A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse

Slovenian ‘imaginary folk’ instrumental trio return with a kaleidoscopic third album. Handmade and global instrumentation meets fearless sound exploration.

There’s a sequence in ‘Memoryscapes’, a lovely French-made short lm, in which Sirom set about fashioning music from a pile of pots, pans, saucepan lids and empty cans of supermarket lager on the kitchen table. It’s the band in microcosm: cracked, insistent beats, rhythm chasing rhythm, a deadly serious playfulness, and the intimacy of close friendship undercut by the sense of emergency of a flashing torch. Sirom are all about the head and the hand, and the dark that always pushes against the light.

The world of the new record – A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse – is indeed subtly different to that of the last: the viola still teases and tugs at the percussion (or is it the other way round?) and the banjo still periodically tries to break free and set up on its own, but there’s a glimpse of electricity (that rarest of beasts in the Širom catalogue) in ‘A Pulse Expels Its Brothers and Sisters’, courtesy of Samo’s homemade tampura brač, more vocals, albeit as unsettling as ever, and a new sense of spaces being prised open.