The Yawns at Tvornica 27Sep2013

I went to see The Yawns play at Tvornica last Friday.

Day was long and preceding week positively terrible and I was just in the mood for some fresh indie and a tiny bit of socializing and this evening was just a perfect score.

Afternoon was coldish and it rained so evening did not feel promising for a bike ride. Around half past nine I sat in my car and picked up a friend and we drove to town, chatting away. Streets were empty and we found a parking spot fast and we came to Tvornica to find it nearly empty. I had a tiny bit of fun joking with the bouncer and inside there were few girls and barmaids and we got a drink while more people gathered. It was a busy evening with two more gigs that I know of and a club called Klub opening night. Overlaps of gigs that count on the same audience are so funny in a town this small. Few more of our music friends joined so we made more scene jokes and sipped our drinks.

At one moment small group of people passed by us and went on stage. I did my homework and listened to their materials before I went to see them and I found them interesting and very listenable so maybe you too should give them a go and check out their bandcamp page. My favorite is I Win.

Most noticeable thing seeing them live was their age. They seem so very, very young. But they come across as very nice, civilized folk and their frontman talked quite a bit and regaled us with his directness and unpretetiousness.

He introduced the band, told us they have come from Scotland and thanked the hosts for wonderful meal and he continued to amble and speak of personal details in between songs and to introduce every song to us with a few words:

"This one is called: I believe in UFOs. You know, the flying saucers"

There were so few of us in the audience, maybe 20 together with Mali Pogon personnel, but it felt nice and heartfelt from both sides, both to listen and to perform, it seemed. I was thinking about how funny this is, how much of attention and grandeour does the band naming themselves "The Yawns" would actually expect.

"This one, color, I don't know what do you call it in Croatian, like that [shows something by first guitarist] - that color! Brown. That is my favorite color."

They have loveliest, most beautiful bass player I ever saw live. Wonderful color and grace, sparkle in her eyes and real proficiency in playing.

And they have played all the songs they had. All. And it was over.

Small group of people went over to them and asked them for merch and talked with them for a while and it was so great to see this; fans so overwhelmed with joy they can converse with the band and band so overwhelmed with joy to be loved and sought in some distant spot of the planet far away from home.

And then they packed their stuff in under ten minutes, I swear.

I never saw enything being done so efficiently. One moment everything was there and in the next stage was a blank canvas.

We lingered contently a bit over our drinks and then went into the night.

Lose Yourself To Dance

Waaay back in May Random Access Memories by Daft Punk was released and I fell in love with it first time I heard it.

It made me hum, it made me listen, it made me angry.

Everything I ever want from a stimuli; to engage me.

When RAM was just a seven day baby Dean Kotiga wrote a great review on Kultivator covering all the things music geek would ever want to know about this album. I still read a paragraph or two of this awesome article now and then to remind myself of something or just to enjoy concise beauty of it and ginormous discrepancy between simplicity of expression and thousands of hours spent in making all this knowledge accessible and well presented.

Few weeks later I decided to lose myself to dance (i.e. take dancing lessons).

Dance is not something I felt proficient in and it never brought me any joy before taking this course. As I was quite depressed and fully in joy-free mode at that time I reckoned I’ll give this a go as an aerobic activity since exercise is scientifically proven depression treatment. I am aware of dancing being prelude to procreation and its value for social interaction including limbic resonance but I just chose to consider this functions as far second to actual movement in rhythm with the music. I never gave much thought to considering dancing a dyadic social activity and have always thought about it in terms of knowledge and steps - proficiency in narrow meaning of the term. But as it happens this was a gross mistake on my part. This dancing lessons were such a great choice and Martina and Mislav from Jungle dance school are such great teachers because they teach most important thing of all - dancing is NOT just knowledge and steps.

As it could have been expected I had no trouble whatsoever in remembering the steps. Interacting and dyad-ness were completely different story.

Very idea of having to touch another person of male persuasion and to coordinate - let me rephrase that - “to let him coordinate” OUR movements through space in time with the music was so overwhelming for me I spent all my mental fortitude on smiling (as scientifically proven mood and image management) and I must have told a million and ten jokes in that 12 hours of lessons (as I diffuse tension with humor, apparently).

Somewhere in second half of lessons there was a bit of skirmish.

We had to change partners for every dance and I liked some partners less than others. As it happens to me more often than not, extroverted talkative ones I find most… unlikeable.

So we danced. It was cha-cha-cha (my second favorite), 360°turn and Manhattan roll-out figure. While doing that figure you momentarily let go of your partner so lady can do a 360° turn and then both do a sequence of steps and half steps in one direction and then other while taking care to stay close enough and hold and let go hands in sequence so that whole thing is nicely coordinated and social. So we did the cha cha part and then I rotated and he did not (over)reach for my hand and I did not extend it. We just continued with the steps as if we were dancing separately.

After the whole figure (steps only) he said, in a tutoring voice of someone who thinks he has shown me wrongness of my ways:

“You see how this looks if you don’t give me your hand?”

And I said, flat out, surprising myself almost as much as I surprised him:

“Yeah, I do. It looks just like any other dance before now in my entire life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just that. Looks like I’m dancing alone. Just like I danced alone every time I danced up until now.”

That blank stare of utmost lack of understanding that only the chasm between introvert and extravert can cause. He got angry, turned red and clammed up. I was so shaken up I lied that I feel overheated and I went to the toilet and cried. I cried because I want to learn how to dance and because “to dance” means “to voluntarily let go of my solitude for the duration of the song”. The expression for this predicament in Croatian goes: “Nemreš bit’ jeben i pošten” and in English I “can’t have my cake and eat it too”.

So I dried my tears and went back to class.

Mistaken for Strangers

I could never, ever, be mistaken for The National fan.

It's not that I don't like their music or that I find their congregation funny, it is just that they don't do anything for me, they do not move me.

Or at least they didn't until last Thursday.
   
On Thursday (19Sep2013) evening I went with some friends to opening screening of Mistaken for Strangers in Kaptol Centar Zagreb. Movie hall was nicely filled and had an unseemly event, like bombing or fire, happened, Zagreb would have lost almost all of indie-hipster opinion makers. We waved and greeted people around us entering the hall and I smirked a bit and said we should do a muster call to see if anyone's playing hooky. When I sat down a friend leaned down to me and asked:

"Why is hipster sad?"

"Dunno. Why?"

"'cause he heard his band on the radio."

And as we laughed the room got dark and the movie started.

Original movie poster

Right from the start I felt that I'm right where I should be. I may not be The National fan but I'm person enamored with music related documentaries and well made films built on disarming psychological premises and this film is clearly both of those things and displays all its glory right from the very first scene.

 "Don't you have any kind of system or organization for the things you'd like to ask?" 
[Matt to Tom in one of the scenes from his dissorganized interviews]

 The axis of this movie, principal structure around which everything here revolves is Tom Berninger, the guy that spent a year on tour with his brother's band (as movie tagline deftly spells). Tom Berninger is pudgy, naive, seemingly easygoing yet troubled and at the same time extremely gifted individual. Incidentally, he is also the younger brother of Matt Berninger, The National frontman.

By the course of either fine dramatization or simple truth of events Tom Berninger goes on tour as a roadie with The National as a pity or support gesture from his brother - depending on how you look at it. Motivation behind Matt's act remains his own throughout the movie, but this does not diminish the grandeur and beauty this course of events brings.

"I had no idea you were never in Europe!"

[Matt to Tom while flying from USA to Europe]

Movie tells a tiny bit of story about Matt Berninger and The National, about how frustrating and humble their beginnings were and how big they have grown from then to now and this leaves me quite unimpressed as it also left Tom. 

I was never that kind of fan who makes subject of her adoration into an object. I never forget that there are personal lives behind that people up there on stage and I see their crumpled up clothes and bags under their eyes when they are on the road. I notice that overrehearsed boredom and meet with respect both the surprise with unexpected well reception from the audience and watery glazing over of the eyes looking somewhere deep inside his own head where someone close is talking to him from afar.  So in this respect my experience is akin to Tom's. We both see the musicians for ordinary humans and we're too close to the topic to be impressed. But in everything else, hearing Matt talk is just like hearing my own inner voice; civilised yet annoyed and short-fused, focused on the task at hand and intent on having no idling in between two successes. And what makes us most annoyed of all is not being able to transfer that skill (modus operandi, really) to ones we feel closest to us, to ones we believe would benefit the most of it.

So Tom's trouble and lack of focus moves me on a personal level like daily life does - but this feeling comes out of a sequence of scenes and motifs that Tom had put together, while making his movie.

It is a wonderous paradox.

Beauty of seeing someone understand for the very first time. Magnificence of growth.

Tom: “It’s like they think the only reason I’m here is because I’m your brother!” 
Matt: “The only reason you’re here is that you are my brother.”

There is a slew of scenes depicting Tom as a quitter, failure, misfit, inadequate and a great bunch of people that love him and believe that there is value and ability behind his facade of leisureness. It slowly dawns on us, the viewers, that the only thing he truly lacks is not the talent or ability or persistence - it is confidence. But confidence stems from success and feeling of self-worth from feedback of being good at something. 

Like being good in making a movie and people liking that movie you made.

I may not be The National fan but I'm sure as hell Matt's fan after seing this film. Because the greatest gift one can give to another is an opportunity to be a success.

Walnut-Cinnamon Buns

I'm just sickly methodical person. Let me illustrate:

Since my daughter is in third grade this year and there is no afternoon programme in school few weeks ago I started to prepare for cooking in the morning, before work, to leave her with freshly cooked lunch. Last year she had lunch in school so I only cooked dinner after I got home and I didn't worry much about what kind of food I cook in terms of practicality and re-heating because I was there to help her with serving and it was freshly cooked but now I have to leave her with a lunch that would look and taste well in four hours time and one that she can easily serve and eat without assistance.*


Yesterday she told me a little story.

She likes to have mid-morning snack and I usually make her a small sandwich to take to school. Yesterday T (my daughter) said that her friend also had sandwich during break and that she asked her, while they were munching on their sandwiches, what will she be having as her "nice lunch".

Friend responded that she will have another sandwich.

"What do you mean, "another sandwich"?! I asked." T told in her story:"My mum left a nice lunch for me to have when I return from school, before doing my homework." 

I have no idea where she got this "nice lunch" expression as it certainly wasn't from me but it felt like a ginormous compliment. Especially after just one week of me cooking her school lunches "for realzies".

It felt so great a compliment I decided to bake a fun cake for breakfast and snacks. It took just a few moments to come up with this adjustment of Chelsea Buns recipe I found in The Ultimate Book of Diabetic Cooking (bought this for ideas for entertaining friends and family members with diabetes).

Walnut-Cinnamon Buns

Dough:
300 grams flour (150 g graham + 150 g plain)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp dried (instant) yeast
180 ml warm milk
30 g butter 
1 egg

Measure and assemble all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Warm up milk with butter so it is hand-hot and butter nearly melts.  Pour milk and butter into dry ingredients and stir it with a fork, check the temperature and mix in the egg and then turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it for 10 or so minutes until it forms soft, elastic dough that doesn't stick to surface or your fingers. You can flour surface or your hands additionally but bear in mind that the dough should stay quite soft and that graham flour will use more moisture from the dough than regular flour would while rising.

When you're done kneading roll the dough on lightly floured surface to about 1 cm thickness.

Filling:
2 tbsp olive oil
3 -5 tbsp ground walnuts
2 tbsp sugar (or mixture 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp vanilla sugar)
1 tsp cinnamon

Brush dough with olive oil, sprinkle ground walnuts, sugar and cinamon over, leaving 2 cm empty border on one edge. Starting with covered edge, roll the dough to finish at empty edge. Cut the roll into 12 slices and arrange them in lightly oiled tin, cut side up. Leave in a warm spot to rise for an hour, until almost doubled in size.

Heat the oven to 200°C (without fan) or 180°C if you plan to use oven fan and put the tin in  when fully heated. Bake for  approx 15 minutes, until fragrant and golden all over.

Turn off the heat and take out the tin. Pour 1 dcl milk over the rolls using spoon so everything is covered and cover the tin with aluminum foil (or another tin, if you have it, to keep the steam inside) for 15 minutes.

Enjoy your hot walnut-cinnamon bun or leave it to cool so it is only warm. Baked like this rolls can stay out of fridge for a day, no more, or you can keep them in a closed container in the fridge for 3-4 days. Warm up cold/refrigerated buns before eating them, to at least room temperature.

.
*And I think I'm doing a great job after a few weeks practice if you don't mind me saying so! You can check my progress on twitter (my handle is @derzafanistori) as I usually tweet my lunch idea for the day. And all this without being late for work! :D

Multigrain bread

Some time ago I had a bread-baking binge I showcased on Twitter and there was one lovely bread lots of people inquired about recipe of. So here is the recipe:



Multigrain Bread

1 cup warm water
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp yeast
2 generous tbsp rolled oats
2 generous tbsp graham flour
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 tbsp linseeds
1 tsp salt
Enough white/all purpose flour to form soft dough (start with 3 generous tbsp and then add in smaller increments while kneading the dough)

Knead for approx. 10 minutes, intermittently flouring lightly your hands and kitchen surface until the dough is soft, elastic and does not stick anymore to hands or kneading surface. Leave to rise in a warm space covered with cloth for about an hour and then knead it back down for a minute and place in a prepared greased tin. Score with sharp knife across the top for decoration.

Leave to rise a second time for about half an hour.

Preheat oven to 200° Centigrade and put small ovenproof dish filled with water in bottom of the oven. Brush bread with water. Put bread into the oven and bake for 10 minutes on 200° C, and then turn down to 180° C and start oven fan (or leave on 200 if not using fan).

Bake for 15 more minutes until golden. Bread should sound hollow when tapped on bottom, and smell toasty with just a hint of moisture.

I make this when I'm in the mood for some late night confort food and when I'd like cool rustic slice of rich bread for my breakfast or brunch tomorrow morning.

Bon appetit!

State of the Nation - Summer 2013

So I took a month off from blogging.

I was just too exhausted to do it for a while.

Somewhere at the end of March I broke off a five year long relationship with a guy I love. It would be a lie to say that things were too complicated as they weren’t to my opinion, but we just weren’t making the common ground to thread upon while negotiating our lives. As I’m a firm believer that you cannot force these things but only facilitate and stay open-minded and the other part inevitably relies on chance and the other person’s efforts I did the only thing left for me to do - and that is get on with my life. Still hoping, yes, but not holding my breath.

And life was wondrously rewarding as ever.

In April I, rather assertively, fought for a promotion. I assumed it would be a crown of my career efforts so far to get it and you already know I love my job (in Clinical Trials field) dearly.

From May 1^st I started working on my new job and I love the sense of success it gives me. It is dynamic, demanding, complicated and - worst of all! - it involves working with people day in and day out. As my dealings with people are always inseparable mixture of awe and disgust exhaustion is normal effect of the job. But, this is what I fought for and this is what I got - and I love my new job even more than I loved the old one.

In June we - my daughter and I - have celebrated one year anniversary of living in our new home! I still cannot believe how great this is and I’m immensely thankful that life is going so well and that I’m surrounded with wonderful people who I can rely on for assistance. If you feel like reminding yourself (as I did) on what is home you can re-read my What is Home series here.

July went by quick and in the sign of dance lessons I signed for to get myself to leave my comfort zone. Those were great 10 1,5 hour sessions covering standard and Latin-American dances at Vrbani, in Jungle dancing school. It was a small group (12ish people) and we got to be real dancers by the end. I’m looking forward to attending advanced group this fall.

By beginning of August I was completely ready for a yearly re-boot and I was happy I arranged for a 15-day vacation in Maslenica. I loved it there; weather was great, we had great company but we still got to have our private time too, shops are a-plenty and prices reasonable and I loved the atmosphere of family and trust in Maslenica. Children can play there and everyone watches after the children, it’s not too crowded and sea is wonderfully calm and welcoming. I swam for more than an hour every day and we played and jumped from the piers and took long walks and saw children festival (Dite Jasenicko) and drove to Vir and to Nin and to Zadar and barbecued and entertained guests for lunch and had late-night-shindigs over good food and excellent beer.

So I’m here now, rejuvenated. I’ll try to blog more.

# # # and Punchke @ Prostor Do 20Jul2013

Although, just like Gogo Pavlov, I cannot understand what motivates a band to name themselves ### I come across similar smarty-pantses rather frequently and I even remember I bought an album by a band called ∆Ñ∆ from Bandcamp. At this moment Bandcamp search page alone houses no less than 12 pages full of bands named in this fashion - from lonely Asteriskses to Triple spaces and small posses of question marks surrounded with back andfront-slashes.

Maybe to discourage torrent searches and copyright infringement? Who can say? It just seems like a really bizarre marketing strategy - but then again; maybe they do not want to be popular or available.

Nevertheless, I liked what Hashtags played for us at Prostor Do this Saturday night. They were so loud during sound check that we were a bit worried how this would sound but when the venue filled with people it was just right. As I did my homework and listened through their EP before coming to live act I knew what to expect and I think they did a good job performing. Besides that, this being their first show, I expect them to be even better with a bit more experience. Since, if I was not misinformed*, part of the band is also part of Zagreb/Croatia “kužističke scene” (know-it-all scene behind fun and vibrant Kultivator music portal) this could have gone both ways but I was actually pretty pleased that it felt very cute and natural, and, as much as guys seemed freaked out in the beginning, final result was quite good: energetic post-punk with tendency to slip into noisy instrumental post-rock. My only objection to the act is that it lacked soul - it was technically excellent and they have showed us they can play AND that they know how to communicate with the crowd, but it both felt like it comes out of a book rather than being their second nature.

They will relax with more live performances and this will be just a sentimental anecdote that we could all enjoy, band and the audience that was there for their first show. For all of you that missed the show or ones that want to re-hash the memory here is their EP on Bandcamp.

And then there were our stars of the evening - Punčke.

I was trying to catch one of their gigs from the beginning of this year and I have almost caught them during Terapija portal birthday at Gričevanje and it was close, but no cigar.

Not this time.

I had to tumble my itinerary quite a bit and also miss Fjodor gig and Galactic Picnic on Saturday to be here and I was not dissapointed. Girls rocked!

That rediculous amount of energy that Lucija, the frontwoman sports, is something that regales my soul and makes all this concert-going business all right. Sound was awesome and  girls were in good spirits so the music was explosive and wonderful. They performed and they conversed and they were softspoken and loudthinking and I loved them.

I was also very pleased with conspicuous change in the audience as it, without mistake, contained unusually high number of LBT audience and it was good to see that and good to be there among this crowd.

Here you can browse through their EP/singles discography so far and you can also take a look at their brand new, beautiful video:

 I will most definitely go and see them again and follow closely on release date for their release "Sunčano s povremenom naoblakom" (due September 2013).


*Update - 26Jul2013:

It looks that I have been misinformed as Kultuvator guys contacted me through twitter denying all and any connection with the Hashtags :D
So I'm including this footnote for clarification.

A Band Called Death

Last weekend I saw an interesting movie and I’d like to share my impressions with you.

The movie in question is A Band Called Death (2012) and it is a documentary about a 1970s black punk trio whose music managed to become a success 30 years after it was made.

Original movie poster: © 2013 - Drafthouse Films

For me there are three sides to accessing this movie; the music, the life and the movie itself and I would like to say a thing or two about each of those things.

The music:

As and avid concert-goer and a person quite engaged in both enjoying music and music trivia this is a wonderful puzzle piece in World musical puzzle. The band - created by three black guys (!), playing punk before punk and calling themselves Death in a world that runs on sugarcoating - is an aberration to say the least and this is what musical side of this story rests upon. Through the movie we see bunch of short commentaries by popular musicians like Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra and also by people from the music business like producers and label owners and music bloggers and collectors and if this was the only meaning behind the story this would be something fast forgotten because however it sounds surprising there is no real-life weight. It just seems like long-tail nerd business, a legend that gets told and retold only by particular subculture as a way of recognition and kind of rite of passage for aspiring music geeks.

But this is not only meaning behind the story, oh no. This is just the front porch at which you stand while just knocking at the door

...and then the door opens...

and on the inside there is a kind smile and smell of coffee, promise of lemonade, and you - the movie viewer - are ushered into a world of hope and dreams.

This is the life.

The documentarists did not stop on the front porch, showing us only the story of musicians. They knocked on the door and were welcomed into the lives of people - grooms, fathers, brothers, children, employees, house owners, devout believers, students, pack rats and grieving widows. In this movie we see life of a musician for what it really is: another constituent part of life among other roles the person has and it is a role that is sure to bring happiness just as likely as sorrow. These people, brothers and partners in this music endeavor, lived this story and they talk about it here. The story is about music but even more it is about personal relationships, about humanity and trust and hope and adversity. This movie is sentimental, but not corny, and it is oriented on a person and on love and support and on honesty we rarely witness in family life nowadays. When things look bleak and they feel they have reached the end of the road there is always sincerity and tact and they talk to each other and share and are grateful for the things they have and life rolls on. And some fall in this march but they are never left behind and forgotten nor is the nature twisted and pressed into molds that don't fit. As we watch this story through life progress of these people from being someone's kids into being spouses and having kids of their own we can see that all this steps are made with benevolence and growth, carrying genuine love and care from one generation into the next and this is so lovely and engaging and warm I'd be hard pressed to find a movie to match that even in fiction.

And movie itself is a documentary - truly creating and showcasing a "paper trail" for life.

These guys - Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlet - must have gone through a billion conversations and family pictures and meetings and phone calls and punched in thousands of hours to show this story as beautifully as they did. I do not understand technology they used to make ancient photos come to life but it brought tears to my eyes. No part of this film is unnecessary or too long or out of place. Both archive footage and newly made material is beautifully fresh and put together in a way that both shows and celebrates its content as much as the age and the media itself. It is a perfect marriage of contemporary technology and human skill and imagination and I love how this production feels entirely a human effort in using great tools to make the imagined come to life (instead of tools taking over the scene for themselves).

I recommend to everyone to watch this film no matter which music they like or do they even care about music, as a way to remind one's self that if you go through every day with love and integrity what ever the world serves you whenever you look behind all you see will be good life.

... "For The Whole World To See".