April 1, 2021, 9:50 p.m.
12. As far as I understood, the recordings made by Pedja were supposed to serve as a kind of promotional material, something that you presented to PGP RTB label, one of the largest music publishers in Yugoslavia. You had negotiations with them to release the record. How did these negotiations come about? Did they contact you? What were the conditions like on their part? Do you know why they finally decided not to publish your record after all?
Contacts with the publisher PGP RTB were going well and we were already sure that we would have the record. However, during the last meeting, everything failed (I would not go into the details of a few thousand Deutsche Marks). I reacted by simply giving up from both the band and the music ... we broke up.
I had no more desire to do music, so after a short persuasion with Alex (Stains, Plush Cats, Dead Carrington) I joined the Carringtons and we had a lot of fun (at that time I bought my first sampler Ensoniq Mirage). Medical School club was packed every Friday. The gigs ran from 11 PM to early morning. We played the Stones, Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Ramones, The Clash and other classics. After a while, all these fierce gigs affected me, so some ideas started creeping into my head. In 1988, I rented Tascam again, gathered Srda, Gax, Mali Sava (Fleke) and for the first time I added guitars to RB. I was interested in the combination of guitars and samples. I adapted the songs to the voice of Veliki Sava (Fleke), but he never recorded them and only the working versions (12 songs) remained with my voice and my dissatisfaction with the project. After a while, Petar Usurević (Agnus Dei) sang on five songs and fixed the thing a bit.
13. Some of the synth bands of the time (Videosex, Denis & Denis) became big mainstream pop bands. Many other bands of similar expression like Data, Tužne uši (Sad Ears), Ogledala (Mirrors) received much less support and rarely released records. How do you look at that situation? Were you disappointed that you failed to release a record in 1987?
I was very disappointed. I even wanted to stop playing music, but after a while I came back with a little different ideas. I couldn't hold back. All these events, ie. disappointments pushed me to change and improve, so I have remained in music and sound engineering until today, and most importantly, I live from it and I live for it.
14. After the end of Romantic Colors, you had a solo band called Pasivni posmatrači prirode (Passive Observers of Nature), and released a cassette. How did that project come about?
In the nineties I tried to combine punk with electronics (I've always loved DAF). That is how Passive Observers of Nature was created. The”band” left behind a mini album "Intro" for the publishing house "Dom". I did not consider PPP a real band. It represented my need to get rid of everything that was accumulating in me, and in that I had the help of my friends Điđa and Krasa (Arnold Layn). The album "Intro" (that's why it's called like that) was supposed to be an introduction to the full version of the album next year. That album contained several instrumental versions of the songs that were to appear on the full album next year. That album was supposed to be twice as long, but it didn't happen due to inflation, devaluation and wars.
For the next few years, I hung out with Cepi, Kras, Mima, Djidja and the Markiz (Arnold Layn & Alchemy) and in 1994 we released the album Land Ho for ITV Melomarket. This socializing has continued to this day with another album (2018) Jednom nogom u grobu (One foot in the grave) for RNR Records.
The beginning of the nineties is very important for my involvement with music. Then I got my first Atari STE and I became “self-sufficient.” A few years later I bought an Atari Falcon and then a whole new world opened up for me - I could do audio at home on 8 stereo, ie 16 mono channels, and nicely sync it all with midi channels. My happiness was endless.
The PPP album Elektro-etno from 1995 was not released because there was no purpose in doing so in those crazy years. I worked because I could. The basis of this collection of poems is the collection work of Prof. Dr. Dimitrij Golemović, the then head of the Department of Ethno Musicology at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. The songs were created in reverse, ie. a recordings (from the field) of ethno instruments and voices were used, and then synchronization and creation of music and arrangements was done, all on the Atari Falcon.
In 2015, at the urging of my best man Cepi (Arnold Layn), I went through this material again, played, cleaned, slightly rearranged, mastered and did a couple of new songs, of course, in accordance with the time and technology. And here again were Passive Observers of Nature (Cepi, Krasa and I), but this time the project was called Obredne narodne pesme (Ritual Folk Songs). Four songs were released on two compilations on Outerbass Records - Mad Audio Scientists vol.1 and vol.2, but the album as a whole was not released. In 2017, we had a multimedia concert as part of the Nishville Jazz Festival.
15. What do you do today? Do you make music? Are you still involved in studio work?
Since the nineties, ie. from the purchase of the first computer to the present day, I use my free time to work on instrumental music, Romantic Colors - Music for movies and games. So far, I have finalized over 100 themes. mostly I’m jealously stashing them.
By the way, I am professionally engaged in sound processing, making radio and TV commercials, presentations, documentaries, composing, arranging and mastering sound.
From the equipment I have: PCs, MacBook Air, Atari Falcon, iPad 2, iPad Air 2, Alesis IO Dock II, Arturia Audiofuse, Focusrite Scarlett 8i6 3rd Gen, iConnectMIDI4 +, Akai Advance 61, NI MT32, Ensoniq Mirage, Korg M1, Korg Radias, Roland SC88 Pro, Roland Integra 7.
16. Who is ‘good old Alex’? Dobri Isak mention him in one of their songs and he is listed on you LP thanks list.
As for "good old mystic Alex", I don't know exactly who Pedja meant when he wrote Mi plačemo iza tamnih naočara (We Cry Behind Dark Glasses). I never even asked him. In my head I always saw our good friend Alex (Fleke) behind that bar.
17. Thank you very much for your time and for the unforgettable music you left us. All the best.