Igra Staklenih Perli
Inner Flow / Unutrašnji tok

  • Format: LP
  • Band: Igra Staklenih Perli
  • Title: Inner Flow / Unutrašnji tok
  • Band's Origin: YU
  • Style: psychedelic Rock, English lyrics
  • Rating: 5
  • Release Year: 1992
  • Recording Year: 1976-1979
  • Production Year: 1991
  • Record Company: Kalemegdan Disk
  • Item's Number: KD 002
  • Color of the Label: silver
  • Edition: 1994
  • Extras: inner sleeve, insert
  • EAN: without EAN
  • Weight: 214 g
Grading
  • Visual: new
  • Acoustic:
  • Cover: new

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



The five of them met by accident. That is, if you don’t believe in the immanent laws that govern our lives and actions. It was an encounter of people who were a bit different in their attitudes towards life and in musical taste, but yet had something in common: a need to create and explore beautiful and strange and frightening spiritual places for the pure joy of it. Although they were fortunate enough to spend different periods of their lives at various points of this planet, the place of their encounter was as strange as if they came from outer space – the Balkans, where their home land is.

Each of them had experienced different influences while they developed their consciousness. They listened to Pink Floyd, Can, Tangerine Dream, Yes and Jimi Hendrix, they read Hermann Hesse, Castaneda, the “Tibetian Book of the Dead” and they seldom did anything important without consulting the I Ching.

So their energies met. And together, they started to create their world, finding out that the most adequate means in materializing it were the sound and their love for sound images. They rarely did proper “rehearsals”. Every meeting was meant to establish new frontiers of perception – and they always had a demanding audience: themselves.

By the time they realized they had something worth showing to the others, they decided to get on stage. There again, they didn’t really distinguish between live performances and “rehearsals”. And soon enough, the word spread among the people – Igra Staklenih Perli, Das Glasperlenspiel, The Glass Beads Game became a band with “something else”, a group of people that had the power to work out some magic for everyone who was ready to be there.

As Pedja, the percussionist, says: “You watch yourself playing, your hands move seemingly without volition, you percieve yourself “knowing without knowing” what will happen next, you feel that sound has set several – sometimes quite a lot – minds “in phase”, that you’ve cast yourself in an incredible procession of psychical landscapes. The collective sphere of awareness is expanding, the spiritual eye opens, you feel an ever expanding number of minds joininig you and then you “remember” that you’re on stage and you see those faces in rapture and you realize that you’ve taken them somewhere they’ve never been before. Somewhere even you’ve never been before, that even for one moment we’ve managed to make ourselves ONE. Wow! That moment of oneness is worth hundreds of gigs!”

All that happened at the end of the Seventies. It isn’t very difficult to imagine the conditions for rock music in Yugoslavia at this time, really unfortunate for the young players and even worse for the alternative musicians. Members of the Glass Beads Game found themselves spending more and more time arguing with the record company and less and less in the creative process. And the joy had gone. Although they were the first band in Yugoslavia to use laser on stage, although they managed to control sound and lights on stage themselves while playing, after two records they were forced to accept the fact that the obstacles and the lack of comprehension of those “in power” were too big to be overcome. And so they stopped.

The tapes you are about to witness were never published before. They’ve waited silently for their moment to come. And in spite of all those years, the essence of their music remains very much alive – one is still amazed by the level of “oneness” they succeeded to achieve. Anybody who ever attended their live performances would be able to recognize that spiritual feeling, so rare and so unique. Something that was so unexpected at that time, something that is still quite a surprise for the listeners. The Glass Beads Game wishes you welcome in the Inner Flow of their world of sound.

...

They came from outer space, gliding effortlessly on the Inner Flow that permeates this universe. After brief sojourn at different points of this tiny globe, they met at the navel of this dimension and, finding their vibrational level matched perfectly, decided to give birth to some powerfull magic. Planets trembled in their courses, each quasar missed one blink to stare at this marvel and earthly astrologers puzzled over a strange set of conjunctions and oppositions. Taking material forms they used this magic to leed the elect through the portals of time and space and play this new game. And after it was completed they assumed new forms, waiting for the new cycle of rebirth to start another game…

Predrag Vuković & Vesna Jakovljević (1991).


Tracklist



Side A


1. a) Flow Access / Uranjanje 1:44
1. b) Hotel Wave / Hotel talas 4:56
1. c) Magic Machine / Magijska mašina 7:59
2. Lake of Lily / Jezero ljiljana 6:38

Side B


1. Drakula’s Dance / Drakulina igra 6:56
2. Inner Flow / Unutrašnji tok 12:01
3. Balkan IV / Balkan IV 4:03