Drugi Nacin LP YUGO HEAVY PSYCH PROG HARD ROCK POKORA

$

34

Yugoslavian pressing on the light blue RTB label. The gatefold sleeve and record are in near mint condition.

One of the most innovative bands on YU rock scene was Drugi Nacin (pronounced "Droogee Nacheen" and meaning "Other Way"), a band from Zagreb which had started their career in early to mid 70's after issuing a number of singles 1973-75. Their first album was a great breakthrough for the prog movement. Before them, the only other prog act was Korni Grupa, who however weren't a pure prog band and therefore this album can be considered the first true progressive rock album in Yugoslavia.
One wouldn't guess that at once however, as the first song "Opet(Again)" is opened with a crunchy rock riff and is really more of a rock song. Then comes "Carstvo samoce" which has a good and long guitar passage in the middle and the end. The highlight of the album is unquestionably "Na mom dlanu (On my palm)", a moody 9-minute gem. It deserves to be called psychedelic and somewhat reminds me of Vanilla Fudge. "Lile su kise" is an interesting song by Ismet Kurtovic, the chief composer, guitarist, flutist and singer. It encompasses everything from folk-rock to rhythm & blues and finishes with a quasi-baroque organ solo after 4 minutes. The instrumental "Zuti list(Yellow leaf" offers a nice jam, before the song "Stari grad (Old town)", another aching love ballad, closes the album. For it's time and place, this was truly a daring experiment. Unfortunately, it wasn't received very well and was soon forgotten at a time when mainstream rock acts like Bijelo Dugme, Indexi and Yu Grupa ruled the charts. 
It is characterized by a loose concept of loneliness and lost love, with quasi-poetic lyrics in a post-hippie vein. Even the song titles could be interconnected making a sentence in English roughly "Again the empire of loneliness on the palm of my hand, it kept raining on the yellow leaf and the old town". Cover sleeve was one of the first gatefold designs at the time so allegedly it convinced an executive producer of the record company to release the album in the first place! Music style ranges between hard rock of the first two tracks to more mellow improvised jams with solo parts of the flutes and guitars to power ballads like "Lile su kise" and "Stari grad" which were concert favorites. It can be described as hard prog with touch of psych jams, like early URIAH HEEP (hard rock ballads with high pitched vocals of Kurtovic a la David Byron) or JETHRO TULL (solo flute with strong guitar riffs). Even during the punk/new wave era of the early 1980s DRUGI NACIN played regularly on tours across fromer YU countries and were warmly welcomed everywhere especially when they played the entire set of this album, which they did frequently along with their famous DEEP PURPLE covers. Highly recommended album to every prog rock listener.

Mail me for questions. Check my other auctions as well.