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Borut Kržišnik — Utopia
(Bandcamp Claudio Records CC6058, 2024, CD / DL)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2025-01-06

Utopia Cover art

Four years after his previous release, Dancing Machine, Borut Kržišnik returns with a new avant-garde release, Utopia, his ninth album. Utopia continues Kržišnik’s exploration of synths, music software, and live playing. On Utopia the music is quite abstract, academic, and at times sterile, but this is intentIonal as Kržišnik is challenging reality with his abstract musical visions. He maintains that Utopia and its abstractions are not just fantasy ideas about an ideal society where abundance and harmony reign — they are also our human values, desires, and ambitions, which cannot be fully fulfilled as well. These concepts are embodied in his piece “Stockdale Paradox,” named for Admiral James B. Stockdale, who was the highest ranking officer taken prisoner during the Viet Nam War and held in the Hanoi Hilton. His unwavering faith that he would eventually prevail and be released in contrast to facing the brutal day-to-day facts of not knowing when he would be taken out for torture is what has become know as the Stockdale Paradox — his ability to balance realism and optimism against difficult situations. Across the eight experimental tracks, Kržišnik presents us with violent abstract strings (played, plucked, and scraped), electronics, dissonance, and metallic sonic textures that try your patience and then resolve into near cinematic compositions. The listener must have faith that the music will resolve itself over the album’s 58 minutes. Utopia to me sounds like Kržišnik took Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack, especially Ligeti’s work, to its extreme limits.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Borut Kržišnik

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