BLEIBURG

"Pieces Of A Broken Dream"

Cold Spring - 2006

2 CD

The most addicted and spendthrift vinyl collectors will surely remember of the name Bleiburg and his creator Stefan Rukavina, who a few years ago was also running German label Thaglasz and releasing some of the most incredible limited-editions ever seen, with the 10-LPs boxset "Security Of Ignorance" remaining as the most representative example. Apart from a few again extremely limited vinyls (a 7" single and a double LP) and various apparitions on the aforementioned releases, Bleiburg had never released anything else, much less on digital format. Cold Spring presents now this double CD featuring 24 unreleased tracks, rich of collaborations and apparitions by a lot of neofolk and industrial artists appeared on the collectable Thaglasz samplers.

Since its last manifestation, Bleiburg has changed from a one-man project into a band of four elements, considerably widening its musical possibilities. The listening of the first CD will be a surprise for those who remember the not very convincing noise tracks featured on "Za Dom Spremni" or "Notre Domicile Est L'Europe": the sound has turned into an epic, dramatic and powerful mixture of martial industrial, neofolk, and dark ambient, thanks also to the collaboration of the likes of Cawatana, The Soil Bleeds Black, Harvest Rain and Lonsai Maikov. "Teufeldivision", for example, stands out as a powerful and perfect neofolk anthem, with nothing to envy to any of that scene's big names, while self-titled "Bleiburg", with its echoed and cavernous thuds and ghostly keyboards, could have come out of Raison d'être's mind.

CD 2 presents a totally different face of Bleiburg's music, closer to the early experiments but, of course, a lot more refined and effective, although this second half is less homogeneous and convincing than the first. The interesting part is that the band is here working with very topical issues, as shown by titles like "Oil In Their Eyes", "Muezzin Pop" or "The Days Of The Storm", and by the fusion of noisy ambient with Muslim chants and sampled voices from the Middle East, in the vein of what recently listened from Ure Thrall or, in the past, by the pioneer Muslimgauze. This time, the list of guest stars features, among the others, Aube, Nocturne, Telepherique and Vidna Obmana.

Undoubtedly, "Pieces Of A Broken Dream" will appeal to the whole martial industrial / neofolk audience, as well as to the more noisy and experimental maniacs, since both genres are well represented on the two CDs, and there is enough variety among the tracks to make the listening of both hardly ever boring. The only legitimate doubt is how much of this reach menu is to be credited to Bleiburg themselves and not rather to their numerous guests.

- Simon V.

Website: http://www.coldspring.co.uk

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/bleiburg