UNLIKE A VIRGIN
Chrom Records, 1999
Produced by Peter Penko. 'Heavy Straighter', 'Nevermind The Bastard' and 'Tschudno' produced by Gregor Zemljic and Miha Klemencic

1. Son Of Sin
2. Drive
3. Scream, Greeneyes
4. Etwas
5. The 5th Elephant
6. Barbara
7. God Forsaken Country
8. Heavy Straighter
9. Nevermind The Bastard
10. 4-2
11. P.S.
(12. Tschudno)

Listen to: Barbara


A patchwork called »UNLIKE A VIRGIN«
Unlike a Virgin covers roughly about eight years of work. Most of the songs have been written at the very beginnings of Silence (92-94), labeled »too strange for publication« at the time, stashed in dusty corners and rediscovered two years ago. We were pleasantly surprised by the ingenuity of these songs after listening to them again. They all had a similar composition; a harmonically weird instrumental motif combined with a pretentious vocal line. The most important part though, was the fact that all of these »sketches« were completely deprived of a climax. In other words, they had no refrain whatsoever.

Even though we try to steer clear of patterns, cliches and other »pop necessities«, we nevertheless believe that every song needs its pinnacle. Whether it is attained vocally or instrumentally is of no significance to us, as long as it's there.

We started writing the refrains and suddenly noticed that these new additions unintentionally differed from the way the songs were originally concieved. The new stuff sounded like a foreign body. The music we wrote eight years ago became a stranger to us. We realized that our conception of music had drastically changed. And, as we couldn't think the way we did eight years ago anymore, writing the refrains became a serious obstacle to us. After a highly enthusiastic start, thoughts of giving up the project slowly started surfacing.

But, instead of quitting, we decided to avoid the problem by intensifying it. We began adding strange elements all over the songs. Elements that were the exact opposite of what was characteristical to our music. Elements that seemed completely out of place. We added all the things we found interesting in other types of music. This way, we disguised the eight-year gap between the refrains and the strophes, and, at the same time, got a glimpse at what Silence's music could evolve into in the future. Check out Drive, for instance; you can find jazz, blues, rock, electro and country elements in it, and even a shred of russian folklore. In the midst of all the industrial chaos in 4-2, you can find a typical Slavic melody underlined by a classical string quartet.

But even though the songs were concieved as a sort of »audio patchwork«, they do not sound as one. To our surprise, the diverse elements blended into something completely homogeneous. The album's unexpected uniformity was our biggest gratification.

Interesting background information for particular songs:
P.S. - The confirmation of Peter Penko's indisputed progressiveness. In this daring audio experiment, that was recorded, produced and mixed in less than six hours, we can find rythm made out of white noise, two separate vocal lines turned on and off reciprocally and a rock'n'roll rythm sample taken from a Bontempi toy synthesizer. Benko's monologue at the beginning is a quote borrowed from the only available book in the studio at that moment, Susie Boyt's love-novel The Normal Man. While Benko sung, Peter stood by the microphone tuning and kicking his guitar. The "frequency announcer" at the end was added later, while editing the song.

4-2 - This song was actually inspired by Alphaville's legendary hit, Sounds Like A Melody. Believe it or not.

Tschudno - This strange hidden track is a bizarre combination of three unfinished Silence songs. The title is actually a Slovene word, written phonetically in German, that means "strange". Tschudno is the result of the collaboration between Silence and two magnificent young producers, Gregor Zemljic and Miha Klemencic, (better known as Random Logic) which took place in November '97. Together, they recorded four songs, three of which are on the album (Tschudno, Nevermind The Bastard & Heavy Straighter), whereas one remains unreleased (Promises).

Silence, August 15th, 1999

Unlike A Virgin is available online - see Mail Order for more information.

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