Those who handle folkloristic forms and motifs can quickly put their foot in their mouth – after all, where there’s soil, blood is never far away. In recent years, however, the Slovenian band Širom, for example, has proven that the results do not necessarily have to smell of eso-nationalism, but can also convey a very open transculturalism and an inkling of a better future. Whether they can really share the stage with Merope on their European tour in spring as planned is questionable at the moment, but it would make a devastating amount of sense. For the Belgian-Lithuanian band is also putting new wine into old wineskins in the best sense of the word: »Salos« is their fourth album and is surprisingly released by STROOM, but is in good hands there in a way. The seven pieces, recorded together with a chamber choir, have an organic, sleepy psychedelic quality that not infrequently borders on New Age tropes, without, however, putting its foot in its mouth and losing its structure because of all the fantasies of transcending boundaries. No, »Salos« is just as musically stringent as it is conceptually, as the first piece shows: a song carried by guitar and flute merges into electronic sounds before it becomes a polyphonic vocal piece. More important than the repetition and arrangement of individual passages is the journey from one to the other. »Salos« also knows no fixed home, but only movement, connecting lines instead of vanishing points – somehow between ambient, chugging rhythms, a capella interweaving and a form of folklore that is open in all directions. It is, in short, a superior album. Friendly, modest, yet undoubtedly visionary.
Salos
