Zel’s music has been echoing through my home for just over a week now. Repeating over and over again, the songs mix in and out at first in order, then random, but somehow I can bring myself to write, just everything else. After the initial time I listened to Truth all the way through, I immediately went to my own musical instruments and played for hours until I collapsed into sleep literally, on top of my synthesizer headphones and all. The next time I listened to the album for a few hours in a row, this time meditating, only to go on to do some artwork. On the third run through, I attempted to write while we had company, hoping that comments about the music would be influential to the process. Instead, the music stirred an epic philosophical conversation that spanned hours. All the while, people enjoying the music of Truth, yet no one ever noticing a mere 10 songs were on repeat (actually 9 as Libertas is good enough to revisit at the end of the album up-tempo style) the entire time! But to the end, toes tap, and tongues loosen with the intricate melodies, core to the music that drove the conversation. It was by this time I was realizing just why this review is so difficult to write: Zel’s Truth is empathetic to the listener’s real emotion, giving us honest inspiration, from his genuine love of melody, not only as a musical construct, but as a core theme for his music that extends to life. The songs are liable to send you into a creative frenzy just as much as they can sooth the mind or ease the soul. All of this without a single word spoken, but there’s no need! Zelimir Vukasin’s poetry is in his fingers, the meaning of the lyric is in the way each string is plucked. The rhyme of the unvoiced word is in how the flamenco balances elegantly to the pseudo-acoustic electronica, drums, and strings. Every bit sounds real, like Zel has amassed a world-class percussion section and chamber of strings for your private audience. Letting the music drift out to my deck, laying in the sun, or working in the garden, one can almost feel the Mediterranean breeze in the airy synths. One can hear the ocean waves crash just under where the strum of the guitar meets the rattle-click of the castanets. This record sends one to a happy place that is energetic, yet calm.
On Truth you will find a sort of musical historian’s reverence for the past from a place renown for its multicultural and adventurous heritage, The Pearl of the Adriatic Sea, Dubrovnik, Croatia, brought in honest candor to New York with a scientist’s sense of what is modern, what is still pertinent now, no matter the age or place. The song “First” is a good example. Here we find Zel updating a classic Croatian folk song to a modern sense of musicality with splendid results. It is amazing to think that here in the U.S., I may have simply never even heard it otherwise, and that would be a real shame. The problem with modernity and the race to new advances in any culture is what gets tossed to the wayside in the struggle. Thank goodness for musicians like Zel, keeping these auditory treasures, salvaging their riches for the likes of us! Another song that reaches back in time is “Light”, performed in what is known as an Alegrías, or a strict flamenco structure designed for traditional Spanish dancing. It is a difficult pattern to play (to say the least). The tremolo strum timing is a work of master technical instrumental skill and yet the sound is natural, the timing flawless. Even though it seems at first a stretch that Croatian folk music should translate well into Spanish flamenco, we must remember that long before the Age of Discovery, the great port cities of Cadiz in Spain and Dubrovnik in Croatia, they were close via sailing vessel. Cadiz is on the very southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, native origin of land Alegrías, and Dubrovnik is on the southern most tip of Croatia; each an ancient trade Mecca in their own rights, were at the time closer then many land based trade or travel routes to other great cities. Now with advanced travel and the internet, we all get to experience the synthesis of Zel’s lush musical history; much the same way the Mediterranean cultures met when sailing became prominent, only on a massive scale. We all now surf the world web searching for great music to mesh our own styles. Zel does not resist the future or the past, does not abide by cultural stereotypes, but embraces all, to write music in the moment. One of the arts somewhat lost on our postmodern culture is the actual meaning and power of song as a part of daily life. Most people enjoy music, but few seem to perceive the ways it moves us all physically and metaphorically. Billions of people rely on music to help them in every imaginable occasion each moment. There are some songwriters whom hear clearly the timeless harmonies of life as they resonate through all of us. Zel is a musician firmly imbedded in a rich past, giving us looks into what the future fusion of what “music as we know it” could become. Similar to how artists like David Gray have fused together classical folk guitar with electronic rock rhythm drum machines, on the Truth album, Zel is taking two completely different styles (at least), and producing a fresh new sound that appeals to an older and younger generation simultaneously. Few artists have the style and grace to mend seemingly opposing elements of music into true beauty. Perhaps, Zel is healing a part of music we didn’t know was broken. He reminds us how reliable and essential these old styles are, and how amazing new technology can make what once seemed old, outdated, or even irrelevant –not so!- new. This music is important to art, and how we see it. Zel makes great music for not just many occasions, but for the many phases of life and how we live them. Truth is music for the soul.
Reviewed By Julian Gorman
