https://youtu.be/bQebq8Zgwxc

Mario Batkovic is a Swiss virtuoso solo accordion player born in Bosnia. His playing can be challenging and experimental, yet it maintains a masterfully beautiful quality. He scratches every nuance out of the instrument, integrating scratches and clicks into the arrangements and making a feature of the kind of tonal scars and birthmarks which are usually eradicated from recordings and live performances.

Available on Black Double LP housed in a spined sleeve, complete with digital download card. Also available as a CD Digipack.

At times the playing sounds like low end distorted feedback, at other times like an obscure analogue synthesiser. But the common thread running throughout is the quality in the writing and arrangement, and Batkovic's mastery of this instrument.

Through the accordion, he’s been able to channel an unbound desire to explore and express, a freedom that he has been denied through the various physical, social, cultural, and political borders that have existed in his life.

His music criss-crosses between classical and contemporary, often featuring many classical cadences and harmonies, yet is also interlaced with less conventional sounds by using the instrument percussively and draws from minimalism.

When Geoff Barrow (Portishead) was introduced to Batkovic’s music, he immediately realised both its musical and technical proficiencies, as well as its sheer uniqueness. Batkovic was subsequently invited to support Beak on their 2015 tour and then signed to his record label: Invada.

Geoff began working with Batkovic in the studio, encouraging him to write in new ways and opening doors for new musical directions. And the finished product, is a manifestation of this. The album is encompassing in its moods and sounds, for example drawing on a restlessness and urgency that can be found in the album’s opening track Quatere, yet delivering someth.......
więcej