THE RED STEP
With The Red Step, The Black Heart Procession co-founder Tobias Nathaniel conspires with Belgrade thaumaturges to invoke a singular resonance for souls after the sun. Assembled in 2015 in Serbia’s capital city, The Red Step is a powerful gathering of notable Belgrade music figures: keyboardist Boris Eftovski, bassist Rudolf Cibulski, and drummer Vladimir Markoski, all hailing from the longstanding Serbian garage rock band Kazna za uši. Londoner Sarah Jane Seatherton also joins The Red Step on cello, and Tobias handles vocals and guitar. In addition, Boris and Vladimir are current members of the Black Heart Procession lineup, and Vladimir has played drums with Andre Williams.
In this interview, the band discusses their music backgrounds and the making of their eponymous debut album, out now on Pravda Records.
Interview by Tyler Nesler
Several of The Red Step's members are a part of the longstanding Serbian garage rock band Kazna za uši (keyboardist Boris Eftovski, bassist Rudolf Cibulski, and drummer Vladimir Markoski). How did you all come to meet Tobias and wind up forming The Red Step?
Rudolf: After the breakup of our previous band, Kazna za uši, we took a break for a while and thought about the next steps. We really missed rehearsals and concerts, and then Vlada invited me to have a jam session with an American guy from San Diego. He didn't immediately tell us who it was, but during the rehearsal break we were surprised, but also proud, that we had the opportunity to play with a great musician like Toby. During those sessions, Toby experimented with the guitar, he didn't play keyboards at all, and after a few rehearsals he told us that he had been planning to start a band for a while where he would play the guitar and that he liked how it all sounded with us. At the next rehearsal we had our first song, “After the Sun”, and more songs just kept coming.
Vlada: I eventually called Boris too, and he jumped in easily since the three of us had already been playing together for many years in KZU. We thought Toby’s chords sounded weird and great, so we continued to play. At first we were thinking about looking for a female main-vocalist, but when a well-known musician from Serbia (Nikola Vranjkovic of Block Out) came to our practice to check out our music and help us find a singer, Nikola suggested that considering Toby was writing the songs, he should try to sing. And that ended up being the right thing.
For those of you who were a part of Kazna za uši, how do you view the Serbian music scene as having changed over the last couple of decades, for good or bad? What are some significant cultural changes in Serbia that have impacted freedom of expression and opportunities to perform?
Boris: I think that the best music in Serbia was made in the nineties, as far as the alternative scene is concerned. That dark period of civil war, refugees, hyperinflation and poverty was, in a creepy way, a fertile ground for artistic inspiration and the expression of their rebellion and resistance against the system through music. The artist is like a flower - the more you feed it with garbage, the more beautiful and bigger it will become. On the other hand, the mainstream has turned into cheap entertainment for the masses, and obedient bands were favorites of the regime with provided logistics and distribution through the state media. Such circumstances forced artists to organize themselves and find alternative channels for working and presenting their music. One such place in Belgrade is the former Yugoslav printing house BIGZ, which remained empty after the mass collapse of state-owned companies, and thousands of square meters of warehouses and business premises on several floors were rented by artists of various profiles, mostly musicians, artists and designers. In the same building, there are several recording studios which have created a lot of good music and videos. In addition, the artists organized through various organizations and workshops, and several festivals were launched. By the way, the building is one of the most famous symbols of the former Yugoslav modern and Bauhaus school, whose fate is currently uncertain, because the state-owned company that owns the building wants to sell it. We spent a lot of time in that place and I am happy about that.
Also, in the city center, in the area of the abandoned BIP beer factory in Cetinjska Street, clubs, cafes and record stores were concentrated and formed an alternative city zone - the district, where every day there is something happening: concerts, exhibitions, literary evenings. One of these clubs is “Elektropionir” where Black Heart Procession played in 2017, and in addition to domestic bands, these clubs are often on the list of performers from around the world, such as James Leg or Jon Spencer & The Hitmakers and many others.
Vlada: Thirty years ago, the Serbian music scene was a part of the Yugoslavian music scene, which was much bigger than what we have here today. Of course it still exists, and there are many new bands, but unfortunately many of them have lost their authentic approach to the music and they are now influenced by popular music of different genres. There are also the dinosaurs who still perform, and most of the space for playing music is reserved for them, because they are a safe financial bet. Nobody wants to give the young bands a chance to represent their music to a bigger audience. There is a cultural exchange between the ex-Yugoslavian republics, but only on the most popular levels and very little in the garage and independent scenes.
The Red Step, Pravda Records, 2021
Boris and Vladimir are also current members of the Black Heart Procession lineup, and you both toured in the U.S. in 2017. Were you aware of or into the Black Heart Procession's music before meeting Tobias? Was touring with the reconfigured Black Heart your first time performing in the U.S., and what was the overall experience like?
Boris: Of course, I knew about The Black Heart Procession before I met Toby, songs like “A Cry for Love” or “A Light So Dim” and many others are shared on social networks in Serbia, and there are a number of fans.
For me, a tour in the U.S. was a special experience, after so many years in rock’n’roll I finally got a chance to perform in a country whose cultural influence was great while I was growing up. Yugoslavia was a very open country to all cultures, especially to Western pop culture, American and British, which is still the case in Serbia today. A lot of my family members migrated in the 60s to the U.S. and today most of those families live on the East Coast. Some of them visited me and and attended concerts in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Also, it was a great pleasure to meet former members of the band, friends and fans, talk and socialize with all of them across America.
Sarah Jane, you're originally from London. How did you happen to come to Belgrade and ultimately get involved playing the cello in The Red Step? Have you played cello with a rock band before? What have been some creative challenges and rewards with this experience?
Sarah: I started playing cello late in life and for my 40th birthday gave myself a year of music school at The Liceu, Barcelona (where I'd been living for many years). The pianist who helped me prepare for my audition was from Belgrade and I really liked her sensibility and so I decided to move there for a year. My plan was to study classical but then I met Toby smoking on a balcony. "Uhm…I'm looking for a cellist for my new project," he told me after we'd swapped our how we came to be in Belgrade stories. We both go home with links to each other's previous work. My link took Toby to a ten minute video of a bastardised version of Vivaldi's La Follia I did for a cabaret show - complete with flowers in my hair and a violinist in gold tights. And Toby's links took me to, well, you know!! Needless to say I was expecting him to politely say "Cute - but not quite right" when I next saw him, but he didn't. He said, "Do you want to come down to a rehearsal one night and see what happens?" And so it began. I'd never played in a rock band, no. I'd played mostly classical and improvised a bit on benches up and down the coast of Catalunya (with the gold legging glad violinist). The guys all made me feel so comfortable and welcome from the first day. Toby was particularly generous and nurturing with me and he gave me a perfectly balanced mix of guidance and freedom. The main challenges I faced personally were of a more practical nature - how to play amped up, how to hold your space in a post punk rock band as a cellist. On a creative level I felt very aligned with Toby's vision. Although we've had very different musical backgrounds, we connect on a fundamental level - access to a melancholic core that accompanies, and makes beautiful, the unavoidable heartbreak that comes from living.
And the reward? Playing in a freaking awesome band, dude!! It doesn't get much better than that.
Boris Eftovski and Sarah Jane Seatherton
Tobias, how do you feel The Red Step's music differs from the Black Heart Procession in a fundamental way? Has playing and collaborating with new musicians introduced any surprising or unexpected creative results for you?
Tobias: From my perspective, and regarding what I bring to the table, I don’t feel the music actually differs all that much. Perhaps it’s wrapped up in a different package here, but at the core - at least for me - the process is the same. Observation and absorption of the disheartening and disillusioning, followed by synthesis and output. Sure, The Red Step can be faster and more aggressive than BHP in terms of output, but I tend to consider those aspects subordinate to the main point. As for working with new people, of course. There’s always an element of the unexpected. Everyone sees the world through their own unique lens, and so naturally, interpretation and expression of ideas can vary greatly from person to person. Though this doesn’t always affect the very essence of a song, it can certainly lead to a reshaping on many other levels.
Tobias Nathaniel
The album's artwork was designed by Marijana Markoska - what were some of the influences or intent behind the minimalist design? Is the distinct linework on the cover meant at all to resemble the Brutalist towers of Belgrade's Blokovi district?
Marijana: It literally represents them. This architectural aesthetic is a legacy of Yugoslavia, and has recently been highly regarded in the western world. It is a monument of lost values that (for the western mind) represent utopia. That is partially right, because the country doesn’t exist anymore. For those of us born here, this utopia was simply a place to live, which included a lot of human rights that the world is still fighting for. The “something special” of this band is that it connects the east and west. Now we all breathe together in a cloud of dystopian dirt, thinking that “something is wrong” and “things have to change.” For me, The Red Step is an embryo of change that is eventually going to emerge from the dirt, the new utopia that the whole world needs.
The video for "Reset" features a looping black and white archival clip of a huge group of people bursting out of a building - what is the source of this footage and what was the artistic intent behind using it?
Marijana: All the videos from the album are derived from the album art, with the addition of archival footage that I could find to represent the emotion of the song accordingly. The content is there to express a feeling (mostly of being oppressed and exploited) rather than tell a story, and I hope that shows.
The lyrics for songs such as "Reset" ("I can't breathe/So I won't savor my last breath") and "Black Summer" ("Watch on as the beast we fed makes contact") seem infused with a sense of despair over the huge geopolitical shifts to the right and towards nationalism that have occurred in recent years. Is this a general lyrical theme throughout the album? Whereas Black Heart Procession seemed more thematically focused on heartbreak or personal loss, would you say that The Red Step takes on a broader scope of issues lyrically?
Tobias: In terms of lyrical content, I’m typically concerned with the intersocial, intrapersonal and behavioral side of things. Whether this unfortunate political shift to the right is cause or consequence of the way we have begun interacting with one another here on the ground, I cannot say. There’s most certainly some complex interplay going on between the two. All that said, “Black Summer” was indeed a direct reaction to the (then) absurd notion of Trump actually being elected president back in 2016, and what would potentially occur should he take office. This was a rare case for me in that the words just poured out in their entirety. In fact, I had no idea why summer was the season of interest, since it was fall at the time. As for Black Heart lyrics, Pall [Jenkins] is a crafty guy. Though many of the songs appear to specifically address the woes of heartbreak, they can in fact be interpreted otherwise.
The Red Step is available now
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Tyler Nesler is a New York City-based freelance writer and the Founder and Managing Editor of INTERLOCUTOR Magazine.
