Zdravko Colic: New Album Mastam i Prastam After 9 Years

Half of the album was already public knowledge, song by song, months before the record itself even had a name. Six of the twelve tracks on Mastam i Prastam, the new album from Zdravko Colic, arrived earlier as singles: “Sto dukata,” “Biraj ti,” “Zasto ona,” “Tamo,” “Prolece za ljubavnike” and “Ne daj da ostarim sam.” The official announcement, which came late last night and this morning through the label, simply tied a bow on what fans on YouTube had already pieced together, clip by clip.

It is Colic’s sixteenth studio album and the first after a nine year gap between records. Presale for the vinyl edition began on September 23, exclusively through the Jugoton web shop, according to Antena M, and starting September 30 the album arrives on CD, vinyl and every digital platform. It is being released by Jugoton-Croatia Records, and according to Telegraf, it is a joint release with the company Ulaz d.o.o.

Working with Jugoton has not been a new chapter for Colic for a long time now. It is a continuation of a much older story.

“We’ve been working with Jugoton-Croatia Records for a long time, we’re old friends. We worked together on the last two or three albums and it went great. Some of the songs from this album we’ve already released, some we’re still going to release, so all of that together makes up an album of 12 songs.”

That is how the singer put it in the announcement carried by B92 and Telegraf. Speaking to Antena M, he gave a more technical breakdown of what listeners can expect: “It’s an album of 6 previously released and 6 new songs, mostly ballads,” Colic said. That detail, beyond the standard press line, says more than the bare number suggests: the six older hits are not there to fill space, they are there to make the album feel like a whole that adds up, not a list of singles tacked on after the fact.

The list of names behind the songs places the album in the wider context of the regional scene, not just Colic’s own career. The songwriters are Vjekoslava and Tonci Huljic, Dino Merlin, Maja Sar, Sasa Matic, Milos Smiljanic Zuca, Neno Belan, Niksa Svilicic, Miroslav Rus and Antonija Sola, while production was handled by Niksa Bratos, Mahir Sarihodzic, Baby Dooks, Marko Luis and Tonci Huljic. It is a list that spans at least three generations of the regional pop scene, from writers who have been penning songs for Colic for decades to producers coming from an entirely different, newer sonic language. Putting that many different creative signatures on one record usually carries a risk of inconsistency, but it is also a signal that the performer is not making a record for one audience, but for every generation that has followed him.

One technical detail worth mentioning, and easy to get wrong: the lacquer cut, the process of cutting the master for the vinyl edition, was done by Son Magi at the Abbey Road studio in London. This is not mastering for the whole album, as some reports suggested, but one, admittedly precise, step in preparing the record for pressing. For a listener streaming the album, it changes nothing, but for anyone following the vinyl release, it is a credit that belongs to the studio, not to the sound of the recording itself.

On the songs themselves, Colic is clear that he is not chasing an outright hit with every single track.

“Not every song on the album has to be a hit, but let them have substance, let them last for some time to come, and that will be enough.”

It is a statement that translates easily into the reality of regional music: after decades in which nearly every one of his singles landed in heavy rotation, the album as a whole is now allowed to stop chasing hit after hit.

The design is credited to Dragan S. Stefanovic, Colic’s longtime collaborator, and the photography, according to Antena M, is credited to Aleksandar Kerekes Keki. Until September 30, the album remains an announcement: twelve titles and a list of names promising more than any press release can confirm before the record is actually out.