Unofficial SCH Site Archive

It's something over a year ago that we published on these very pages a review of SCH's Eat This! Album, and here we are again, now reviewing the band's latest offering – 'Deluge and After'. And let's make one thing clear right away to all those nouveau Bosnian cafe archaeologists: if you're wondering whether the title perchance has something to do with the 'Visoko pyramids' and your Semir 'Indiana Jones' Osmanagic, well it doesn't. Now let's turn to more relevant things, namely the music of the Deluge.

This is the third album in SCH's latest phase (start date 2002) and it showcases the band as we've not seen them before. The name SCH often conjures up images of industry, noise reminiscent of factory machines, music created for robots of the future, robots capable of assimilating sound waves, capable of enjoying music. But it also sounds so human and so imperfect that it reminds you of your closest friend, the one you hang out with all the time, even he may possess traits that piss you off.

The former description applies to the two central tracks – 130 and Long Night at Roxy- death disco rip-you-apart tunes that are guaranteed to create a sweaty deluge on any dance floor, should they ever come close to one. These two tracks are book-ended by six songs that showcase a new SCH, gentler and more melodic, and yet sufficiently recognisable, enough not to leave room for doubt. The three openers – Near You, Not So Often, and Imdina – sprinkle a handful of oriental mystical dust across the album, primarily through the lyrics of Darko Cvijanovic. They also herald the return of the guitar in SCH, big style, at moments sounding like mid-career Depeche Mode. The album concludes with the elegiac Karim trilogy, dedicated to the too-soon dearly departed [BH Dani journalist & writer] Karim Zaimovic. The third and last part of this trilogy perhaps foretells the direction SCH will be taking in the future.

If you're a fan, SCH's 'Deluge and After' will help you meet a new, softer side to the band, as well as remind you why you fell in love with them in the very place. If you're not a fan, you only have yourself to blame.

Reasons to be cheerful. Looks like Senad Hadzimusic has found a way of maintaining a rhythm of satisfactory discographic presence. We're thus comforted in the knowledge that SCH releases are not an anomaly, but a regular diet of musical pleasure. Another eyebrow-raiser is the fact that their albums are packaged in very respectable sleeves, far more luxurious than our leading pop artist brigade. This in no way implies that they've gone mainstream, for they remain the only alternative, a subversion, the underground, a reaction. It's just our prejudice that leads us to believe that such a band should be awkward, ragged, miserly.

On Deluge And After, SCH come across as more accessible then ever. They announced their love of death disco on Vril , developed it on Eat This!, and now they confirm it. The guitar even has a likeable, danceable, almost funky tone on some tracks here. Their miniature DJ set tracks '130' and 'Long Night at Roxy' even whisk us to a bizarre SCH discotheque where you are guaranteed to dance rather than stand at the bar.

The album's first track, 'Near You' features a metronomic rhythm, a nervous guitar, and the lyric of Sandra Zlotrg. 'Not So Often' is Kraut rock psychedelia, while 'Imdina' is reminiscent of eighties Goth music. The album closes with a trilogy dedicated to the late, great journalist and writer Karim Zaimovic, in which Sandra Zlotrg reads a letter penned by Darko Cvijanovic to his departed friend: "I've seen places you always dreamed of / I've been in Palomar and Gotham / I slept in Arkham and walked Dreamlands / With all the sand and with the Man / Yeah, I even played chess with death / But I didn't see you."

'Karim 2' further develops the tender melody, while 'Karim 3' transforms it into a militant, mean, menacing march.

Continuing with my need to draw parallels between Bosnian and other European artists, I see Teno as our own Mark E. Smith, both being equally confident, resolute, creative, and persistent. Never enough people like that around.

When I reviewed SCH's Deluge And After a couple of months ago, I said it seemed that SCH have found a steady rhythm when it came to releasing CDs. This confirms it.

'Only Cunts Don't Fear the Rain' is a compilation of previously 'unreleased B-repertoire punk, rock and other tunes 1983-1993', to quote the sleeve, itself well in tune with the content coming as it does in the shape of a mock 7" single, retro punk fanzine style. The cover photo was taken in 1987, during SCH's infamous Novi Rock [Ljubljana, Slovenia] appearance, and is very reminiscent of the Clash's London Calling sleeve. The CD further contains two posters, a wall-paper photographic collage of SCH's past. The disc itself carries a photo of a child-punk, complete with a Mohican. Songs like 'Znamo Sve' [tr. We know it all], 'Tablete' [tr. Pills], and 'Djevojke su gole' [tr. The girls are naked] abound with hollow, distorted guitars, a punk sound fast careering into noise. Others like 'He Takes My Something…', 'Act I', and 'Oh Sto je To Tako' [tr. Oh why is it so] are more ambitious in structure, with melodic basslines and threatening guitars. The dramatic 'You Stab Me in the Back' was recorded in 1989, while tracks dated 1993 sound like outtakes from their 'Gentle Art of Firing' album, released the same year. 'Narodnjak' [tr. Folk Song], flirts with ethno, as they did on their 'Eat This!' album.

'Back to the USSR' dates from 1985 and features the xenophobic lyric: ' Russians, Czechs and Poles / all are bound by the same interests / all blessed with military might / all bound with the same chains… but come the summer / here they come / here they flock to our beaches / and then I tell them / Back to the USSR'

The legendary 'Our Song' is also here, this time in its 1990 incarnation, all hymn-like melodies and political horror lyric, [which translate as]: 'Martial law we'll introduce / Fear and terror we'll produce / Countless raids we'll undertake / Only for the nation's sake'. The English-lyric version appeared on the 'Gentle Art of Firing'.

This album is brought to us care of Polikita Records, also responsible for another SCH reissue/compilation, 'During Wartime… again!'

'Only Cunts…' is a reminder of the war path and battles fought by that most persistent of underground warriors and equally essential listening for any young fans unaware of SCH's pre-digital past. For reasons beyond my control I failed to make it to SCH's last gig in Sarajevo. As bad as not voting in the elections.

Deluge and After is quite simply a great album, blending diverse interests and creatively reinterpreting numerous musical genres, separated from commercial success but as little as an active publisher and a couple of videos.

"A work of genius", "Simply an extraordinary album", "another piece of perfect beauty", "another masterpiece by the most significant artistic project in BiH within the 'sphere of human interventionism in the field of arranging tones and noise'" – these are all some of the phrases we could use when discussing the release of the newest album by Sarajevo's urban legend, Senad Hadzimusic Teno, or rather his band alter ego, SCH.

But… we've read tons of panegyrics to Senad and his music over the past 20 years, and yet his (marginal) status has remained unchanged if not worse now, due to the general decline in the cultural and social environment.

In our mediocre hellhole, in which cultural artefacts are judged on the basis of mass approval, valued exclusively through the size and number of (foreign) awards won, in this turbo-colony in which mere basic cultivated discourse is seen as radicalism worth of an urban guerrilla, in this terminally ill society, the release of another SCH album awaken all sorts of contradictory feelings with those of us who've crumbled under the weight of disappointment in and disgust with all that surrounds us: on the one hand, elation and disbelief, incredulity that there are still among those who'd not given up, who are still able to find Meaning.

The pain caused by the general loss of humanism and the absence of integrity and dignity, the conception of the emptiness of existence in a world unfit for man, none of this has broken the back of Senad Hadzimusic; instead, it has led/forced him to find, in the ruins of this world, an elementary cell of re-born humanity.

With fascinating persistence, Teno has dodged the trap of contemplating the point(lessness) of doing anything but taking up the art of butchery (i.e. politics and 'making money'), allowing his creativity to flourish, with disregard for the surroundings and problems of the material nature.

"You could produce quality music in the middle a concentration camp, if you have the balls", Teno says, refusing to become another member of the massed 'dildos in motion', refusing to drown in this world of dehumanised man-like creatures. Luckily, he's also managed to maintain a measure and not slip off the knife's edge and into pathos, maintaining his dignity and accepting the world, despite the privations resulting from activist imposition of subjective values onto an objective reality.

The melancholic optimism (or in new wave speak – 'the new melancholy') of this latest album of his 'chamber mathematic orchestra' appeals due to the successful merging of the un-joinable: sorrow and optimism, disappointment and strength, burdensome awareness and danceable playfulness. Or, to paraphrase, Julia Kristeva and Dejan Ajdacic: 'creation comes from melancholy'. In this sense, SCH's new album could be seen in the shadows of a black sun.

In the rhythm of a heartbeat, the music here pulses through the bloodstream, jabbing at the brain, forcing the body to move, forcing it to release all frustrations in an explosion of the physical. With a bit of imagination and indulgence we could call this contemporary classical music, a techno version of what is (according to Teno) the ultimate work of music, Bach's Die kunst der fuge.

From the very outset, form SKUC-Forum's cassette-only releases, via the fundamental album of underground culture of this geographical region (1989's During Wartime), via the aborted White Music, The Gentle Art of Firing, conceived in the midst of Bosnia's war, the conceptual During Wartime… again! (1999), the menacing Vril (2002), the double album of Eat This! (2004), all the way to the melancholic Deluge and After, Teno has given us nothing short of masterpieces of what is still euphemistically-naively known as "popular art", satisfied in the belief, one can only assume, that some of these gems will end up in the hands of the few capable of valuing them, not just before the swine amongst us.

Hypnotic rhythms, beautiful guitar segments, interesting vocal interpretations, pumping techno, emotiveness bereft of pathos, extraordinary production… all of these characterise this album, seen in these godforsaken lands as 'alternative' music. But no matter how much I sentimentally cling to this term, the fact is that Deluge and After is not an 'alternative' anything (not to mention that 'alternative' has long joined other similar terms in the dustbin of history), it is simply a great album, blending diverse interests and creatively reinterpreting numerous musical genres, separated from commercial success but as little as an active publisher and a couple of videos (although it remains unclear when and if these will materialise).

So, in conclusion – Deluge and After, significantly entitled, is a well-polished diamond, albeit one enclosed in an irritatingly threadbare (I could say minimalist if I were in a better mood) package, and thus far the closest the band has come to a classic pop/rock articulation. But what's the point if our masses (led by prominent ex-punk writer M. Jergovic) sing together with [leading folk foghorn] Halid B. 'Don't want no diamonds'.

By LUKA ZAGORIČNIK
from thewire - A discussion group that centers
around the music discussed in the UK magazine 'The Wire'

SCH: Vril (Magaza, 2002) - a legendary underground Bosnian group from Sarajevo: a mix of Laibach, modern dance electronica, punk edge and their folklore...

The SCH art-group, which has been working in Sarajevo since the late 80's till nowadays has dedicated all its work to the artistic transposition of war catastrophies and genocide. Their music with their paralelly screened videos tell the human experience of the apocalipse and the human overcoming of it above the reality of horror and terror.

[SCH: Vril; Post War Sound/Magaza Records; CD M/PWS; 2002; tr. 63:52]

If anyone has succeeded in shaping the traumas of our war and post-war period into a thoroughly convincing and artistically relevant form, than this is surely Senad 'Teno' Hadžimusić, singer, guitarist and political activist, with his alternative rock band SCH. Their records were almost always infused with the prophetic, granting the band and their artistic endeavours a special position within both the rock scenes of their native Sarajevo and Bosnia, but also outside those confines, within both Yugoslavia and Europe. Hadžimusić's political brutality, however, has always been bereft of direct political activism, opting as he did instead for claustrophobic visions of the projects of the future, whether bright or dark, dependent on the moment these visions came to be and the events they tended to anticipate.

Two steps ahead of all others

Anticipating, beating reality by a few steps, detecting, in the most direct and emotive way, all that awaited us in Bosnia, and elsewhere, not just all around us but within our souls too. Teno was, quite simply, a visionary, like every true artist, and today there's no doubt that this was the case.

This permeates their entire output: whether the talk is of their self-financed During Wartime album of the late eighties, where Teno foresaw the coming of the forces of chaos and destruction, or the gentler, pathos-laden collection of love songs that was 1995's The Gentle Art of Firing (Obala Art Centre), in which they almost heralded better days ahead, a record that certainly forms one of the cornerstone artifacts of Sarajevo's 'war art' scene (together with the works of director Danis Tanović, writer Miljenko Jergović, and those of our young conceptual artists), not to mention During Wartime... Again! (Polikita Records, Tuzla, 1999). Nestled in between came the SCH – Songs & Tales book, published in Prague, at the time when the band's leader was convalescing in that city following the traumas of war.

And just as we were lead to believe that Hadžimusić had totally sent the band into hibernation, the last line-up having dispersed to the four corners of the world, came the first signals that this leading alternative artist was arming himself with computers and software packages and preparing for new battles. Now a solo act, but continuing to operate under the brand name of his band, Hadžimusić unveiled VRIL, a record that once again underscores all that was said in the opening paragraphs.

Soul Miner

It namely underscores the fact that Teno is not about to surrender, that he is persevering until the end, radical in his efforts to prospect our reality, cynical as ever, but equally tender and visionary. Whereas previously monotony was explored at the level of guitar noise, now this is done using electronic instruments, samplers and various other contemporary music software tools. Once again we face an exploration of monotony, a minimalist research into rhythmic and melodic forms, tracks infused with a maximally claustrophobic atmosphere, and surreal imagery adopted from science fiction tomes that indeed inspired this latest (whisper it) masterpiece.

Senad 'Teno' Hadžimusić, is clearly mining our souls, as well as his own, during these oppressive post-war times where nothing can be deemed normal, at a time when all we can hope for is that at least a small part of ourselves can remain emotionally balanced and psychologically stable, while the world around us implodes and crumbles and loses all contours of humanity.

When on 'Predugo sve ovo traje' ['It's Been Going On Too Long'] he recites/sings in his exciting voice above the den of mechanised rhythms worthy of Laibach's best, you are in no doubt that you believe him, all the more so seeing as the track is instrumentally brimming with neurotic guitars and loops. 'Kazumi', again, is almost a love song, a gentle track that almost opens new vistas of hope, while on the other hand 'Tamna sila' ['Dark Force'] cautions that Big Brother is omnipresent and watching, that the space for true love is very limited.

Electronic reticence

The lyrics are now mainly penned by the renowned poet Saša Skenderija, with whom Hadžimusić had evidently shared not only some refugee days in Prague, but also certain thoughts and feelings. The instrumental tracks on the album are sublimed chaos. Take 'Nazi UFO', a veritable little electronic symphony during which Hadžimusić develops his minimalist aesthetic of endless repetitiveness of rhythmic and melodic lines to the outer limits, a method he resorts to on a number of tracks here. Teno uses the tools of today's digital electronic civilisation to express his very contempt for it, his reticence towards it and disagreement with it; but then he also seems to imply an exit, a desire to venture into a future that is perhaps more human, humane and emotive, intimated in his exciting voice and deep within these monotonous, ever-curving digitally generated phrases. SCH's Vril is unlikely to meet with great acclaim, nor is the band anticipating it, but those conscious minds who look to music beyond the limits of the charts can enjoy another exciting product that is sure to shake their souls and invite unease, at least for a few days, possibly longer. That is surely the point of art, and the essence of what Senad Hadžimusić and his SCH are about, is it not?

Rating: * * * * *

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Guitar noise meets kraut rock from ex Yugoslavia, if you like early Swans this will blow up your ears!!! Great band!!!

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Bloody hell!! What a bunch of racket. Art-industrial-minimalistic recordings. Side one opens with a piece that is about 20 minutes long. I have no idea. It starts out sounding like someone blowing across the top of a bottle to get that deep whistle tone. The piece ends sounding more like a large pipe being dragged on a freeway. In the middle the tone changes ever so slowly. The other 3 pieces on this full length cassette feature a little more variation what with drum machine, feedback, synths, and spare guitar noodling being added.

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"Actually, I am here to do an assassination", said Senad Hadžimusić Teno at the promotion of a new album of his band SCH 'During Wartime...Again'.

The year 1989 brought a record that had predicted the war, the cantons, the leaders, ... But no one took them seriously. SCH were and still are the best meter for Sarajevo urbanism. Although their existence in Sarajevo at the time seemed Utopian. "The material for the original 'During Wartime LP' was composed in the spring of 1988. Politically, with the name and the contents, the record announced the upcoming political changes which culminate in a destructive war. It seems to be the logical consequence of moral decay of important figures in social and cultural life in the country over the years. Unlike many others, SCH has fully responded to demands of that time and they did it in a precise, clear and clean manner. Constructively about destruction; harmonically about disharmony. On 'During Wartime' SCH brought a fusion of politics and aesthetics to culmination and proved that that is the only thing that art can deal with..." (SCH, January 1999)

Ten years later, Teno returns from Prague to do a new assassination. Despite of all political and civil population that continues to destroy this town and this country. This World, eventually. Is the new album 'During Wartime...Again' announcing a new catastrophe? And precisely 85 years after the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, got killed in Sarajevo? If the revolution happens, SCH will be the symbol of it. They did not exist to be good or bad, they existed to be judges of reality. That is why they have always been so fascinating. "Unlike Slovenia and Croatia, where the critical public, humanistic intelligence, independent media and institutions through their hard categorical apparatus, often from the point of Marxism, defended subculture and everything else that exposed false slogans and misery of the system, SCH has always faced a silent wall in Bosnia. The battle between subculture and the ruling ideology, whose consequence would be the making, the survival and he development of positive (political-cultural) values, came down to illusions and suicidal attempts of SCH... On the other hand stands the fact that it never mattered what SCH would do next. It is only important that they do something (and survive). Their significance has gone beyond the meaning and quality of their music. They move beyond limits where everything is allowed (even the potential failures and mistakes). They are their own measure. There is noone else. Their death will put an end to an epoch and the far-sighted graphite will be proven 'TENO-TITO'. It was written some time ago on a fence in a neighbourhood where they used to rehearse." (Samir Šestan, Grafit, Lukavac, IX 1995).

Nicely wrapped up album, along with a book of SCH lyrics named "SCH-songs and tales" (reprinted edition that was first published in 1996 by MENORA in Prague). It came out in the production of POLIKITA RECORDS from Lukavac, BiH [Polikita Records - NIK Grafit, Partizanski put BB, Lukavac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, (+387) 75 567 523]. If anyone remembers, POLIKITA is a great Bosnian satirical magazine, convicted and confiscated many times because of its sharpness and power. They make a perfect combination with SCH. SCH are a lot calmer and less painful this time. Understandable. Ordeals they were facing (as we did with them) are in the past but still threatening. SCH keep their distance and warn us about it. Just like ten years ago. "So you have in front of you a CD 'During Wartime...Again', which once again offers the same way, a new version of the old, a change that is not real, and it is being done in the best SCH tradition - fusion of political and aesthetic message. From a threatening militancy to a seductive demagogy. From 'During Wartime' to 'During Wartime ...Again'." (Samir Šestan, March 1999)

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The only consistent anda truly worthy project to have ever come out or the mainly tragic-comic history of the rock scene in Bosnia-Herzegovina is undoubtly Sarajevo's SCH. Formed as long ago as 1983, and moving from its very inception down the path of least-resistance-having determined as its raison d'etre sonic exploration over cheap popularity, mass appeal and commercial successs, the prime choice of others-SCH have made their 12-year-long trek through a jungel of uninventiveness, greed and spiritual destitution surraounding us, and in doing so gave us one of the most significent cultural phenomena of these teritories. In a world crucified between folclorick escapism on the one hand nad the incritical embracing of foreign cultural experiences on the other, SCH laid to rest the myth of how impossible it was for a band playing provocativ unconvectional and radical music to survive and flourish.

The scope of their operation made it possible to change styles without losing consistency. This broadth has also made them superior to all else in our (and "our") scene, as well as to foreigne bands of a similar propensity. And although marginalized and ignored by the mdia locally, SCH were nonetheless the only alternative band from Bosnia-Herzegovina whose output had resonance around the former Yugoslavia, the only one to be criticallay acclaimed and proclaimed one of the most significant bands in our former country. The "Novi rock '87." festival held in the then-Mecca of alternative music, Ljubljana, when SCH appeard in the company of other local greats such as Mizar, Grc, Miladojka Youneed and Roderic, can serve us today as an ilustration: "The rock profile of the event was best justified by SCH whose noise, gyration and trashing way at best be compared to some US post-hardcore bands. SCH were by fare the best band of 'Novi rock' " (M.Ogrinc, Stav no.1.)

It's of paricular interest that SCH also went against the maxim that deems band to be most radical in their initial stage, making way later for a more or less comercial sound that aims to attract a larger more lucrative audience and cash - in their (alternative) standing.

SCH have throughout the 80's and early 90's constantly radicalized their musical expression moving from post-punk via a number of HC, ultra trash and noise forms, always going for the most radical of those.

Constantly experimenting and throwing themselves ahead - first into the depths of the unknown, SCH have alwys remaind at least one step ahead of other alternative bands as well as their faithful fans who were forever losing breath as they trailed the band from one shock to another. Incredible stylistics twists and turns and a constant radicalization of form have created a situation where their audience was forever being attacked by a sladge-hamer of sonic discoveries. Their every public appearance or audio recording literally gave their followers, who were still reeling from the previous sonic crunch, something completely different.

Auto-destruction is indeed one of the basic characteristics and most fascinating points about SCH. What for others may seem a truly abominable horror flick, and what objectivly does require a strength of titanic dimensions is for SCH a normal way of life.

Principally following the principles of experimentation and radicalization, SCH have long become the sole band worth being an alternative to. All else is but a pose, a narcistic elitist masturbation (which is exactly what the "alternative" scene is about). This is why SCH is SCH - untouchable greatest of the alternative scene.

Owing to their ability to constantly change and their couageous suicidal tendency, SCH have always rejected their own music whenever it became accepted by a wider audience and embraced into a current trend opting instead for the abyss of the new and unexplored. SCH demand the binding constructivity which is not found in the intemprace of hedonism, but in the depths of introspection and self-respect. In addition to sonic exploration and a pushing forward the bounds of music, SCH's output comprises another important component-politics.

For them "art can only be politcal" and "only politically conscious person can be an artist". The subject matter here is not the primitive "daily" politics of the late communist epoch and today's vaccum of nationalist madness. For SCH, sound is also a politicas form of expression. They fit in perfectly with the modernist definition that art is result of tension within society and individual. Faith lost In objectivity is replaced by subjectivity of individual and original, the ideal of the endless quest for the new. Much in the same fashion that Russian avantgarde artist at the turn of the NEW TIMES and the NEW MAN instead of using old tools to treat new subject matters, so SCH create their alternative music as a mirror to their alternative political views. From the mid-eightiewonwards SCH deal in their lyrics with the eternal relationship between democracy, totaltarianism and humanism in society, warning of the danger from the east, treating the phenomena of the leader and the subjects, the higher and lower races and elitism. They were among the first to warn of our society's journey towards New Toralitarianism, while the culmination may be found in their songs from 1988. in which critics discover the atmosphere of "cantonal war", says the title of their 1989 LP "DURING WARTIME".

In terms of their political impasc on society and the ensuing social changes SCH remind a lonely and mrginal occurrence trough, no fault of their own, but rather because of the objective state of Bosnian society. Where as in Slovenia and Croatia one found the humanist intelligentsia, the independent media and institutions, with their firm categorical apparatus, defending sub-culture and all that which strips naked the slogans and the privation of the system, often from a marxist position, SCH in Bosnia encountered a wall of silence. In our darklands, the clash between sub-culture and te dominant ideologies which normally give birth to and helps maintain & develop positive social political and cultural values, amounted to little more than the solitary delusion and suicidal battles of SCH. The band's latest phase finds them presenting their new audio and video material (produced in the cellars of "Obala") at the beginning of 1995 having already endured three years of life in the concentration camp that is Sarajevo. This again managed to shock. Teno opened the event with the following words: "Since we hope peace will come to us in some 30 years time, we have prepared material which will fit that period"... SCH are again ahead as and against the times. While all other bands continue to busy themselves with ideas dating back to the eighties, SCH keep their promise from days when they were one of the only trash bands here: "The day thrash becomes mass thing, it should be given a kick in the butt and dumped". SCH's new material is probabely their "softest" over the past ten years and they remain faithful to themselves their believes. Rather than savour the moment and reap the (material) rewards of a ten-year-long experiment with noise, today when trash and noise have both become ultra commercial finding equal space on MTV and on the turntables of anspicious teenagers, SCH reject it as an "old" form becoming yet again in alternative to themselves, opening the frontiers and shifting through the entire heritage of rock demolishing each and every interesting form in their search for the essence which is sometimes lost beyond recognition. Their true tradition and ideal form they nonetheless continue to find in themselves. The Sarajevo's "Dani" magazin noted how one foreign journalist himself an old critic, present at their promotional gig remarked that this was the most authentic and indigenous music he had heard.

Their relevance transcends the importance and quality of their mucis. They are above everything now and can be forgiven everything, even an eventual decline in the future. They are their only parameter; others simply don't existe. With their demise, an entire epoch will come to pass and the once prophetic, far-sighted graffity declaring "TENO TITO" as found once on a wall in some obscure part of the town where band used to rehearse, will only then come to be seen in its full meaning. And, finally, let us say that SCH were never in the position of lonely rebels although they are frequently thus presented and although they retain certain elements of this form, but rather in that of lonely missionary, the hermits, the quiet and patient teachers who bring enlightment. The thin line which marks the distinction is the fact that they are not destructive for they are not interested in demolishing, not as a goal anyway, but instead in the creation of the new, exploring the unknown. They are, therefore, conscious that they cannot be followed ultimately down this road. They do not indeed require folowers. A paradox, granted, where rock groups concerned but then the essence of SCH is not that of a rock group, but rather of an artistic-political project where rock music is but one form of expression...

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LISTEN LOUDEST WITHOUT MUCH BASS

By MILAN CVIJANOVIĆ, DANI, SARAJEVO, 1995

Two years before war SCH made the album "During Wartime". In the middle of the war they have prepared material for their new album with the working title "The Gentle Art Of Firing". After a decade of existence, SCH has grown into the most eminent underground band in Sarajevo and has become one of the most significant cultural phenomena on these teritories.

"What we have made might seem too 'softy', but we ten years ago went into 'noise'. Others are left in the dust. And since we hope that in some thirty years peace might come, we have prepared material that fits that period". With these words SCH turned to the audience that gathered at club "Obala" on January 7. to hear and see the promotion of the newest audio and video material that they had recorded in the basement of the Academy of Performing Arts. An expected recognizable statement. However, after listening to the material and to six songs that were played live, the only iritating thing was that it was too short.

Soft and singing

First impression is - unexpected. As usual SCH is running away from dominant trends. While other bands are in competition for who will be the wildest and closest to dominant world trends, in which "Sikter" and "Lezi majmune" have most of the succes, SCH, in the middle of the war, is creating soft, slow material. Slow is still faster than how they used to play few years ago. Emotions, by which they communicate with the audience are still very twisted, so they cannot be read as political messages. Senad has begun to sing and he does not bark into the microphone any longer, but still he is the only one who knows what he is singing. Guitars are more melodic than in previous recordings, but, even if it sounds like a love song there is no sweetness in it at all.

As usual, SCH offered an alternative vision that talks about the reality sorrounding it. They will also be different (this time as well) than most of others creating rock'n'roll and that is proof that the only band these others should be alternative to is - SCH.

Rock'n'roll band

Since the first public concert in 1983. at Kuk, SCH has become the most important alternative underground band in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the time when New Primitives passed from illegal to main stream, they were leaning towards punk and reggae. Then, as the opening band for "Saxon" they reached the top, they became the first and the only trash and noise band in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the time when trash finally became mainstream, SCH was playing what one journalist described as something he had never heard before.

SCH had gone so much into alternative than it became less alternative than the bands trying to enter mainstream. Finally they stopped being the most important alternative band in the city and become the only authentic band.

It is a matter of personal taste who to declare as the best Sarajevo band: "Sikter", "Lezi majmune" or some other band; SCH is certainly not it. They are simply the only band in the country.

After the promotion of their newest material, it is beyond doubt that they can play whatever they want, but they are playing only what they think they should.

Others play what they know. SCH is not convicted to momentary mainstream or alternative trends, grunge, hip-hop, metal or something else.

In their music you must work to find influences and you must know 70's, 80's, 90's. The music traditions on which they lean include Robert Fripp, kraut rock, trash, noise and dark rock and others, but nothing will appear in it's original form. Tradition remains a basis on which Senad, Pero and Dane build their own music expression and views.

The thing that is missing is a good studio and a producer that would be better than the one with which "The Gentle Art Of Firing" was made, but having in mind the punk history of the present director of Open Society Found of Bosnia and Herzegovina, these things are not out of reach.

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SCH - During Wartime
<http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/5224/sch.htm>

SCH is the pioneer industrial band from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their first record "During Wartime" was made in November 1989, but is recorded in October 1988, except MASTER (January 1989) and FANTASTIC LOVE SONG No. 7 (July 1988). Here is translation of the booklet from this record: "This record is absolutely independent. It is prove of inscrutability of the two worlds in culture (subculture). These two worlds are human and the other one is media critical and tyranic. They want to say thank you to former Prime Minister of Yugoslavia A. Markovic because of that. Alternative and private radio and TV will finish that thing. The time of boring cultural editors and some commisions, cenzors, and the other protectors of system and (un)culture is gone. They broke their system but all the other systems in next 200 years. They know who they are." That was their vision of political system on Balcan or Yugoslavia before the war.

Also, they are only alternative group which is all the time during the war in Sarajevo. Some other musicians stay but their groups break aparts. This record is good for listening on open civil squeres because of scaring groups of people who are almost made of nationalists (most of them are from villages or students). If is possible to listen on 20000 Watts speakers. This record also can be used as a warning for civil war.

In houses before sleep listen it on headphones (if possible). For "good morning" after waking up listen to The Day When I Was Born and Master (and the other ones also). During listening concetrate on text and music. Record can not be good after first listening but after 2, 3 or 4 times is really good.

Record is financed by: Schestan Von Schestan, Erak Petar and Teno. Thanks to friend Schcheta Adnan, Hajo and Obradovich Goran. Cover Design: Amra Zulfikarpaschich from "Interestrada". Lily was very helpful. Female voice on FAREWELL by Lily (under pressure). Introductory vocal tune Martin Abma (Amsterdam, Netherland). On this record all things are recorded how group wants. Pirolic is good friend and he showe that. SCH thanks for Austria for all these beautiful (JUGENSTIL) sezessionistic buildings which they made in Sarajevo. If you listen louder and with high bass you get real effect. Listen loud and with lot of bass.

Slovenia good bye, Bosnia who knows when. Viva la confederation. We want it. More party system. Death to traditions. We don't have to mention names. Let me roll it. It's not possible by force prevent death of our language (cirilice). This is "FUTURE NOISE" Record. Price 9 DM + post.

By reading this booklet we can conclude that the band was so much concerned about "Bosnia on the West" idea. In the middle 80-es they played one gig in Belgrade which was known as "Under Bosnieshen Siege." On this concert the band played under some unknown flag which later became official flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The singer Teno had many troubles because of his ideas. How is it today I don't know.

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The tragic inconsistency of the survival of Sarajevo's scene od the '80-s seem made it unserious to the average consumer. It is certain that musicians are guilty for such a sitation, but the media bears a greater responibility. It is ignored by most of the messengers even if treated consciously and when it was not pushed iinto an intellectual ghetto it was still unaccepted by most comsumers.

Sarajevo is a too small of a urban society to accept the serious things by such existence of alternative Sarajevo scene (authors, gathering, audience). Exactly this weapon made the phenomena of Sch as result of many year gray eminence of Sarajevo's independent scene, of music gatherings, art-politics fantasies of authentic antihero genius Senad Hadžimusić - Teno. Like a tragic materialization, thoughts of a disturbed scientist in "a forbidden planet", Teno's ideas form artistic works (music and words) aesthetic discussions, that work through independent cultura-political organization. Only highly aesthetic rock that works for society is good rock. Rock in lack of specific acting in a society is bad rock. Rock is accepted only in that sense. Positive rock is a part of "positive subculture" positive subculture presents a number of different creative approaches in different forms (film, comics, music, theatre, art...). Subcultural forms that lack social sense are bad in an aesthetic sense. Understood as this ("positive"), subculture represents the highest expression of the present. So, culture is not culture, culture is subculture, subculture is culture, culture is culture. On a wall of a dirty Belgarade underground concert hall is probably still first poster material of SCH, a message corpus delicti of a failed police career. First promotional element had found perfect place in present new-primitive disturbed image. It will be noticed very soon that the original media identification I unjustified. It was about parallel worlds. And while the actor o new primitivism were still comsciouusly wearing out ideological conclucions and aesthetic suggestions of self-parodic, ethnical pathos, especially in a brader Yugoslav contents, SCH went toward an opposite diredtion overcoming aesthetic boundaries, avoiding categories of any kind. Anattentive and good ear could even in the earlier orthodox noise phase recognize the frames of a refined artictic expression that will inconsistently develop on a schizophrenic way moving towards Teno's genius, intellectually corresponding with popular trends of the anant-garde (minimalism, hard core, trash). Extremely uncomercial SCH will probably not for a long time have an edition like "colected songs..." in 5 Lp boxes; and the previously mentioned stuff on Teno's cassettes and some video materials of performances In Yu programs will not be shown to the public athough they should for benefit of local culture. The memories on the concerts at CDA, Medicine faculty club shall remain. The group will be noted 3 times (by now) on lasting messengers od sound: a cassette from 1987, SCH Cassette published by FV 1988 and the album "During Wartime" 1989.

Social-aesthetic context

"At this moment it is important to politicize creativity complitly. Applying the positive creative aproach, creators contribute to the aestheticizing of the socieaty and they block negative interest In politics. The aim is complete freedom of creativity. The aim is the dying of creativity. The aim is the dying of the race. Unnatural becoms natural. Political activity in art stops being important at the time when arti completely separates from politics, that is when politich stops being a limiting factor. Politics stays aside and dies; politics should not ever get mixed up with art. The only possible way of realization - political way. In a creative sense it is very necessary to understand the relation between politics and aesthetics. Politics stops being vulgar, it grows into a fine figure and becomes a part of aesthetic totality, a part of creative totalitarity". And realy, it is unbilievable how serious Teno is. How much he believes in what he does. On their last concert in Sarajevo at The Academy of performing arts, before them "Patareni" a stupid and faceless, sterile hard-core band withour any sense, plaxed for a very long time. A group of wild instant-generation od fast-growing Sarajevo's middle-high class with identical above mentioned labels called the band to return back to the stage. Teno went out and started calm them and dead serious started to convince these hopeless persons "You are only few, and there are hundreds waiting for SCH..., OK Hard-corers! We are going acording to the plan. Do you dnow that heavy metal and core is all included in the music of SCH...!" That can be done by a serious man! Concert began with a big delay. This was a tidy promotion of already mentioned LP. If we agree thet insisting upon this kind of space treatment of leadin istruments (bass, drums and guitar) and that after a definite Martin Hannett's prduction of "Closer" by Joy Division, we could call this artistic achievement that has not been seen here for many years. Spontaneity and faith In the material are the basic characteristics of a magical music organism that pulses constantly by an almost hypnotically strong, heavy, brutal rhytm. The nest at OBALA is professinally sounded so the sharpness of drums. Bass as the background is decorated by Teno's warning voice and dirty fender, on which he builds a suggestive story-tale (don't ever let me forget / that I long for him / that I want him / that I give him everything I can / that our land Is powerful / that our love for him is eternal...). Confusing and at first sight unlogical on ancient sound of synthesizer complete the image of intelligent music identity of gently built nose. The noise as a mean of expressing built by many years of seeking for the style of the band caused much more than an effective provocation and shock. It is in this mature phase of such a band in Sarajevo's alternative machinery (scene) grows into an institution is our honor in these territories. Even last year we have on this very place written about "During Wartime". So far many have given a positive critic about this work.

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