25. The Stroj celebrates it's 20th anniversary

For the closing event of the succesfull exhibition about our work, we decided to perform live and loud. So we invited our former members to join us at the final part of performance. For the moment it seemed like they never left the band. The force is still alive and The Stroj is ready for another decade.

The Stroj collective would like to thank to Coal Mining Museum Velenje, director Stojan Špegel and the crew of Kunigunda Festival for their support on this project. 
Big thanks also goes to Arnold Marko, Tina Dervarič and Matej Loredan who made the video.

24. Grandioso

During preparations for The Stroj's anniversary concert in Coal Mining Museum complex in Velenje, we also managed to release The Stroj's latest single Grandioso. Video was made by Stane Špegel and beside some wild shots from our live performances it also contains some captures from the exhibition opening.

Free download is available here:
https://soundcloud.com/the-stroj/grandioso

23. Force of Sound / Rhythm of Time: The Stroj 1997 – 2017

Exhibition was held in industrial invironment of Coal Mining Museum of Slovenia in Velenje. Beside photographs, instruments and personal items we also invited our former members and collaborators to exhibit some of their works, connected with our story.

The Stroj collective would like to thank to Stojan Špegel, the curator of the museum, for invitation and assistance, Stane Špegel for his live act and Jure Longyka who held the opening.

22. Resonant snare drum

For a long time I wondered to make my own snare drum, but It wasn't before I found a proper car rim to fit the purpose.

The rim needed some fine adjustment to get the exact diameter, then I got to work to drill all those holes. As the body of the snare is not plain it wasn't very easy to attach drum lugs, but my solution worked well.

At the end I also attached a pickup to the body of the drum so I can trigger stronger hits and get hybrid sound while playing.

21. DIY E-drums

 During past ten years I have worked quite a lot with different self made electronic pads in addition to basic The Stroj percussive arsenal which includes rough percussions like plastic oil drums, assorted cymbals, coils and metals, kick and coil drums. So I decided to make some prototypes of heavy duty electronic pads connected to drum module (recently I'm working with 2Box DrumIt Five). Car tires already proven their durability so I used them for pads. Their response and dynamic work well enough for our purpose as we tested them as oil drums the crew is usually playing.

I was quite lucky to find a small trampoline in a junkyard not far away from my house. Except the pink plastic, It seemed to be the perfect head for E - Kick.

And it was. Heavy duty, very responsive, hi-tech and with retro futuristic appeal I really like.

To hear them in action, stay tuned for my further projects....

20. Kymaticon on Vienna Art Week

It's been almost 20 years since I work with sculptor Boštjan Drinovec on different sound and kinetic sculptures. Our collaboration started in the early days of Metelkova in Ljubljana, squated military complex with most vital artistic scene in 90's.

This year we were invited to exhibit two instruments/sound installations at Denise Parizek's gallery Schleifmuhlgasse 12-14 during Wienna Art Week. I've performed a short piece of music on efektor on the opening before leaving the machines to the audence. I think they had a lot of fun and for most of them it was the first time to see cymatics.

19. Cymatics On The Edge of Science

On The Edge of Science is a production of Croatian national TV hosted by renown journalist and author Krešimir Mišak. He explores many fields on the verge of official science like parapsychology, alternative approaches in medicine, altered states of consciousness, alternative history etc.  I was invited to present my cymatics research and put it in a wider context. So we discussed about history of cymatics, fractal geometry, dissipative structures of  Ilya Prigogine, rhythmanalysis of Henry Lefebvre, morphogenetic fields of Rupert Sheldrake, Pribram's concept of holographic mind, Bohm's implicite order and about the role of vibrations in general perception of life and the cosmos.
It was an important step in my efforts to raise awareness of public toward vibrational phenomena and the importance of sound as one of the basic formative processes in cosmos.

You can watch the episode here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yYYUkfUK24