The Slovenian free-improvising Sunday Sextet is named in honour of the local Sunday Noise concert cycle, which has been happening at the Klub Metulj in Bistrica ob Sotli since 2011. The sextet was formed in 2021, a year before the cherished Sunday Noise concert cycle ended, and released its debut album, Lih Kadim, in 2022 (FMR).

Sunday Sextet’s sophomore album, Meander, celebrates the resurrection of the Sunday Noise concert series. It was recorded at Kulturni Dom in Bistrica ob Sotli in November 2024 and features the same lineup – reed player Jure Boršič, violinist Marko Jenič, modular synth player Jaka Berger, guitarist Andrej Bošjančič-Ruda (one of the first organizers of the concert series), and the Drašler brothers. Jošt on double bass and Vid on drums, disciples of local hero drummer Zlatko Kaučič, and known from the free-improv TiTiTi with Boršič and the septet Oholo! (with Boršič and Jenič), as well as their trio with Norwegian clarinetist Andreas Hoem Røysum.

Meander is a six-movement exploration of six experimental, exploratory voices working as a collective, genre-defying sonic entity. The Sunday Sextet does not seek to create peaceful, homogeneous textures. It searches for bold, intense, and tension-filled, resonant frictions, interferences, noisy distortions, and collisions with an uncompromising need to explore unpredictable, uncharted electroacoustic territories. Meander is tied by nuanced, fragile threads and intensified by the extensive use of extended techniques.

Vid Drašler, who initiated this recording, wondered if it is not remarkable that such an experimental, free-improvising ensemble still exists. It is even more remarkable that this ensemble keeps enriching its collective aesthetics with such captivating, powerful conviction and sonic imagination.

Eyal Hareuveni

Jure Boršič (alto saxophone, clarinet), Marko Jenič (violin), Jošt Drašler (double bass), Jaka Berger (modular synthesizers), Andrej Bošjančič-Ruda (guitar), Vid Drašler (drums)