These days I continue to work on little pieces — drafts or sketches — that are possible seeds for serious tracks. They are mostly not longer than a minute, 16, maybe 20 bars, and contain a drumbeat, a bassline, or even solely a melodic line. I’m sitting on this kind of work for a good month already, so I have decided a week ago to try to work on longer pieces — still sketches or drafts — where I’d begin to work on structural ideas, calling them skeletons.

After a week of work I’m realising I’m still making short 1 minute sketches (which I’m posting the backstage section) without any serious attempt at bigger structure, and I’ve been thinking why is that so. One reason might be that I have about maksimum three hours in the morning to work on music-making (that’s pretty much self-imposed), but usually less. Another (and perhaps central) reason seems to be, however, certain reluctance to start working on a track’s structure.

Truth is, once you start working on a structure, musical work starts to be much more demanding. There’s so much more mental work involved once you start thinking through the timeline:  if this is here, then this must happen there or if here’s a breakdown there must be an announcement of it, perhaps through a build-up, or should it? And similar kind of thinking.

It seems suddenly creating music ceases to be only playing with sounds and beats but becomes some kind of story-making. And that has its own rules, which are as complex as they can get. When diving into the structural dimension of a time-based creation, what emerges is responsibility towards that dimension.

The process has now seriously begun. We (Wanda & Nova deViator) are working in the studio on a daily basis, desperately wishing for a residency possibility, when you move away from daily grind, from administrative tasks, managing the association, the label, cooking, kids, and so many other things. But, hey, it’s what we need to work with.

Autumn is quickly approaching, and deadlines are looming. While we’re releasing the album at the end of November, the album tracks need to be finished in mid-September for them to go into mixing and mastering by Igor “PlankTon” Vuk of the BeatMyth fame. Which leaves less than two months to write the album. Our goal is to produce 8-10 tracks that will go onto a double vinyl. I’m now pretty serious about crowdfunding campaign, which should start at the end of August. I’m quite nervous about it, I really want it to work out. In the meantime the tracks need to work too, and I’m such a perfectionist, and I always run out of time.

All-in-all summer will contain some sea-side, bit of traveling, but also a lot of work, out of which a lot is creative (thankfully). This is a journey into sound.

We (Wanda & Nova deViator) didn’t quite know what to expect when we were packing things up for this Maribor gig. The last (and the first) time we played in Maribor, it was at a small low-profile venue called Stolp_3. It was (and still is) run by single guy, who purposefully keeps it without much advertising not wanting to grow, not wanting to be in the spotlight, just throwing gig here and there and hang out with people. Many locals from Maribor don’t even know about Stolp 3.

Anyway, Gustaf/Pekarna is whole different story – as we’ve been told, it’s pretty hard to have a decent crowd at the venue, but believe it or not, the crowd was quite in decent numbers – far from empty, but not too crowded. The event was a three-day-long 24th anniversary of Maribor’s Radio Študent – MARŠ and we played on the second day – Friday.

During our drive we remembered that we played our first duet performance “Une façon d’aimer” in Gustaf for the last time. Will the last Pacification performance be also the last time at this venue? Most probably not, since there’s a long way till autumn: in November we plan to premiere our next project which would include album and a performance/concert. So until then, it’s doubtful we wouldn’t play another gig with Pacification.

We shared the stage with Karmakoma from Krško – a trio that played an interesting blend of  post-rock electronics with funk gusto – think of old Faith No More, LCD Sound System, The Prodigy and hints of Death from Above 1979. While their sound guy was no perfection (vocal suffered the most) the music was full of energy, solid structures and wit. We exchanged CDs and other merch and the next day I was blown away by quality of their record – Imagination & Mechanical Metamorphoses – have a listen and support.

The reception of our gig was very very positive, organizer also told us, that we were impatiently expected in Maribor by some fans. Everyone seemed very satisfied, we could have played a second bis/encore, if we would have anything prepared for it.

A rerun of »What if« at MuCEM, Marseille-Provence 2013 (European Cultural Capital) was one of those quickies where you land, go to the hotel, sleep, go to the theatre, work like crazy till the show, do the show, pack equipment, maybe have a drink, return to the hotel, sleep, and leave for the airport next morning. You don’t see the city. You don’t meet the locals. At. All.

Well this is actually a bit of an impartial truth. Because on a good note – we had delicious (supposedly ‘authentic’ Marseille-an) food after the show. We’ve seen (a part of) amazing MuCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations. On the day of arrival we strolled down some streets and found lovely little CousCous on a lively, rough street. Breakfast at the hotel had fresh grapefruit.

But then again: the show was in a venue not made for theatre-based performances – it was a technological nightmare. So we worked from 8am till the show, which was at 6:30pm, to setup everything. And we played for 20 people. That’s a shame considering that Maja learned all texts and did the whole thing in french!