VELJANOV – “Porta Macedonia”
Studio album 2008
Tracklist:
- The congress
- Never More
- His Vita
- We Can’t Turn Back
- My way
- The New Order
- Queen of Ice
- Dirt
- Lily B.
- Your House On My Hill
- Two forward and three back
Alexander Veljanov has already made music history as the singer of the equally eccentric and successful electronic band Deine Lakaien, whose last album reached number 4 in the German charts. As a performer, charismatic voice with a Slavic timbre and “Prince of Darkness”, he is an exceptional phenomenon in the German music scene anyway. However, he also seeks to realize his musical expression possibilities, which are far from exhausted, outside of Lakaien.
Alexander Veljanov’s first solo album “Secrets Of The Silver Tongue”, which went Top 70 and was composed in a straightforward acoustic style, made it clear that he is far from being confined to one style. And so on his new solo album “The Sweet Life”, he has not only taken his songwriting a step further, but has also rediscovered his love of electronic sounds. He was supported by Dave Young, who has worked with greats such as the Pointer Sisters, Happy Mondays, Duke Elligton, John Cale and David Bowie. Alexander Veljanov has been shaping the German and European music scene with his band Deine Lakaien for two decades now. The man with the exceptional voice has become a figure of integration in the common field of tension between two components that previously seemed antagonistic and mutually exclusive – dark wave and avant-garde. Veljanov worked tirelessly with his “Deine Lakaien” partner Ernst Horn until 2003, when he reached a stage of creative exhaustion after working on the album “White Lies”. He felt the need to pause and return to his own roots. At the time, he had no idea that this need would mark the beginning of a new phase of work. Alexander Veljanov is at home in Germany and Macedonia. For too long, he had sacrificed contact with his second homeland for his work. Suddenly, he asked himself about his relationship to his roots and knocked on Macedonia’s door. “The situation was somewhat paralyzed by the wars in the Yugoslavian countries,” the singer recalls. “Macedonia was not involved in the wars of the 1990s to the same extent as other former Yugoslavian states, but I couldn’t imagine traveling there as unencumbered as before. Although I had kept in loose contact, I had almost ignored this part of the world. Then in 2003 I traveled to Macedonia privately. I met up with old friends again and started working without any pressure. I didn’t have a record company breathing down my neck waiting for a product and could do whatever I wanted.” He presented the result of this four-year work in November 2008 under the meaningful title “Porta Macedonia”.