Sirom: I Can Be A Clay Snapper LP

Hailing from Slovenia, Sirom play vividly textured instrumental folk musics in which handmade global instrumentation meets fearless sound exploration. Samo Kutin and Ana Kravanja first met at the improvisational music workshops conducted by leading Slovenian improviser Tomaz Grom and Japanese improvisational percussionist Seijiro Murayama. Other shared influences include classical minimalism and global musics. The couple eventually formed the kalimba-based duo Najoua, before forming Sirom with Iztok Koren. The band's emergent sound oscillates between a wide array of acoustic folk sounds and contemporary post-rock meditations, often drifting from improvisation to structured composition and then back. The trio describes it as "imaginary folk" or "folk from a parallel universe." According to Kutin, the guiding concepts of their music-making are: "To play on acoustic instruments, to work with repetition and a common sound. Each of us can play a simple thing, but the overall result is that a complex thing comes to life. The quality of sound depends on the combination of the instruments and that's why we modify and prepare instruments or create our own." As an avid sound-seeker, Kutin began to develop an interest in building instruments out of everyday objects like drawers, computer boxes and other "junk" (as he lovingly calls his creations), in addition to re-tooling the ones he brought back from his globetrotting adventures (which have included personal encounters with local musicians in India, Morocco, Mali, Greece, and elsewhere). In the little village of Lesno Brdo, tucked in the rolling hills six miles south of Ljubljana, Kravanja and Kutin organize music performances and festivals on a farm they rent, and divide their time between music-making and vegetable farming. With I Can Be A Clay Snapper, the trio have devised a work of fearlessly textured sonic landscapes both linked to and unbound by the past and present, geography and tradition, the real and imagined. Hypnotic, otherworldly, and epic, Sirom's music moves like the restless waters of their homeland. No matter how hushed or slow it may seem, it is never standing still. Iztok Koren: banjo, three-string banjo, bass drum, percussion, chimes, balafon, objects; Ana Kravanja: violin, viola, ribab, cünbüs, balafon, ngoma drum, mizmar, objects, voice; Samo Kutin: lyre, balafon, one-string bass, frame drums, brač, gongoma, mizmar, objects, voice.