Creepy and tension-filled percussion work on Kako Klicati Zmaja (DISSIPATIO DISS036), performed by the Slovenian drummer Zlatko Kaučič with the help of Francesco Cigana.
Kaučič is an improvising veteran who’s been involved with many great free players and jazz musicians since the 1970s, ever since he moved to Italy. Today’s record tells the story, or at least provides fleeting glimpses of, the Pozoj, a strange marsh-dwelling creature who seems to materialise mostly in the presence of acolytes who believe in it, subscribers to the “Black School.” This slice of weirdness all comes from a paragraph written by Josip Pajek, a 19th-century Roman Catholic priest who also happened to be a historian and ethnographer, plus he wrote Superstitious fairy tales and customs among Styrian Slovenes which might be whence this strange tale of the Pozoj springs. It’s tempting to imagine that’s a drawing of the monster on the album cover here, drawn hastily on a nearby piece of slate by an astonished farmer or peasant. Or maybe it depicts the hieratic outfits of the followers of the “Black School”.
I wonder if Pajek intended some sort of subtext about Satanic worship with his fictions, which I only mention as it might appeal to this label’s aesthetic, which has been home to music with a vaguely occultist or spiritualist vibe, while not explicitly endorsing the works of “the Dark Lord” (even the group Satan Is My Brother are not remotely Satanic). The duo play found objects as well as drums and percussion, and it was recorded in Padova. (27/03/2026)