Luna
Nestvarne stvari

Dear friends of DeBaser, listen: whoever told you that new wave was a musical phenomenon exclusively dominated and geographically situated in the Anglo-Saxon world is talking nonsense. And whoever claims that, okay, some good things in the genre were also released around New York, in the faraway United States of America, is also selling you a big rip-off.

Notwithstanding the challenging definition of what "wave" and "new wave" exactly meant and what was not, and therefore the fundamental role played by bands from New York and Manchester in the development of this musical trend, rather than from London, it is undeniable that throughout the 1980s there were expressions of this musical movement all over the planet and all across dear old Europe. We had excellent examples in Italy, since the various Litfiba, Diaframma, CCCP, and Faust'o are all artists that can be traced back to the new wave movement, and Florence, in particular, is still pointed out today as a city that was a pilgrimage destination back then and carried a certain cultural wave probably unmatched in the history of Italian rock music.

However, evidently, the "new wave" must have been long if it even reached the former Yugoslavia, where Serbia also had its new wave stronghold, its Manchester. This was Novi Sad, the capital city of Vojvodina in northern Serbia, located on the banks of the great Danube River. Novi Sad, the mother city of the Luna, which is the band I am now going to review.

The year was 1984, coincidentally the same year as Pornography by the Cure, just to name one at random, when Luna released Nestvarne stvari, an album that is still considered one of the ten most important rock albums in the history of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. It is their only LP and is a great album, but to consider it merely as an isolated incident or a single exploit of a musical scene that was quite vibrant and included, among others, the ska band Kontraritam, the historic band La Strada (some of whom - guitarist and leader Zoran Bulatovic "Bale" and drummer Ivan Fece - were also integral parts of Luna), the Pekinška Patka (also fueled by the usual agitator Zoran Bulatovic "Bale"), the Obojeni Program, who can now boast thirty years of activity; the Ekatarina Velika from Belgrade; etcetera, etcetera.

Led by the charismatic guitarist Zoran Bulatovic "Bale" known as Balder and vocalist Slobodan Tišma - the lineup was completed by drummer Ivan Fece and the charming keyboardist with the gloomy and eerie voice Jasmina Mitrušic - Luna cannot therefore be defined as true pioneers. Other bands and musical projects, which may have also seen the participation of members of Luna, boasted a greater longevity. In short, Nestvarne stvari, translatable into Italian as "Something Unreal", can be considered the highest point reached by a musical movement that had a certain following in the former Yugoslavia and can undoubtedly be defined as one of the most interesting wave albums published in continental Europe of those years. A dark wave album given the particularly gothic and decadent atmospheres that characterize the ten tracks of the album.

The comparisons we can make are with the more famous and popular bands of the era: more Peter Murphy's Bauhaus and Virgin Prunes than the Cure; more Birthday Party than Joy Division; more Public Image Limited than Sound or Jesus and Mary Chain. And perhaps it is Public Image Limited, along with Bauhaus and Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, the band closest to Luna, whose sounds, besides being dark and definitely eerie, stood out for being paranoid, hallucinatory, and redundant, almost noise and whose lyrics are often almost "recited" with a theatricality typical of the genre and that can find adequate epigones precisely in Lydon, Peter Murphy, and the darker wave productions of the Americans Tuxedomoon.

In short, dear friends of DeBaser, don't be overwhelmed by the usual cheap prejudices and listen to Luna. You won't regret it: satisfied or reimbursed. I did, and I am happy.