Dead Body Collection — Zvala Si Se Svetlost
This release original appeared in a C20 cassette form on Uk’s Vagary Records. This original tape came in a doubled sided colour sleeve,which on it’s front half took in pictures of face-less female figures edged by star & moon light projects. And on it’s reverse/ inside cover a picture of a star constellation with Serbian text in red over the top. This original tape version of the release came in a edition of just 16 copies, but you can now go direct to DBC’s bandcamp here to download a digital version of the release.
The release takes in two tracks that come in around the nine minute mark, and first of these is 'Ostalo Je Sivilo' (roughly translation Grey is the remain). This first track opens with either field recordings or movie sample- that takes in a mix of: a female crying, crackling fire/ possible water & distant bird sounds. In just under a minute the ‘wall’ has risen up, and it’s a mixture of rapid ‘n’ battering low-end juddering, and sweeps of thinner gain bound static- underneath the ‘wall’ you can still just make out the sound of twittering bird song & possible distant water sounds. Structure wise the ‘walls’ low-end battering stays fairly fixed, while you get shifts & sweeps with in the thinner grained sub-textures, and of course you get movement with in the field recording elements too. This first track has quite a interesting mix of sad-ness, natural sounds & head battering brutality- it’s ok I guess, though the ‘wall’ it’s self just felt rather uninspired & not very engrossing, I appreciate what DBC is trying to do here, but for me the ‘wall’ elements here just felt a little too bland & unimaginative.
The second track is title track (which roughly translated means Your name was light). This track kicks straight in with a mixture of low-end juddering, & tense thinner/ crisp jittering- this is under played by this sad (and fairly retro sounding) simple ambient synth element, that’s seemingly playing out this repetative & sad melody. About mid-way through the ‘wall’ pans back, and we get just the moody synth texture, and some Serbian( I presume?!) male spoken word elements, this last around 30 seconds or so, then we’re back into the mix of battering ‘wall’ and buried moody synth sweep. For me this second track was a lot more successful and rewarding- firstly the ‘wall’ element was more urgent & appealing, and added to this the locked synth drift & moody break down was quite effective too.
It’s always interesting to hear an artists you know well trying something a little different from their normal out-put, and on the whole I must praise DBC for this attempt at stepping outside his normal focused/ take-no-prisoners wall attack. As I say above it’s not wholly successful release, with the first tracks ‘wall’ rather falling flat for me, but I did very much enjoy all the elements in the second track.. So all told it's an interesting & rather unique release in this projects truly huge discography(well over a 100 releases, and counting).