Svemirko Announces New Album, Zappa Baza Concert
After a creative break, Marko Vukovic returns with Svemirko for songs that pave the way to a fourth album. The concert is set for November 26 at Belgrade's Zappa Baza.
Of all the clubs in Belgrade, Zappa Baza is the one that tests artists on acoustics before it tests them on the crowd, and that is exactly where Svemirko is set to return to a Belgrade audience on November 26. The date is set, tickets go on sale on Friday, September 18, and the show is being organized by the promotion agency Long Play. Underneath that ordinary concert announcement sits a bigger piece of news: Marko Vukovic, the man behind the name Svemirko, is preparing a fourth studio album after what he himself describes as a creative break.
As far as is known so far, the evening’s program will mix what the audience has already made its own with what is still to come: old hits alongside tracks that hint at a new sound. For anyone who has followed the domestic scene over the past decade, that is close to the standard formula for a comeback show, yet with Svemirko it still carries weight, since the gap between his third album and this moment has stretched longer than it has for most of his peers on the scene.
Svemirko has existed as a project since 2015, and in that time Vukovic, working as both writer and producer, has steadily built a sound that does not sit easily in any single box: pop, synth pop, indie and alternative trade places within the same song, sometimes within the same chorus. His three albums so far, Vanilija from 2017, Tunguzija from 2018 and Skalamerija from 2020, have earned him a status few domestic songwriters hold, recognized even outside the narrow circle of alternative music fans. Songs such as Zena od vanilije, Miris grada and Mozda nisam dobar long ago crossed over from being singles to being the songs a crowd sings back word for word at his shows.
What makes the Zappa Baza announcement more interesting than a simple date reveal is the direction the new material appears to be taking, judging by what has been released so far. The cycle opened with the singles “Po tijelu” and “Ja te vodim do dna,” and continued with “Nokturnalne aktivnosti,” which, from everything heard so far, brought a harder, more guitar driven sound than Svemirko has used before. For an artist whose signature has mainly been an electronic, synthesizer driven layer, that is no small shift in direction, and it is exactly why this concert should not be treated as just another show on the calendar.
“Po tijelu” was also Vukovic’s debut release under Universal Music, the first time he has worked under the roof of one of the major labels. Announcing the song, he described what it was about himself: “The new track is a debut release for Universal Music, and also an announcement of new material and a new album that should come out next year,” he said at the time, also giving some context for how the song came together. “Basically, it’s a pretty ‘hyped up’ electronic track, which is of course performed and inspired by a retro pop scheme. It came about as a reaction to a pretty wild night and a pretty thirsty morning,” he said of the inspiration behind the song, while calling the accompanying video “self-made” and “pretty psychedelic.”
Just as typical as that kind of self-description is of Svemirko, it is equally typical that his music, on paper conceived as studio, producer-driven work, turns into something else entirely on stage. The reputation he has built in recent years, that his shows are an experience in their own right, is likely why every return to a Belgrade audience draws more attention than it would for an artist with a similar sized discography but without that live reputation.
For now there is no official album title or release date, only the announcement that on November 26 at Zappa Baza the audience will get a preview of it. As a reminder, tickets have been on sale since September 18.
