MIKSER MUSIC

• Author: Gordan Paunović, Vlada Janjić
• Date: 25.05-02.06.2012.

In an attempt to once again present the trends and provide a review of the music scene, this year we opted for total eclecticism.

Over the last two years of the festival, Mikser mapped the new scene, first as an isolated fact, presenting in 2010 for the first time, in one place, on one stage, a generation that today practically dominates the Belgrade sound. Next year we played with historical references, looking for the origins of their aesthetics in the historical heritage of Yugoslav pop music of the 1980s and the early 1990s, by a symbolic task given to the performers to present and play an album chosen from this music era before the visitors of the festival.
This year we see that the time period from last year until now has practically left the majority of Mikser’s trademark bands in the same place they were a year ago, which practically freed us of the obligation to deal with their current expression... Thinking about the urban toponym where Mikser 2012 takes place, the historical space of Savamala, we tried to guess which sound of the current scene would best revive the imagined spirit of decadence and chose Anja Đorđević whose program “Šlager sa šlagom”¹ deals with the history of festival and cabaret music of this region, combining the covers of classic songs and the new material. After Anja, a performance will be held by Lady Jelena whose aesthetics of a sensitive girl in an exposed urban environment cannot be hidden by a supreme bossa nova packaging.
The Saturday night of the first weekend is based on entirely different premises. Within a Belgrade – Paris – Zagreb triangle we will present the new electro sound, which between pop and punk actually catalyses a sensibility that has so far been reserved for some other music genres. Lollobrigida will present their third album "Pilula" (“The Pill”) in a premiere performance for the Belgrade audience. The Paris-based Juno brings the sound of a scene that has for more than a decade combined dance and emo, Daft Punk, Phoenix and Kaminsky. They will be preceded by Kill Me Laser, Belgrade’s electro-punk heroes whose appearance in concert irresistibly evokes memories of the time when guitars were more important than anything.
The main concert program of Mikser 2012 will be closed by Goribor, currently the most important band on the local music scene, which is confirmed by their superstar status in the neighboring countries. Aleksandar Dragaš described their music as: "The metaphysics of life, the state of consciousness, mind and sensibility", and we can add that the success of such a band in a country like Serbia is almost an act of individual rebellion against everything that makes up our cultural environment today. Don’t miss!
Midnight programs are envisaged as a combination of satisfying the primary party animal need for “an end to a busy day” and a curious wish to see together with the Belgrade audience what some of the important heroes of the electronic club scene are doing now. Paris’s I:Cube, one of the silent heroes of analogue revisionism of the retro house sound will open the night programs of Mikser 2012. He will be joined by Undo, the legend of the Catalonian deep scene and our old friend Michael Mayer whose imprint Kompakt is today an unavoidable point in any research of contemporary German electronic music. The last but not the least, this year’s festival will be closed by Daniel Miller in person, a veteran of synth pop and electronic releases whose labels Mute and Novamute, in the 1980s, practically established synthesizer as an equally important medium as electric guitar. It is enough to say that it is a man who discovered and published bands like Depeche Mode, DAF, Yazoo, and also Einsturzende Neubauten and Nick Cave. This is why his performance will be a kind of pilgrimage and homage to a man without whom the history of the last 30 and more years of pop music would definitely be different and much poorer.