longital

Tout le monde en a entendu parler, cet été. Un groupe soi-disant „slovakistanais“, les Bratislava Boys, venait d´être découvert. Une télévision, branchée jeune, voulait faire un coup de bluff, sans réellement penser qu´elle s´amusait sur le dos d´un pays peu connu. En réalité, tout était faux. Il a été totalement inventé par la bande du Morning live. Cette farce n´était pas du meilleur goût. La Slovaquie n´a pas à se formaliser de cette vulgarité. Le pays regorge de talents prometteurs. Complètement inconnus en France car les distributeurs y sont absents, de nombreux groupes créent de la musique originale et pleine de trouvaille. Shina est la chanteuse phare du jeune groupe slovaque Dlhé diely (Longital) qui fait du trip hop ou du „son de Bristol“, tel qu´il est incarné par Massive Attack. Le disque Sinadisk est un petit bijou. Les sons produits sont ingénieux et véritablement atypiques, servis par la voix toute de sensualité de Shina. La langue slovaque, par ses sonorités particulières, est sans doute à l´origine de cette créativité. elle s´adapte parfaitement à cette musique. shina est produit par un petit label slovaque indépendant, Slnko records. À l´écoute, on reste en apesanteur.
- Europe & Liberté

When two continents collide the results is more than earthquakes and mountains. The moment they brush against one another, the lives of two separate landmasses join in a burst of exchange and evolution. Two worlds end and a new one is born.
Something of this sort happens on Sveta diely (which translates as both "Continents" and "Tectonic Plates"), the title of the new album from Bratislava´s Dlhé diely.
Until this album, duo Daniel Salontay and Shina had released four disks on which, though they played together (at times together with friends), the personality of one or the other always defined the album.
On this fifth outing the duo´s individual sounds fuse. Salontay and Shina come tohether, allowing artistic ideas to cross freely from one side to the other, setting off an explosion of new growth. The results is the band´s most successful album to date.
The fusion is not taken so far that the album will seem strange to fans. Each song leans toward one or the other of the duo, letting the listener know that, buried somewhere below this new world, a dynamic fault line remains.
Shina is more focussed than on the previous albums. She reins in her lyrics and delivery, and this newly-concentrated power is clean from the first words of the opening Dobrovo¾ná jeseò, a shuffling folk-pop track that eases into your head like an old friend and is just as hard to forget.
The wild electronic production seen on the Sinadisk album (with the help of Slavo Solovic) is also toned down, without loosing any atmospheric effectiveness. One example of this is the use of strings and soft pulsing in the background of Zeleným po¾om, which forms a velvet cushion for Shina´s voice. Another is the sound of crickets and sawing on Postavím ti dom that envelops rather than distracts from Salontay´s acoustic guitar and Shina´s voice.
For his part, Salontay takes his voice and guitar, which he stripped down to their essential elements on the albums Tu and September, a step farther. On Sveta diely´s title track, minimal arrangements are directed into mesmerizing repeating bars that gather lightly, like clouds of emotion.
Likewise, he does not waste a note with the funky acoustic guitar underpinning Bublinky, or the blues-rock on Poslušný muž, a song full of reverb and percussive bite where he raises his voice from its unusual soft one.
The songs in which Salontay and Shina sing togeter are a welcome change. It is nice to know that not all tectonic meetings end in disaster.
By Erick Smillie, 1/17/2005
- The Slovak Spectator