Iztok Koren

Because of nearby construction works, the original recording location in the peaceful natural environment of Prekmurje was, almost ironically, moved to another construction site – Krater, a temporary production space that emerged from an abandoned, crater-like construction pit near Ljubljana’s city centre.

Located on the site of former military barracks, it is now surrounded by a residential and commercial neighbourhood and two busy roads. It is a self-contained ecosystem, an oasis in the middle of the city, full of wild bushes, tall trees and creative, cultural and socio-environmental activity. Temporary mobile homes, symbiotically placed in the space, form a miniature urban village with multifunctional workshop spaces, a tea pavilion for relaxation and a wooden shelter for discarded plants, which became the setting for Iztok’s music.

Although it did not offer spacious or rich acoustics, the shelter – with its short, irregular reflections and resonances, combined with occasional rain and the river-like hum of the distant city – evoked a visit to a shack in a small village, where a local man plays little musical motifs and melodies for himself and the villagers, with no need for technical perfection or strict adherence to rules. Over two rainy late-winter days, a set of compositions emerged that, with their repetitive patterns and tiny melodic motifs, invite the listener to open the window and let the sounds outside, natural or urban, into the room – creating their own fusion of music and environment.

Iztok Koren is a versatile self-taught musician who, at the turn of the millennium, began focusing on almost contradictory musical projects – from solo concepts full of emptiness to saturated, noisy duets and group ethno-folk improvisations. He draws inspiration from the mystique of his native Prekmurje, from the persistence of emotions and from the constant dance between hope and history repeating itself.

He perceives art as a medium, a unique language that helps him face his emotions, his thoughts and the world around him. His musical expression, marked by constant flow and movement, is felt most strongly in his solo performances, where he uses a variety of stringed instruments and percussion to conjure an evasive, elusive wholeness that can only be sensed in his music through hints and fragments.

His melodic motifs often consist of single notes from instruments from different parts of the world – the opening note comes from Africa, the next from Mongolia, followed by a chord from the Appalachian Mountains, and the motif is completed by a strike on a Moroccan cymbal. With such sound fragments he builds musical patterns that do not strive for technical or conceptual perfection, but rather lull the listener into the musical ‘here and now’.

Spaces is a collection of in-situ sound and music recordings guided by a simple premise – one performer, one instrument, one space – capturing the synergy between the musician, the space and the music that emerges in acoustically compelling places. Each session unfolds live over a day or two, with no audience and no studio overdubs. By relying on location field recorders and a minimal microphone setup, we bring studio-grade capture into remote, off-grid locations – leaving the sound honest, unprocessed and defined by the space itself.