by brian pozun, september 2003

Quite possibly the single most popular and successful band to emerge in Slovenia since Laibach appeared in the late 1970s, Siddharta is breaking records and barriers – and could soon be a force to be reckoned with across Europe, if not the world. 

The band is made up of six guys known only by their first names and last initials: Tomi M., Boštjan M., Cene R., Primož B., Tomaž O.R. and Jani H. They first got together in 1995 and started playing high school parties around their hometown, Ljubljana. In 1998, they managed to get the song “Lunanai” – later a number one hit – on a compilation called Tivolski Pomp, but only after a long search did they succeed in convincing a record company to take them on.

In October 1999, they signed with Multimedia, and with the release of their first album, ID, they became the fastest rising stars the Slovene music scene had seen in ages. Rare for Slovene bands, they released "Lunanai" as a five-track CD single. Among the bonus tracks was a live version of the song featuring, Slovenia’s beloved crooner Vlado Kreslin. ID went platinum shortly thereafter.

When they released their second album, Nord, at the end of the summer of 2001, it went platinum – meaning it sold more than 10,000 copies – within three and a half months. Nearly 25,000 copies have been sold by now. This they followed up a year later with Silikon Delta, a compilation of remixes of songs from both ID and Nord done by major figures on the local music scene – including internationally successful DJ Umek and even Laibach themselves.

In fact, Laibach returned to the scene this summer with a new album, Wat, and a new tour – which they opened in their hometown of Trbovlje with their remake of Siddharta’s "B Mashina," also the first track on Wat.

Siddharta’s videos have made as big a splash as their music. Writing in Mladina, noted film critic Marcel Štefančič, Jr. declared the 2002 video for a Silikon Delta remix of the song "Platina" to be "a fragment of the best Slovene film which has yet to be shot."

The band had another hit in late in 2002 with a cover of Vlado Kreslin’s "Od višine se zvrti" – included on his greatest hits collection Kresliniče, which took all of four days to go platinum. The song was also used in an ad for Mobitel that ran on MTV all across Europe.

Recently, the band split with Multimedia and signed with Menart’s Kif Kif label. On 13 August 2003, Siddharta released its third studio album, Rh-, which is still flying off the shelves. Estimates put the number sold on just the first day at around 5000. According to STA, this is the fastest-selling CD ever in Slovenia, and only U2 has ever sold anywhere near as fast in Slovene record stores.

Clearly, just a couple songs in English isn’t enough for the band. They have already started translating several older songs into English, such as "Platina" from Nord, which has become reincarnated in English as "Uner Venus." The English-language version of the group’s website [http://www.siddharta.net/] includes translations of other formerly Slovene-only songs.

The band’s flirtation with English has culminated into their first English-language album, released on 3 September. The album is a special edition of Rh- which features English-language versions of all 15 Slovene-language songs on the original album, as well as two English-language bonus tracks. Just 1500 copies of the special edition disc packaged in an actual blood bag were produced, and most stores sold out within hours.

So few copies were printed because the English-language version was not necessarily recorded for the band’s audience. "We don’t want to record in English later, we want to already have an English-language album on hand: if an opportunity arrives, you have to have the album on you so you can show it to a foreign record company or promoter," Tomi M. said in an interview in Vikend back in June.

It’s unfortunate that so few copies of the disc were printed, but it nevertheless marks one of the most ambitious efforts of any Slovene band to reach out to English-speaking audiences. While it is nothing new for bands and artists to begin their career in their native language and later switch to English – international superstar Céline Dion (who began her career in French) springs to mind – it is nearly unheard of for artists from Central and Eastern Europe to pull it off. Does anyone in the US still remember Falco? Not likely.

Radio Silence, a 1989 attempt by Russian superstar Boris Grebenščikov to break into the English-language market failed miserably, even though the Eurythmics and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders were heavily involved in the project.

On 13 September, the old high school band from Ljubljana managed to fill their hometown’s Bežigrad stadium – capacity 35,000 – with a concert together with the RTV Slovenija symphony orchestra led by South African conductor David de Villers. The show played out over three stages – one for the band, one for the orchestra and one for nearly 50 dancers. Vlado Kreslin showed up to sing "Od višine se zvrti" with the band.

Bearing in mind that Slovenia has a population of less than 2 million people, a crowd of 35,000 is enormous. STA commented, "No other name on the domestic scene could ever afford to perform at the central stadium, let alone dream of filling it to its full capacity." Commenting on the huge audience afterwards, Večer called the concert a "Slovene Woodstock."

Most media agreed that this was not only the concert event of the year, but also the largest such production ever to take place in Slovenia, with a larger audience than any other concert in history. Siddharta outpaced even those few other performers who have been able to fill up Bežigrad – including Bob Dylan, the Kelly Family and Metallica.

Finance reported one interesting footnote to the concert– while the highest priced ticket was SIT 3000 (USD 15), scalpers were getting up to 15,000 (USD 75).

The idea to perform with a full orchestra came out of the band’s appearance at the anniversary celebrations last year for radio station Val 202, where they performed two songs with the RTV Slovenija orchestra at Križanke in Ljubljana. One of those songs, "Orion Lady," will be released on 18 September as a bonus track on the band’s greatest hits package, Izbranke 99-02 (Selections 99-02), which covers the period when Siddharta was with record label Multimedia.

The band will be touring Slovenia throughout the rest of the year, starting in Maribor on 2 October. The full schedule is available on the band’s website. Unfortunately, the orchestra will not be joining them.

Back in 2000, during the promotion of the first album, ID, Siddharta member Primož B. told Mladina that the band “wants to become an institution!” Asked whether he really thought they could pull it off in Slovenia, Primož answered, “well, we’re not just aiming at Slovenia. We’re aiming at the world and everything else which will be even more current than this world in ten years." Achieving that goal has never seemed closer.

Siddharta’s homepage http://www.siddharta.net

Jure Aleksič. “V peskovniku s Siddharto.” Mladina, 28 August 2000.
Available at: http://www.mladina.si/tednik/200035/clanek/siddharta/

Davorin Pavlica, "Dan zmage za Siddharto?" ŽVPL, 25 April 2001.
Available at: http://www.zvpl.com/clanek.asp?ID=622

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