Birdland - History of Love and Belief 1980

This album features Yugoslav musicians who created a band in Switzerland where they recorded three albums. Their first magnificent mahavishnu-hard rip-roaring fusion is an unforgettable supersonic smash through the ears, full of majestic and satanic guitar riffs and thundering basslines all momentumed to phenomenal crashlandings, not a single boring slow throwaway in sight. Their second from a year later which is featured here is not quite as good and energetic though it without doubt stands comparison, using the same high-energy and modal style chords (cf. McCoy Tyner in late sixties, with Miles Davis). Unfortunately both master Shige and myself obtained copies by an odd cosmic coincidence or alignment of the z-list stars and as a result we are spoiled here with two versions of rippery hereby enclosed beneath the fold, again I defer to master Shige for the musical quality of his equipment and care of his time.

Back of album includes credits as follows:
Borivoje Vukadinovic - bass
Predrag Bankovic - guitar (responsible for most of the composition, not surprisingly)
Peter Humi - drums
Boris Relja - piano (no slavic band complete without a boris)
Beat Rauch - percussion

Recorded live at sinus studio berne, Helvetia, Feb 28-29 1980...

First track, Birdland 1 starts off in either A minor or B minor (I can't tell) with a very chromatic and angular riff on guitar then abruptly descends to the minor second tone below, for some arpeggiated chords. Great modulation there. Unfortunately we are then 'treated' to about 8 minutes of virtuoso soloistic noodling.
Second Track, "Pureheart" is obviously keyboardist-written starting with an obbligato piano which passes into some really nice structured jazz sampling but after three minutes we can fast forward all the way through unless interest is to be left lost and bereft at the bottom of an oceanic ridge of meaningless notes.

Side 2 starts with Firebird (dedicated to Christy Doran, probably a pretty interesting lady by the sounds of it) some very McCoy-esque modalities intro into a high-nitro dzyan-like riff. It amazes me that 5 talented and super-fast musicians can create such orchestral music with just their instruments and psycho-energy alone in probably a few takes with no overdubs.
The continuation of Birdland ensues, at this point mentally following the relentless guitar becomes a bit wearying. The minor descending chord pattern is hard to enjoy when so overused in rock music (A minor - G - F - E as in Led Zep Babe I'm gonna leave you). In this case I think in B minor though I might be mistaken.
The last song again from pianist Relja starts with Kentonesque piano dissonances and moves into some acoustic guitar soloing... A little disappointing an ending, but there is another, a third album, which they did a year later (In a temple of silence).

Mention as usual must be made of the amazing cover photograph showing a picture of a white beach with a cliff or mountain almost evoking a post-nuclear holocaust scene, complementing well the title of 'history of love and belief' i.e., post-communist nothingness - ? evolutionary depredations of a windswept radioactive desert in five fusion riffs - ? I won't get into how soviet ecocide destroyed the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, by diverting all rivers for irrigation projects (mostly to make cheap cotton for domestic clothes) until today it is a tiny salt-swept cesspool of pesticide contaminations-- and sure you'll be grateful for that.

Birdland 1


Firebird