BREZMEJNA

Chanson - Singers Songwriters

Format: Long Play

Code: 119590

EAN: 3838898119590

At ZKP RTV Slovenija, in collaboration with Radio Maribor, we are releasing a vinyl and digital album Brezmejna (Boundless) performed by actor, director, screenwriter, musician, and multiple award-winner of the Chanson Festival and Slovenska popevka, Jure Ivanušič, together with the band Nordunk, with whom Ivanušič has collaborated since 1997. The group consists of Andrej and Gregor Antauer, Bojan Logar, Tomaž Marčič, Martin Rošer, and Simon Šimat, and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Patrik Greblo.
The album presents a kaleidoscope of themes relevant to the modern individual – from hidden forms of everyday slavery and fake relationships to fabricated realities, conformism, social apathy, poverty, and trivialized rebellion. With irony and satire, it carries the character of mocking theatre and becomes a carousel of diverse states of mind – from fear of life to fear of a wasted life and of drowning in an ocean of banality. The central thread is the individual’s ability or inability to fight for inner integrity – and for that rare but essential thing: personal freedom – in a time of collective disorientation.

Jure Ivanušič about the album

This collection of chansons has been in the making for almost twenty years. That much time has passed since the first drafts of some of the songs on this album. Back then, I wanted to create a kind of omnibus of chansons with a band and a symphony orchestra – short musical stories with a cinematic atmosphere, connected into a whole.

But since my compositions were nowhere near mature enough for such a project at that time, I put it aside for a while. In the meantime, I released with Nordunk the album Srce v kovčku (Heart in a Suitcase), for which I translated thirteen Brel chansons, and later the solo album Sonce in sence (Sun and Shadows) with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, featuring my newer original chansons along with a few more translations of Brel and Brassens.

Only when the old comrades from Nordunk contacted me again a few years ago did I return to that earlier idea. I pulled five unfinished chansons out of the drawer, completed or reworked them, and added five completely new ones. Although the lyrics of a chanson are already poetry in themselves, it is the interpretation that, together with the original music, gives each story its soul. That is why Nordunk and I first performed this new material at a concert at the Lent Festival, after which I revised two or three chansons yet again.

I wrote the music myself, except for Sneži (It’s Snowing), whose music is actually the main theme from the film Prehod (The Passage), in which I played the leading role. The film won the Audience Award at FSF 2008. After the premiere, composer Dragana Jovanović suggested that I write lyrics to the theme, and soon Nordunk and I recorded a demo version. But I quickly realized that this chanson would work best arranged for both the band and a full symphony orchestra.

This was now accomplished by Leon Firšt, who captured the musical-cinematic idea with great sensitivity and creativity in each story. Conductor Patrik Greblo masterfully led the orchestra, skillfully overcoming the technical challenges of recording both the Symphony and the band, which in some pieces transforms from cabaret into a rock band.

That is why the LP, a special collector’s edition, has been designed as a kind of film poster, created by Matjaž Wenzel.

A key contribution also came from music producers Rok Lopatič, Žiga Stanič, and Smiljan Greif; sound engineers Darko Kukovič and Gregor Samar; digital mix and mastering by Simon Šimat; and LP mastering by Miro Prljaća.

A heartfelt thank you also goes to the artistic director of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Maja Kojc, as well as to Vesna Martinec, acting editor-in-chief, and Gregor Stermecki, acting editor of the Radio Maribor music program.

The result of the work of so many people is now here: an omnibus of ten new chansons titled Brezmejna (Boundless).

Each chanson is a song in its own right, yet the album functions as a whole, taking you on a musical-literary journey:

“Južni veter” (South Wind) carries you into a new day, where you’d rather “play dead” than endure an idiotic regime. “Sneži” follows with the pain of separation from a loved one. You travel to “Rotterdam”, one of the world’s trade capitals, and ask yourself if your entire world is “fake.” You return home, haunted by a “Nightmare”, and at a poetry evening you encounter Shakespeare’s “Cordelia.” Then you set off again, like an “Odysseus,” and finally find a home you share with “Some Girl,” where your world awakens into “Boundless” freedom.