Don’t get me wrong, I love all the festivals I made a habit of visiting every year, both in my home and my adopted countries. You know the ones: festivals where 90% of the acts either sing in English, and/or come from the Anglosphere. Just like I’m writing these lines in the current lingua franca instead of my own language so you can understand me. But there was something refreshing about my first trip to MENT Ljubljana, and that had to do with the variety of latitudes and, most importantly, languages and regional traditions you get acquainted with on stage, without any pretence of the whole thing being labeled a world music festival.
Because it isn’t – it is a showcase festival, with mainly 30-40min long shows, aimed at discovering new-ish artists from all over Europe, where you’re surrounded by professionals from the music industry – around 700, according to MENT – but also music lovers from all around the region (7000 across 4 days). Except for the odd loud conversation at one of the shows of the opening night, this was probably the nicest and most polite audience I’ve been surrounded by, and that’s something.
Five hours on the Trans-Europe Express
Thursday was wild, with nine artists from eight European countries (I unexpectedly repeated Germany) in under six hours. The evening started jazzy at Stara Elektrarna, an old power station converted into a theater. As I left for the Metelkova complex – large, abandoned barracks, squatted and turned into some sort of Christiania, housing a few venues – the crowd was roaring when Kyiv-based jazz band Hyphen Dash told them where they came from. For good reason. Aided by a minimalist projection, the very, very smooth bass-drums-keys trio was just warming up when I had to leave. “Broken” is such a banger that I couldn’t just leave halfway through it, and ended up completely missing Analena’s show, the first act of Moonlee Records‘ showcase at a very packed Klub Gromka.
The feeling of defeat didn’t last long, for the alternative was the hotly tipped Lucy Kruger & the Lost Boys, an avant-garde indie rock outfit from Berlin. And what a show that was, definitely my favorite of the festival until that moment. South African-born Kruger’s enthralling presence behind the mic is intense and grabs you by the guts for the entire 40 minutes of a performance that ends up feeling like 25 at most. The tight-knit band helps build out tension that every now and then leads to a screamed coda, like in the cathartic “Howl”. But sometimes their sound is atmospheric and brooding (e.g. “Play”), and sometimes it’s groovy (set closer “Burning Building”). And Kruger excels at all those moments. Their recent call-up for the mythical Roadburn Festival is totally deserved.
Time for a couple of Moonlee bands. Nikki Louder was one of the highlights when I was digging through the festival artists, and they didn’t disappoint. A proper 90s-inspired noise rock trio, with a bassist playing sitting down facing the drummer like G-d intended. Sometimes things just need to be that simple. My notes for this show include “based generally”. After two very interesting sets from Macedonian post-punk heroes Vagina Corporation (some of the coolest stage presence of the fest) and unexpected highlight Kara Delik (saz-fueled kraut? A dubby long track complete with screaming? I need more of this!) as we wandered into Channel Zero just to see what the venue was like, it was time for Žen’s show.
Treading the line between psych rock and post-hardcore (we can keep the “post-rock-ish” assessment, I guess), all-female trio Žen was responsible for the other top show of the day. Aided by dreamy, psychedelic, sometimes geometric-heavy visuals, the Croatian band took the packed (but comfortable) Klub Gromka on a trip that included one of the very few encores we’ve seen the entire festival, and the live debut of a new track, NEDAMISE. After the show, time for some digging at Moonlee’s stand (scored two great Nikki Louder and Žen records – thanks for the discount, sir) before rushing to the last (half) show of the night. Kodiki treated us to a high-octane hyperpop-meets-footwork set, crowned by an ecstatic “Bizarre Love Triangle” remix.
A unified scene
One of the highlights of the last night of MENT was the focus on the Serbian indie scene, spearheaded by the promoters of festival/party Hali Gali and tastemakers/radio show/independent label Pop Depresija. The venues at AKC Metelkova were packed to the brim, partly because it looked like half of Belgrade was in town. I have to say, I’ve lived in a bunch of cities, visited dozen others for live music, and I haven’t seen a scene so excited for their local heroes. It seems like they’ve got the whole “unified scene” thing figured out, the one that Craig Finn dreamed about. It helped that both Cactus Fields and KOIKOI sounded 1) so fresh and 2) like they were not treating this like an ordinary gig. On the contrary: this was Hali Gali’s first night out outside of Serbia, and the bands knew all eyes were on them. Not all: when we left Gala Hala shortly after KOIKOI’s show, a huge queue outside the venue – the only one we’ve seen in three days – made us wonder for how long were these people congregating outside, waiting for a spot inside for Vizelj’s midnight set.
A big chunk of them would not be lucky. The urge to witness the most hyped event of the weekend even made festivalgoers smoke inside the venue, despite the smoke ban, to avoid leaving the venue and missing out on a band. And they were right not to leave. Cactus Fields look and sound like any other straightforward four-piece rock band chock-full of young blood, and that’s exactly what they are – when was the last time you’ve seen a band like this? They fully embrace the label to the point of being labeled as “only rock” on the festival’s website. There were tasteful guitar solos, remarkable melodies, proper riffs. These are all good things, as far as I’m concerned.
But the stars of the night – and the entire festival – had to be KOIKOI. It was a special show for the band as they waved goodbye to multi-instrumentalist Ivana Miljković, who played her farewell show that evening. KOIKOI are a peculiar band. They’re a young band, yet they navigate masterfully the intricacies of their music, between lulling electronic interludes, groovy bass passages, and guitar freakouts – all heightened by hypnotic polyphonic singing. And they know how to command a crowd that, by itself, helps turn a great performance into a memorable night, and the feeling that we’re witnessing the beginnings of a cult band. Hali Gali’s second compilation is out now, featuring songs by ten Serbian bands. To wrap up the night and our stay at Ljubljana, nothing better than a full blown anarcho-punk show by Mižerija, a trio out of the coastal Croatian city of Zadar. Fast-paced tunes, stage diving, crowdsurfing, the odd dude hanging on the rafters of the low-ceiling venue, cans of beer flying around, the whole thing.
Earlier on, inside the walls of the beautiful Ljubljana castle, and blessed by some heavy showers, we were treated to half of Daniela Pes‘ solo vocal/electronics show (deserved a better time slot, no tricky overlaps, and maybe a seated venue), a treatise on noisy indie rock by Lyon quartet Irnini Mons – your next favorite rock band as soon as they release their first LP, hopefully later in the year – and one-woman band Ana Lua Caiano. Slowly building up her songs using loops, the Portuguese multi-instrumentalist grabbed her audience like few others in the festival. Her debut album, out March 15 on Glitterbeat, is looking promising.
A sax-positive environment
Earlier on, on Wednesday, it seemed like there was a theme: three out of the first four bands playing at Kino Šiška featured a saxophone. Los Bitchos didn’t get the memo, but their psych/cumbia hybrid sound is perfect without one. Italian post-punk band Leatherette brought one, which, of course, reminded me of fellow countrymen Zu (what are those lads up to in 2024?). And, of course, Personal Trainer also indulged in a beautiful sax solo in their newest track, which they used to close off a highly energetic show as the festival’s opening act. Their big 00s Indie Rock energy had its highest manifestation through Willem Smit’s stage antics, which included great dancing skills (especially during the spectacular “Intangible”, taking off his shirt only to wear it inside out five minutes later, stealing someone’s phone, turning on the flashlight and putting it inside his pants, shining the light through the fly (please tell me this was staged). Proper band, proper show. Speaking of proper shows, Slovak duo Berlin Manson would later close off the night with the most visceral performance of the week. You can describe the whole thing as synth-pop, I guess, but the beats are heavy and dark, the riffs are punky, and the stage presence is confrontational and deeply engaging.
Now, the beauty of preparing for a festival by trying to listen to every single artist playing there is, of course, missing out on 20 of them because you didn’t really pay attention to the sole song you listened through the Spotify playlist the festival has set up for you. Gdańsk-based project Artificialice wasn’t really on my list when I was browsing through the festival’s artists when writing the preview, but I’m glad there was nothing else going on at the same time during the opening evening of the festival. Even before Alicja Sobstyl – the heart and soul of the project, half-Björk, half-Twigs – took the stage, we were already blown away by the six piece backing band: drums, sax (of course!), electronics, synths, and guitar. Not what I expected from the description, but exactly what I wanted from this festival: to be surprised when I least expected to.