Igra Staklenih Perli
Soft Explosion Live / Tiha eksplozija u živo

  • Format: LP
  • Band: Igra Staklenih Perli
  • Title: Soft Explosion Live / Tiha eksplozija u živo
  • Band's Origin: YU
  • Style: psychedelic Rock live, English lyrics
  • Rating: 5
  • Release Year: 1991
  • Recording Year: 1978
  • Production Year: 1991
  • Record Company: Kalemegdan Disk
  • Item's Number: KD 001
  • Color of the Label: silver
  • Edition: original
  • Extras: inner sleeve, booklet
  • EAN: without EAN
  • Weight: 220 g
Grading
  • Visual: new
  • Acoustic:
  • Cover: new
First version


Kalemegdan Disk Band Information



In November 1993, when I wrote these lines, Igra Staklenih Perli (The Glass Beads Game) had already become a legend and that everywhere, where the group never had the possibility to play: outside of the Yugoslavia of the Seventies, a country which steered its course between East and West seemingly safely and whose capital was a center of the non-aligned movement. And Belgrade was also the place where in 1976 for Igra Staklenih Perli everything started.

Zoran Lakić (keyboards), Predrag “Pedja” Vuković (percussions) and Vojislav “Joshua N’Goma” Rakić (guitar) played first psychedelic improvisations and prepared themselves for stage appearances with the bass-player and singer Draško “Drakula” Nikodijević half a year later. So they played their first public concert as a quartet in the Belgrade Dadovo theatre in 1977: Spherical psychedelic rock music, visually supported by costumes, masks and a lightshow with laser and slide projectors. Since autumn 1977 Dragan “Šole” Šoć played additional drums to strengthen the rhythm section.

When the TV-director Stanko Crnobrnja, who recently returned from US America, sees the group for the first time, he invites them to appear in the TV-magazine “Nedeljom popodne” (Sunday Afternoon). Directly after a report about Erich von Däniken they play their “Majestetski kraj” (Majestic End). While Stanko’s telephone line runs hot, the music editor Mića Marković asks the group if they would like to record an LP in the 24-channel studio of RTB (Radio Televizija Beograd)…

Badly produced and only 28 minutes long, the album “Igra Staklenih Perli” was a disappointment for the band, but it sold quite well for Yugoslav circumstances: More than 10.000 copies were pressed and inspite of all lacks it was Yugoslavia’s most interesting new release in 1979.

Already in 1978 Goran Cvetić, a friend of the group, recorded a concert at the Belgrade College for Dentistry with equalizer on a simple cassette. During this concert (“Soft Explosion Live”) Igra Staklenih Perli played their complete first album and three more songs. The climax on stage was a totally crazy appearance in the Belgrade Dom Omladina (House of the Youth) in spring 1979. This concert was a main subject in the Belgrade underground, because the band succeeded in setting the whole audience in trance. From 1976 to 1980 they gave about 25 concerts, most of them in SKC (Student’s Cultural Center) in Belgrade and they never asked an entrance-fee from their listeners.

In spring 1979 mainly Zoran Lakić, who was also some kind of manager of the group, pushed the band into the studio again to record a second album to consolidate and to extend the position in the YU rock scene, the band had gained after relasing their first album. This attempt failed, because the material was still not matured enough and RTB did not give them enough studio time. Draško left the group enervated and their whole concept could not survive this crisis. The release of “Vrt svetlosti” in 1980 caused the final blow up of the band’s line-up which had made Igra Staklenih Perli so unique. The group played a few more years with changing members some kind of wave without releasing anything else on record.


Kalemegdan Disk Release Information



“Soft Explosion Live” was the first Kalemegdan Disk-Publication in summer 1991 and will remain – whatever will happen during the years – something very special and personal forever: The realization of my trip without any commercial interests and calculations.

In 1989 I met Predrag “Pedja” Vuković at Moma Rajin’s place in Belgrade and was then his guest periodically every two or three months. We talked about Igra Staklenih Perli, rock in Yugoslavia and about the rest of the world the way it looked from the Belgrade perspective. Pedja introduced me to some material that the group had recorded on cassettes for private use at the end of the Seventies. One time he compiled me two rustling tapes with spherical music. Amongst them was a part of a concert, whose strange effects conquered my heart and soul during the next months...

Pedja and I agreed very quickly that it was a pity that their remaining material only caught a lot of dust and that nobody had the possibility to listen to it. So I asked myself more and more seriously, what I – as a vinyl freak – could do to present their music to an interested public. Although (or because?) it was clear to me that Igra Staklenih Perli was an exceptional group not only in Yugoslavia and that nobody except me would engage himself for this band, I hesitated until October 1990, because we didn’t succeed in getting the master-tapes of their two RTB-LPs.

The 26th of November was then the decisive date: I had already been in Belgrade for two days, when I followed a sudden emotional impulse in the early evening to visit Pedja, although I had other appointments – but that was exactly the way I enjoyed being in Yugoslavia. Pedja was really at home – together with a friend, whom he introduces to me as Vojkan Rakić, their former guitar player. That one hour later after Zoran Lakić’s arrival the whole group’s core sat together, was then no more surprise. Actually, it was clear from the beginning that we wanted to do something together, but it turned out that Igra Staklenih Perli didn’t own a single studio-recording. Their whole material was completely recorded on ordinary cassettes.

Studio-quality or not, at the end I didn’t care and we decided to release two LPs with unpublished recordings, “Soft Explosion Live” and “Inner Flow” were to be their titles. This first version of the live album was published in summer 1991 as a 500 copies edition, but I was not satisfied with it: the sound was unevenly mixed, the trebles rattled a bit, on the B-side the bass was too weak and the order of the songs didn’t make much sense.

In April and May 1992, when I was in Belgrade for the last time during this period of my life – nevertheless for five weeks – Pedja and I came to the understanding to produce a new overworked version. At the 20th of June 1992 the studio technician Michael Carstens, my then partner Vesna Jakovljević and I rearranged the recording in only four hours studio time, this time analogue without many changes of the original cassette-sound. The sequence of the songs is now the same as it was at the concert in the Stomatološki fakultet (College of Dentistry), recorded without a noise-reduction system on a usual cassette. Only “Soft Explosion” and “Solar Modus” are shortened a little bit and the last number “Majestic End” was replaced by the final part of “Soft Explosion”, because the original tape ended too early.

Thomas Werner (1993)


Tracklist



Side A


1. Tiha eksplozija / Soft Explosion 12:37
2. Kvadrant G / Quadrant G 8:23

Side B


1. Gušterov trg / Lyzzard Square 5:29
2. Pečurka / Mushroom 7:51
3. Putovanje u plavo / Voyage into Blue 5:48
4. Povratak na Gušterov trg / Return to Lyzzard Square 4:32