The masked pop eccentric Jonathan Bree won over listeners with last year’s album Sleepwalking and millions of YouTube viewers with the delightfully odd video for “You’re So Cool”. In first weeks of the summer, he’ll present his lush orchestral pop in Slovenia for the first time. We’ll warm up with the Croatian ManMachine and his Roland XP50, who wowed us at this year’s MENT Ljubljana festival.
“Exactly that kind of masterpiece that is a product of somebody who drinks, eats, and sleeps music.” “[…] high art of pop.” “The essence of the ’60s/’70s chamber pop in all its variations.” There’s no end to the praise for the highly rated record Sleepwalking or to comparisons with Serge Gainsbourg, Brian Wilson and even the great Beatles, but New Zealand native Jonathan Bree drew attention to himself much earlier already. As a teen, he started The Brunettes, a band that even signed to the famed Sub Pop Records before dissolving.
After a hiatus of several years, Bree returned as an intriguingly masked solo artist with an accompanying band, releasing three studio albums of excellent baroque pop. The critically acclaimed The Primrose Path (2013) and A Little Night Music (2015) were followed by a broader breakthrough with Sleepwalking, also due to the viral video for the song “You’re So Cool”, which took the oddball performer to stages all over the world. The fourth record is on the way, so we can hope for some completely new material at the June show at Kino Šiška as well. It’ll be so cool.
Zagreb-based ManMachine, the incredible half man, half synth, conquered MENT Ljubljana in February with his dark, nostalgic electro pop – at least according to Drowned in Sound, who declared the performance by Goran Uroić and his Rolandom XP50 in superlatives, as the most potent concert of this year’s festival. “Seriously, go listen to this. Buy it. Play it to your friends. It shouldn’t work but it does, on so many levels.”
Tickets on sale online and at Eventim outlets.
Organisation: Kino Šiška.
