logistics involved in rehearsals (the band members were from all over Slovenia), as well as because of everyone’s neverending work on other projects. Thus most of our efforts remained confined to the studio, where we also kept writing original soundtracks for audiovisual works. During its active period, SUR signed soundtracks for fourteen theatre performances (2002 – Sebastjan Starič: Lust; 2003 – Borut Bučinel: Who Draws Me; 2003 – Branko Potočan: On Our Own Land; 2003 – Nick Pickard & Gareth Boylan: Monolads; 2004 – Boris Kobal: The House of Bernarda Alba; 2004 – Sebastjan Starič: Pepperoncino; 2005 – Tomaž Štrucl: Che Guevara; 2006 – Dušan Teropšič: Dimwits; 2008 – Jure Rudolf: Where Do You Live?; 2008 – Dušan Teropšič: An Event in the City; 2008 – Borut Bučinel: Lullaby of Death; 2010 – Dušan Teropšič: The Upsidedown World; 2010 – Borut Bučinel: Shining; 2012 – Matjaž Šmalc, Aja Zamolo & Sam Sebastian: Sharlatanus Maximus), a short film (2003 – Marko Horvat: Happiness on Sale) and a computer game. Between 2008 and 2012, the SUR collective published a collection of digital releases, featuring all of its original soundtracks for theatre performances:

The Slovenian press imaginatively characterised the music of SUR as “ambiental-rock-jazz-electronica”. This may even be mostly true of our first album, though we preferred to call ourselves “alternative ambient anarchistic hippie progressive psychedelic metal-munching jazzy trip hoppy funky beer drinkers and spritzer aficionadoes”. The full-time members of the last stable live lineup of SUR were: Neža Trobec Teropšič – vocals, Monika Fritz – backing vocals and lyrics, Jure Praper – guitar, Aljaž Tulimirović – guitar, Samo Pečar – bass, and myself – drums and additional lyrics.

The guest musicians and contributors on the first two albums and frequent collaborators in the other projects of the SUR collective included: Marko Djukić – lyrics and vocals, Rok Predin (lyrics, vocals, acoustic guitar), Dušan Rebolj (lyrics, vocals, acoustic guitar), Matevž Šalehar – Hamo (vocals), Vasko Atanasovski (saxophone, flute), Stojan Kralj (bass, fretless bass, guitar), Andrej Hrvatin (percussion), Janez Vouk (trumpet), Marko Zorec (guitar), Jelena Ždrale (violin, viola), Nino de Gleria (cello) and Tomaž Štrucl (vocals and beer-fuelled battle plans).

After our last concert in Slovenj Gradec in July 2007, SUR as a live band was disbanded, as Monika and I had relocated from Ljubljana to the Slovenian coast, and keeping such an “inter-regional” band fully operational had become impossible. In late 2008 Monika and I founded our current band Cynicism Management; while SUR as a creative group that wrote original soundtracks for audiovisual works kept working until 2012. By that time this aspect of my work had been taken over by my “instrumental music & soundtracks alter ego”, Ray Kosmick (and His Porn Groove Crew).

The name SUR may mean many things, most evidently “south” in Spanish, though we liked to tell people it was actually an acronym for “samostalna ugostiteljska radnja” – “independent catering service”… Which also remains the name of the studio where I keep pondering my “masterpieces” to this day.

I’ve recently had loads of fun rummaging through the ancient Ground Zero material (cassette tape recordings of my first band from the 1990s), which I’ve then uploaded to Bandcamp so that all of us former band members could drift down the memory lane a bit. I also took the time to write a brief biography of that band and posted it here. As the whole undertaking has stirred up a lot of pleasant memories as well as a few enthusiastic responses, I kept digging and also uploaded all of the Juice Connection soundtracks, recorded between 1998 and 2002, to Bandcamp.

Juice Connection was the main creative outlet for me for a while, after the unfortunate if completely prosaic demise of Ground Zero. The yarn of Juice Connection started out back in 1998 when my former Ground Zero bandmate, Marko Djukić, invited me to write and record music for a theatre performance he would be appearing in. As it was clear to me that I lacked the necessary knowledge as well as equipment to pull this off successfully by myself, I approached a fellow musician Stojan Kralj with the idea. He agreed and became my trusted mentor and associate, most intensely so during the next few years. We formed the Juice Connection music production team with only us as its full-time members, and went on to produce – between 1998 and 2002 – original soundtracks for twelve full-length theatre performances, a couple of shorter theatre pieces and a TV show about contemporary dance theatre. Later the extended Juice Connection lineup (with myself on drums, Kralj on bass and guitar, plus Aljaž Tulimirović on guitar, Samo Pečar on the second bass and Andrej Hrvatin on percussion) also prepared an extensive setlist of live material and performed at a couple of live gigs. Unfortunately those adorably peculiar sonic excursions have never been particularly “commercially successful” (go figure), nor have they been documented – it would have been a real treat if any recordings of that musical experimentation, sound terrorism and downright jokery existed, but of course we haven’t recorded anything. No – I don’t know what we were thinking.

Be that as it may, while working on various theatre performances, Juice Connection has collaborated with a diverse assortment of guest musicians, depending on what was required for a certain project. Here are the twelve original soundtrack albums that have been compiled almost ten years ago, and now – nineteen years after the creation of the first soundtrack – republished on Bandcamp:

After the last Juice Connection project, I concentrated on the band SUR that I founded together with the lyricist, dramatist and theatre actor Marko Djukić, while Stojan worked on other things. However, Kralj and I have continued working together on various projects to date.

Stojan Kralj and I – the core of the Juice Connection team – have never limited ourselves in terms of what style we would or would not dabble into. While writing music for all the diverse performances we have worked on, we have proved time and again that we can be extremely versatile – sometimes to the point of ending up with exceedingly schizophrenic albums. One has to keep in mind, though, that it is hard to imagine what the music is for and why it is what it is if you don’t actually see the performance. However, we have also strongly believed in collaboration and kept involving other musicians in each of our individual efforts, because that seemed to produce the best and sometimes most surprising results, if done properly. Thus we have recorded a vast variety of tracks ranging from jazz to metal, from ethno to pop, from trip hop to swing, from experimental, avant-garde, atmospheric and ambient pieces to drum & bass, industrial, and even orchestral music and brass band arrangements.

Because of the extremely short development times for most performances, lack of technical and financial resources, and therefore quite a lot of creative as well as technical improvisation involved in each project, the production quality of the resulting work of the Juice Connection team may vary somewhat, especially by today’s standards, while the tracks recorded at impromptu jam sessions may often be less than perfect in terms of technical execution, of course. Nevertheless, these recordings are documents of certain times and circumstances and should be perceived as such. Ultimately we got things done: all the performances were staged successfully, we’ve certainly had lots of fun working on them, and that’s what it all boils down to in the end.

On the tenth anniversary of the first soundtrack we had ever recorded, Kralj and I decided to sift through the material and share it all on Jamendo, in order for it to be documented and perhaps used again by someone who may find it useful. Now, almost twenty years after The Tunnel, it was high time to release this on Bandcamp as well, and post the whole collection as well as a short biography in one place, so that the various facts and names of great musicians who have contributed to all of this don’t get forgotten.

This has been long overdue, but I finally got around to actually doing it: I salvaged the Ground Zero archives from dusty, moth-eaten old compact cassette tapes that I’d had lying around in a drawer somewhere for aeons, tinkered around with audio forensics for a bit, and uploaded the resulting noise to Bandcamp. Here are the results…

Ground Zero was the first band I played drums in. By a sort of youthful inertia, it was formed in 1993 by a bunch of us kids who hung around the stage at what was then my secondary school. The initial lineup consisted of Aljaž Tulimirović, Aleš Kovačec and myself (none of whom went to that particular school), while the fourth founding member, my classmate Mitja Jurančič who was supposed to sing, immediately – at the first or second rehearsals – discovered that he couldn’t actually carry a tune, probably to the eternal gratitude of the band’s few future listeners. I’m not being mean: if Jurančič ever reads this, he’ll be the first to agree. Frankly, none of us – with the possible exception of Tulimirović, who was relatively good on guitar even then – could play very well at that time.

The band underwent the first permutations: Aleš Kovačec on bass was soon replaced by Boštjan Zorc, Aljaž picked up the vocal mike apart from the guitar, and with me on drums we soon made for a classic “power trio”. For about half a year or so we mostly played Jimi Hendrix covers as well as some other blues and rock tracks at high school parties and biker gatherings. When you are that young, you learn fast, and not much time passed until we were tired of vintage rock covers. Zorc was eventually replaced by Sebastijan Roškarič on bass and we started coming up with our own ideas. It soon turned out that we desperately needed a “dedicated” vocalist, and I was very fortunate to run into Marko Djukić as a freshman at the university about a year after the band’s formation. With Marko Djukić on vocals we focused almost exclusively on our own material, abusing covers only as fillers or a kind of jokery, and Djukić also stepped in as the band’s resident lyricist. As Djukić and I both studied English, using any other language for lyrics was never even a question.

The first recording that still exists and has now been “exhumed” dates back to 1995. The other three existing recordings – two from live concerts and a short DIY demo – were done in 1996. During that time we changed the bass player again: Roškarič gave way to Samo Pečar. Later, in the beginning of 1997 (or maybe at the end of 1996), if I remember correctly, we had some disagreements with Djukić, especially as it was difficult for him to attend our never-ending rehearsals and rock ‘n’ roll revelry far from his home every weekend. Besides, ravenous for new knowledge and eager to complicate our lives, Tulimirović, Pečar and I gradually strayed far into the realm of alter-prog-fusion-psychedelia, rendering the ground rather unfertile for vocalists, so we and Djukić parted ways, though on good terms. Of course, as barely anyone but ourselves was exactly crazy about our setlist that ultimately consisted of ten to fifteen-minute instrumentals riddled with incomprehensible, utterly undanceable odd-time meters and other intentional listener pitfalls like malicious breaks, malevolent random-sounding phrases played in unison, syncopated rhythms, atonal compositions and beat displacement, plus ample room designated for random improvisation and on-the-spot “freeform composition”, the band gradually evaporated, without much clamour, sometime in the course of 1997 or 1998, as the band members started pursuing other outlets for their unbridled creativity.

Marko Djukić dedicated himself to theatre, and thanks to him I started writing original soundtracks for theatre performances together with another long-term “associate” of mine, Stojan Kralj. Producing music for audio-visual works is also how I eventually got into the rather arcane music production business more seriously, and I also kept drumming in quite a few other bands. Boštjan Zorc went back to playing guitar (his primary instrument), and he has since been in several bands. He is now a great guitarist and owner of a well-known guitar workshop. Sebastjan Roškarič headed into the realm of magic: he is now an accomplished illusionist. Samo Pečar has become a professional bass player and has contributed to too many bands to list. Aljaž Tulimirović has gone on to form a few bands of his own as well as take part in a number of other projects. Both Tulimirović and Pečar participated in Juice Connection (1998–2002, the music production crew formed by Kralj and myself) as well as played in the live line-ups of both bands I founded later: SUR as well as, for a while, Cynicism Management.

As I’ve already mentioned, the Ground Zero archives were salvaged from mangled old compact cassette tapes. To make matters even more frustrating, most of the material was originally recorded directly from the mixer during rather “unpredictable” concerts of dubious quality, so forget about top-notch production by today’s standards: the recordings did undergo significant digital audio restoration, as far as I could manage it… But without a functional artificial intelligence with a knack for audio forensics, magically transforming this material into anything great-sounding will remain impossible. Nevertheless, all of the former band members agreed it would be a good idea to “immortalise” these fine audio documents by digitising them before they vanished forever. Not that they will have any mass appeal, of course – but they will certainly let us, the former members, take a few trips down the memory lane.

For reasons I will not go into right now, my main band – Cynicism Management – has been quiet for a while. The work on the band’s third full-length album (as well as my third novel, which is supposed to accompany it) IS proceeding, though not exactly as initially planned, so I cannot yet predict with any certainty when either will be done.

In the meantime, we have released the Pendulum Pet album on Jamendo, where you can grab it as a FREE download under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

Here’s the fourth track I’ve worked on with Mr. Rick Neidlinger. This wraps up the material for our first “collab EP”, which should be released soon. As always, I recorded drums, mixed and mastered it, and Rick did everything else.

NOTE: It has come to my attention that under unknown circumstances certain browsers (for now I’ve experienced problems with Firefox) refuse to display SoundCloud embeds for whatever unfathomable reason. Should that happen to you, you can try heading to https://soundcloud.com/rneidlinger/faded-visions.

Here’s the third product of the collaboration between singer, songwriter, guitarist and bassist Rick Neidlinger and myself (drums, mix, mastering):

NOTE: It has come to my attention that under unknown circumstances certain browsers (for now I’ve experienced problems with Firefox) refuse to display SoundCloud embeds for whatever unfathomable reason. Should that happen to you, you can try heading to https://soundcloud.com/rneidlinger/brotherhood-brigade-master.

The second track that songwriter, guitarist and bassist Rick Neidlinger and myself (drums, mix, mastering) have collaborated on to date is finished:

NOTE: It has come to my attention that under unknown circumstances certain browsers (for now I’ve experienced problems with Firefox) refuse to display SoundCloud embeds for whatever unfathomable reason. Should that happen to you, you can try heading to https://soundcloud.com/rneidlinger/what-comes-around-goes-around.

My first novel, the sci-fi / satire Cynicism Management, will be on sale on Amazon until 17 July. During this time you’ll be able to get it for only 99 cents. For more information about the novel – or to grab a free direct download of the original soundtrack for it – head here.

I’ve recently started to collaborate with Rick Neidlinger from Kansas, USA, whom I’ve met on SoundCloud and I happen to like his true “southern rock ‘n’ roll” tunes and sound. So we decided to come up with a four-track EP: Rick would write and record everything, and then I’d contribute to the project by recording real acoustic drums, mixing and mastering the tracks.

This is the first result of the collaboration, entitled Rattlesnake:

More coming soon.

NOTE: It has come to my attention that under unknown circumstances certain browsers (for now I’ve experienced problems with Firefox) refuse to display SoundCloud embeds for whatever unfathomable reason. Should that happen to you, you can try heading to https://soundcloud.com/rneidlinger/rattlesnake-2016.

My good pal Giulio Tarantino has just released his first EP, entitled “Suicide Circus”, as a (for now rather fictitious) band called “Bullet Democracy”:

According to his Bandcamp bio, Giulio Tarantino (a.k.a. Bullet Democracy) is an Italian film director, musician, singer & songwriter, currently residing in Berlin, Germany. He makes a living as an Italian deli proprietor and keeps buying useless junk at the local flea market.

All of this is true. Giulio would probably perish in considerable pain if he were prohibited from haggling at the local flea market, the exact purpose of which continues to elude me to this day. Be that as it may, I’ve gladly assisted him in the realisation of his long-time dream of publishing an album, so I recorded, produced, mixed and mastered his debut while also playing drums, percussion, bass, keyboards and additional guitar on it. I’d characterise the four-track EP – which Giulio is also determined to present live at some point in the future, at least with a limited acoustic live line-up – as a sort of grunge with Italian pronunciation. It may be interesting for some music aficionados to know that Giulio’s distinctive vocal has such a low register that we had to resort to recording three of four tracks on this album with a baritone guitar tuned to B E A D F# B (as well as drop A, where necessary).

The EP is available for download on the Bullet Democracy Bancamp site (name your price / free).