(Nešto kao demanti: odlučio sam ovaj tekst napisati i na engleskom i na hrvatskom jeziku da bih zadovoljio oba ‘’glavna urednika’’ s portala Subsite.hr (kad se već častimo izmišljenim novinarskim titulama neka moja bude viši sintaktičar), od kojih je svaki urgirao da pišem na jednom od ta dva jezika. Kako sam ja miroljubiva budala i ne želim biti odgovoran za krvoproliće nalik onom u seriji Igra Prijestolja, do kakvog bi zasigurno došlo između ova dva vrlo eksplozivna, no inače prilično ljupka lika, donio sam mudro Solomonsko rješenje da očuvam mir u kući – podijelit ću tekst na dva jednaka dijela, hrvatski i engleski. Još i bolje od toga, napisat ću dva potpuna teksta, jednog u cijelosti na engleskom, drugog na hrvatskom. Živio ja, kralj mudrosti i nepotrebnih prijevoda!)

Fuck you!

FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckuckFuckFuck FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck Fuck Fuck FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck

FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck FuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck you, you mask wearing fuck!!!

Video from concert.

 

 

A most unusual way to start a report on a concert gig, you might say as you peruse the first six lines of this text. Well, excuse me (and screw you too!), but I just had to get that off my chest. «Get what off your chest?» you ask as you raise your eyebrows in incredulous wonderment. Let me enlighten you: the opening paragraph of fucks goes to Dub Trio’s guitarist, the guy who was wearing a fucking surgical mask on his face for the greater part of the hour and a half that they played the Attack club in Medika this Sunday. That’s right, he wore a pale green, perforated piece of plastic (or is it made of paper?) that sick people (and many Japanese) wear over their mouths as they aimlesly wander the hospital corridors in their matching pale green, butt-revealing gowns. Essentially, the above cluster-fuck is my way of telling him two things; first, you looked like fuckin’ Michael Jackson in that thing, and coupled with the black baseball cap you had screwed on your head all the way down to your eyes you really looked like a honkier version of Jacko paranoidly trying to hide away from the public. Second, by donning such an uncool item on yourself you totally trashed the hip’n’cool image Dub Trio was carefully honing all these years – the we’re-a-cynical-bunch-of-Brookliners-who-play-dubtastic-heavy-fucking-metal-and-have-a-muscular-bald-guy-for-a-drummer image. Get it? While the bald-headed, muscular drummer chose to forgot his shirt and leave his marmoreal torso naked, his medical mask screamed out « I have asthma! I cannot breathe your cigarette smoke because I’ll have a coughing fit and die!». Well, I got news for you buddy, we’ll all die one day, but at least my cancer-ridden body won’t be remembered as the one belonging to a guy who single-handedly destroyed his band’s stage presence with an unbelievably lame choice of a mask. Couldn’t you have put on a Batman mask instead, or a gorilla’s? Even a rubber George W. Bush’s face would be better than this.

 

Besides the apparently sickly guitar player, the two other guys in Dub Trio looked and played every bit as healthy and vivacious as the audience expected them to look and play. The sculpted drummer was sweating his soul out as he mercilessly pounded his skins and brass cymbals, all the while glowing like some sort of psychedelic basilisk who accidentally licked himself and went berserk from the acid in his sweat, while the bassist firmly stood his ground as he tossed the heavy chunks of bass meat on the sizzling spit the guitarist had built out of the fiery strings of his instrument. The relentless noise of their droning, metalized dub took us on a rollercoaster ride ranging from the high ridges of guitar squeals and crashing cymbals, swirling all the way down into the long, dark tunnels populated with deep fulminations of the bass and thunderous pounding of the drums. The ride was truly nauseating at times, making one’s innards throb with the sheer force of the music which pushed its way through one’s body. The trio’s full-on, distorted sonic-wall assault was frequently contrasted with the more tranquil dub parts, giving us just enough time to breathe in and out before the guys would blast us off on another high-point on the ride. This interplay of noisy and hushed parts continued almost uninterupted from the beginning of the concert to its final note, fusing all the songs, the majority of which (I guess) were from the last album ‘IV’, into one big, fat audience-devouring snake. I have to say that, notwithstanding the guitarist’s mask, this was one of the finest concerts I’ve witnessed in Attack, the sound engineers of which must be credited with doing their absolute best with the sound reproduction – it was excellent!

 

I also have to mention the other band that played that night – Bamwise. This band can be labeled as Medika‘s house band, since the guys (and a girl) who are involved in it are residents of the squat above the club, and hang there almost every day. They play a type of modern electro-dub, somewhat similar to the one many contemporary French dub bands play (High Tone, Kanka, OBF, Ezekiel, Zenzile), especially in furnishing the basic heaviness of the drum and bass with keyboards and numerous computer-generated sound effects.

 

They were the opening act, and they succeeded nicely in getting the groove going in the audience (at least in the first couple of rows), since their brand of dub is quite different and more danceable than Dub Trio’s guitar-heavy kind. A nice touch to heighten the whole experience of Bamwise‘s songs were the background visualizations. In a few circles of various diameters projected on the wall behind the musicians, black and white shapes were constantly changing n’sync with the songs. Some of the shapes reminded me of the lace embroidery from Pag or Lepoglava, and others of knobs and cogs like the ones that can be found on hi-fi systems. Simple but effective, these visuals gave us something to look at other than the beautiful bunch of bums from Bamwise.

 

 

 

The guys on stage have gone through their repertoire of songs quite masterfully, with only the singer’s fake Jamaican patois grating on my ears a bit. I do believe that only real Jamaican singers should sing like this (OK, and Doctor Ring-Ding, but he nails it like a true-born Jamaican), the rest of us should stick to the original voices and accents Jah blessed us with. The patois faux pas aside, it is safe to say that Bamwise are currently the leading dub outfit in Croatia, and nothing short of the eventual reunion of Radikal Dub Kolektiv can make them forfeit that position. So far no news of such reunion have reached my ears.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Jebi se!

Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se Jebi se, ti zamaskirani jebaču!!!

Mogli biste zaključiti dok još jednom čitate gornjih šest redaka da je ovo vrlo neobičan način za početi izvještaj sa svirke. Pa oprostite mi (i nosite se i vi pride!), ali jednostavno sam morao to skinuti s kurca. ‘’Što skinuti s kurca?’’ pitate me dok u nevjerici i čuđenju podižete obrve. Dopustite mi da vas prosvijetlim: uvodni odlomak s mnoštvom jebi se u njemu ide gitaristi iz Dub Tria, liku koji je većinu bendovog jedno-i-pol-satnog nastupa u klubu Attack proveo svirajući s jebenom kirurškom maskom na faci. Tako je, nosio je isti onaj blijedozeleni, perforirani komad plastike (ili je ta maska od papira?) kakvog bolesnici (i nemali broj Japanaca) nose preko usta dok besciljno tumaraju bolničkim hodnicima u svojim jednako blijedozelenim haljama s otvorom na dupetu. Ovom uvodnom nakupinom kletvi želim mu u biti poručiti dvije stvari: prvo, da je izgledao kao jebeni Michael Jackson u toj maski, a još kad si je nabio crnu šiltericu sve do očiju stvarno me podsjećao na bljeđu verziju Jackoa kako paranoično pokušava ostati neprimjećen u javnosti. Drugo, stavivši na sebe jednu toliko bezveznu stvar poput te maske potpuno je posrao godinama pažljivo dotjeravan hip i cool imidž Dub Tria – mi-smo-cinični-Bruklinčani-koji-sviramo-dubtastičan-hevi-jebeni-metal-i-imamo-mšićavog-ćelavca-za-bubnjara imidž. Kužiš? Dok je ćelavi, mišićavi bubnjar mudro odlučio zaboraviti obući majicu, njegova je medicinska maska vikala “Imam astmu! Dim vaših cigareta će mi prouzročiti nalet kašlja od kojeg ću umrijeti!”. Stari, imam vijest za tebe – svi ćemo kad-tad umrijeti, samo što će moje rakom izjedeno tijelo biti pošteđeno stigme da je pripadalo liku koji je sam samcat izborom nevjerojatno blesave maske uspio uništiti pojavu vlastita benda na pozornici. Nisi li umjesto te mogao obući masku na Betmena, ili onu s facom gorile? Čak bi i gumena maska s Tuđmanovim licem bila bolji izbor od ovog.

 

 

Pored tog, po svemu sudeći boležljivog gitarista, ostala dvojica iz Dub Tria izgledala su i svirala upravo onoliko živahno i zdravo koliko smo mi u publici to od njih i očekivali. Bubnjar je iznojao dušu dok je neumoljivo lupao po kožama bubnjeva i savijao lim činela, istodobno sjajeći poput nekakva psihodelična guštera što je nehotice liznuo vlastitu kožu i poludio od halucinogenih sastojaka na njoj, a basist nije uzmaknuo ni pedlja pred podivljalom vatrom gitaristova roštilja, slažući na nju debelo crveno meso svojih bas linija. Nesmiljena zujeća buka metaliziranog dub-a povela nas je na divlju vožnju vlakom smrti, prvo nas dižući do najviših visina gitarskog cviljenja i treštanja činela, da bi nas zatim sunovratila sve do dubina u dugačke, tamne tunele napućene praskanjem basa i gromovitim zvucima drobljenja bubnjeva. Na trenutke je vožnja bivala uistinu neizdržljiva, a utroba nam je podrhtavala od gole sile glazbe što je strujala našim tijelima. Golemi zvučni zid ovog trojca je često bio razbijan mirnijim dub dionicama, dajući nam par trenutaka za predah i šansu da dođemo do zraka, prije nego što nas opet povedu na još jedan krug do visina i nazad na svom metalnom vlaku smrti. Ova se međuigra buke i mirnijih, tiših dijelova provlačila poput goleme zmijurine među publikom, pritisčući nas iz pjesme u pjesmu, većinom s posljednjeg albuma ‘IV’, svojom punom težinom i silinom. Ako izuzmemo gitaristovu masku, bio je ovo jedan od najkvalitetnijih koncerata u Attacku, za što su, siguran sam, velikim dijelom zaslužni i Attackovi majstori zvuka koji su dali sve od sebe da se ovakav bend osjeća kao kod kuće dok svira kod njih.

 

Drugi je bend večeri bio atakovskoj publici već dobro poznati Bamwise, bend kojeg bi bez problema mogli nazvati kućnim bendom Medike.

 

 

Kako mislim da o njima ima već dovoljno toga napisanog na hrvatskom, ostavit ću dio teksta o njihovom nastupu samo na engleskom, pa neka se dečki i djevojka iz Bamwisea slobodno posluže tim tekstićem kad budu slali svoj CV raznim reggae & dub festivalima diljem svijeta.

 

Nenad Lukač

 

photo by Kristijan Smok  http://kristijansmok.blogspot.com/

video by Joža

 

https://www.facebook.com/bamwisedub

https://www.facebook.com/dubtrio