Taxirat 9 Festival Concludes

10 December 2007

The 9th Taksirat Music Festival concluded last Saturday, December 8, offering eight hours of mostly frenetic rock and roll. This year, also, Taksirat Music Festival joined the MTV Movement Campaign for tolerance and respect of diversity, launched at this years EXIT Festival. The Saturday�s event concluded a full week of concerts, all under the Taksirat cover.

The opening gig is traditionally reserved to the winner of the Winner (formerly Loser Fest), a competition of demo-bands from Macedonia, which is on the other hand traditionally won by representatives of the varied metal scene. This year�s Winner fest was no exception, and we had the chance to see the first major performance by Holocaust, thrash metal band from Kumanovo. As all representatives of their respective genre, Holocaust offered a well rehearsed gig, with the required amount of power chords, speedy solos and shrieking vocals provided by the lead singer who favours big biceps rather than big hair. It was too early in the night, however, and they had to perform in front of several hundred die-hard HM loyals.

The things started to heat up with the appearance of Deni te Chuva, for quite some time the sweethearts of the Macedonian punk (or post-punk scene), who presented an energetic well-rehearsed performance of their version of melodic punk-rock, greatly influenced by bands like Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks, rather than locally far more popular and influential American HC/Punk scene. DTC created the first and quite literal fireworks in the audience during the performance of their entry in this year�s competition for selection of the anthem of Macedonian national sports themes, with football fans in the crowd lighting several flares and recreating the atmosphere of a derby match.

The stage was then taken by Zagreb-based punk rockers Hladno Pivo, one of the most socially engaged bands in former Yugoslavia. Their loyal following is due to their great ability to transfer the frustrations presented by the years of transition, the prevalent ideology of consumerism, new shopping malls, spectacle-oriented mass media, youth alienation, domestic violence and environmental destruction, into short frenetic songs, offering an occasional cross-over into hip-hop, metal and ska. The peak of their performance was when they invited on stage the brass section of the local ska favourites Superhics for a performance of their big 2003 hit Zimmer Frei.

Hladno Pivo was followed by Slovenians Leibach, pioneers of the industrial scene and possibly the best know product of the former-Yugoslav rock and popular music in the west, primarily due to their power of political provocation and skillful manipulation of visual imagery of various political ideologies. They mostly played material from their latest project reworking a number of national anthems of various countries in the world. As usual, their performance is based on strong visual effects and larger than life beats over sampled music and vocals delivered in a style best suited to political rallies. All in all, rather interesting and visually certainly effective, but Laibach will never get any crowd dancing, which, one should add, was never their intention.

Leibach left the stage to the headliners of the evening, the legendary (one of the few actual uses of the word where no hint of irony applies) Mancunian punk-rockers, The Buzzcocks. Buzzcocks were never outright political, like the other prominent members of the UK punk scene, but preferred to turn out furiously paced pop-songs about teenage anguish over unfulfilled sexual and emotional aspirations, delivered in the famously high-pitched vocal style of lead-singer Pete Shelley. The melodic hooks and the beats rarely fail to put the audience in motion, and this gig was not an exception. During their performance, the band mostly stuck, rather wisely we should note, to its much celebrated Singles Going Steady album - actually, one of the best recordings of all times, in my mind - with occasional song here and there from other periods of their career. The fact that all the members of the band are now middle aged men, in yours truly humble opinion, singing about �lost youth� actually gains some additional credibility. They may have come to Skopje at least 20 years too late (I don�t intend to join here a much debated and discussed problem why currently big bands rarely come to Macedonia) but for at least one person in the crowd, it was a well deserved wait and utterly satisfying experience.

The last act of the night were the Darko Rundek & Cargo Orchestra, a truly international band based in France, but founded and fronted by Rundek, one of the cult figures of former-Yugoslav new wave scene of the early 1980�s and leader of possibly the best band of that scene, Haustor. Rundek immediately announced the intention to avoid the Cargo Orchestra�s new album and to stick to his earlier successes both with Haustor and his solo career, including a rousing performance of his 1996 hit �Apokalipso�, easily the highlight of the otherwise routine gig without much fire or desire. Having in mind that we get Rundek, and his entourage of the day, in Macedonia on quite regular basis over the last several years, I have to admit that I hoped to hear more from his latest stuff, especially the excellent 2006 release Mhm A-ha Oh Yeah Da-Da: Migration Stories and Love Songs.

Meanwhile, on the other, electronic stage, there were performances by the local ensemble PMG Collective, DJ Tiga (apparently a huge global star on the electronic scene, which of course, means nothing to your reporter) and Bosnian reggae-dub band Dubioza Collective. Dubioza Collective�s intelligent use of dub beats, samples and politically engaged lyrics (they were part of the Bosnian DOSTA! movement), and a high quality performance, bring about the big question for me regarding the 2007 Taksirat Festival � why weren�t Dubioza Collective on the main stage? In fact, if I were in charge of the line-ups, I would have probably decided to put Laibach on the electronika stage (even better, reserve them a separate night all on their own, and move the Bosnians on the main stage. Then again, we can�t change it now, can we?

In terms of organization, great praise is due to organizers Lithium Records. The time table worked fine (with the note that maybe the whole event should have started a bit earlier, so that it could end a bit earlier), the security was discreet and almost invisible, as it should be, and there were no problems with long crowds forming at the gates, or the beer stands for that matter.

Finally, this year�s Taksirat 9 Festival joined the MTV Europe Foundation�s MTV Movement campaign for promotion of Europe�s progressive transition from its past of conflicts, separation and isolation towards positive future based on tolerance. Together with its partners (No Borders NGO � Skopje, CreACTive Youth Association, Line Initiative and Movement and AEGEE Skopje, Taksirat distributed promotional materials informing the visitors about various forms of discrimination, hate speech violence and incidents, and inviting them to adopt the principles of tolerance and diversity.