Z is for Zykopops

This sounds like a half-baked student project that shouldn’t have gone beyond the confines of Zagreb University. It’s a shame, as there are some very accomplished musicians involved: the Croatian alt-folk band Kries, a good female vocalist, Lidija Dokuzovic and an unnamed fiery violinist (could this be producer Martin Swan?). The press release and CD notes are less than helpful: the music ‘shocks and unifies the post-conflict sensibilities of former Jugoslavs with its anti-materialist mission statement of catharsis and mythical regeneration through the embracing of trash aesthetic and post Marxist dialectic’.

Which leaves us with the music. The best that can be said for it is there are moments of fine singing and playing, but the overall aesthetic grounds it with over¬heavy beats or wafer-thin production. Songs are in Hungarian, Serbo-Croat, Romani and other languages. There are good things that could have been developed, but life’s too short. They’d have been better off scrapping it and starting again.