City
Studio-Album – Niowt

NIOWT won the MARSEV GOJZAR award 1998 (the only award for rock-alternative music in Slovenia):
- for the best band 98 and the best album 98: “Niowt”
- for the best song 98: “City”

Even if it’s a bit difficult, you should keep this name in mind. Because what’s behind it, pronounced something like “njaut”, is the Sioxsie of the coming decade - with a first-class band, which in an individual and above all virtuoso manner weave all achievements of the Nineties into their extraordinary songs, yet always being catchy and understandable. Could there be a match to Garbage, Siouxsie and Elastica at the same time? - Yes, right now, with NIOWT from Ljubljana!!!

Niowt - are a bewitching, agile and enigmatic woman with dark, charming voice: singer and guitarist Mojca Krevel (an English translator, a.o. of Umberto Eco and American Beat Poets), and the brilliant keyboarder Peter Senk, who besides that is an architect and photographer with various exhibitions all over the globe.

These two mid-twenties, who are responsible for the songwriting, are supported by Robert Oven (bass, didgeridoo) and Matej Puklavec. And by a drummer who’s a class of his own. This guy, Bostjan Vajs, does not exactly have the statue of a bear, and it’s true he’s only 16 years old, and - literally - animal-like. He’s beating his drums like a berserk, but also produces the most complicated breaks so precisely, that you’re almost desparately start searching for the Drum’n’Bass machine, which “for real” could do this digital thundering…

But Niowt is also an imaginary city, which Mojca sings about with tormenting, very individual lyrics. And yet it is not all too far from reality, because in this city those things rule that we also find in our real-existing cities: loss of identity, serfdom/dependance and being forced into line by the powers of media society.

Anyone who takes Niowts debut album of the same title (Chrom Rec.) to heart will easily fall into raptures. Be it about the combination of technoid breakbeats, dark piano motives and sudden eruptions into brutal industrial worlds (“City”), the original connecting of archaic, mystic and crashing Wave by didgeridoo, veiled vocals and an excellent interaction of guitars and keyboards (“Horizon”), or about the powerful “No Sense”, which easily puts the DAF-classic “Mussolini” into the shadow with its whiplash power - that’s up to you.

But maybe it’s also Mojca’s siren-like, seductive voice in the song “Puzzled”, which also could be the theme of a sleazy crime film, or the phantastic song “Mountains”, which is completely and wonderfully baffling - from the background sounds and the vocals to the moog, or the explicit and at the same time poetic lyrics (“…small-talk minds brainwashed in shit..”, from “City”), which capture us.

In their home country Slovenia, Niowt are already THE alternative-rock-band. This quintet has got everything, which a real good wave-/alternative band should have: charisma, musical profoundness, imagination and outstanding vocals.