FILTER REISSUES
World Of Echo
Ultra-rare recordings from a Croatian-American folk guitarist who unites the sounds of east and west.
By Andrew Male.
Home and away: Branko Mataja hears ghosts in his machines.
Branko Mataja
★★★★
Over Fields And Mountains
NUMERO GROUP. DL/LP
FROM THE opening track, an instrumental re-imagining of Serbian ballad Da Smo Se Ranije Sreli (Yes We Have Met Before) you know you’re in the presence of a unique and strange talent. The roots are Eastern European folk, certainly, but this is music that emerges rather than begins. Materialising from a mist of reverb, Mataja’s eerie guitar glistens with a melancholy delay, as a low rumble, possibly from a Leslie speaker, resembles the solemn humming of a distant choir. There are suggestions of Joe Meek’s New World and Pops Staples’ tremolo ghosts, but also Spacemen 3’s E-chord ecstasy and The Ventures’ electric country twang. It sounds simultaneously ancient and futuristic, familiar yet unique. It’s a miracle that it is even here.