Širom is a Slovenian trio who plays imaginary-psychedelic folk music, inspired by the pioneering work of Don Cherry, but you can find in its inclusive aesthetics echoes of the sonic journeys of Stephen Micus, Jon Hassell’s Fourth World, unplugged faUSt, Gnawa hallucinogenic rituals, and familiar and more esoteric references of old and imaginary musical traditions from the Balkan, Turkey, Persia, Samarkand, Tibet and West Africa. «The Liquified Throne of Simplicity» is already the seventh album of this collective of multi-instrumentalists – Ana Kravanja, Iztok Koren and Samo Kutin, all play on exotic traditional and home-made instruments – and it captures the trio in its most expansive, fully developed and hypnotizing inclinations.
«The Liquified Throne of Simplicity» offers six free-form drone pieces, about eighty minutes of dreamy, abstract and rustic folky soundscapes. These surreal pieces, with their allegorical titles, and the illustrative artwork by the small village-based painter Marko Jakše, imagine fantasies and elusive atmospheres, where enigmatic characters and magical ceremonies are part of daily life. In a way, Širom’s musical fantasies of a global village (Peter Kowald’s term) and a peaceful and borderless world act as an escape route or a therapeutic activity from the stressful, pandemic contractions and its demoralizing, mental effects, or as a recipe against the uprise of the discourse of nationalism.
Širom spent some of the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic in studying an endless list of exotic instruments from the Balkan, Middle East and North and West Africa and Mid-Asia, with other instruments like the hurdy-gurdy coming from Medieval Europe. The trio also experimented with the construction new effective devices like the acoustic resonators (made out of a spring and frame drum). There is a loose narrative to the pieces of «The Liquified Throne of Simplicity». The opening piece «Wilted Superstition Engaged in Copulation» cements the meditative, hypnotic atmosphere of the album. «A Bluish Flickering» suggests a musical universe and a trance ritual that begins in the North American Appalachia and reaches Afghanistan. «Prods the Fire with a Bone, Rolls over with a Snake» and the brief «I Unveil a Peppercorn to See It Vanish» envision a post-pandemic, optimist future, and offer captivating, lyrical melodies.
Eyal Hareuveni
Ana Kravanja (viola, daf, ocarinas, mizmar, balafon, ribab, various objects, v), Iztok Koren (guembri, banjos, tank dr, bass dr, perc, balafon, various objects, chimes), Samo Kutin (hurdy gurdy, tampura brač, lyre, lute, brač, chimes, balafon, frame dr, ocarina, acoustic resonators, various objects, v)
