Darkwood Dub’s second album U Nedogled (”Into Infinity”) came out in May 1996 and immediately carved out a space of its own — raw, cerebral, restless. It’s a sprawling, genre-warping record that fuses post-punk, alt-rock, dub, electronica, and trip hop in a way that still sounds hard to pin down nearly three decades later.
It was named Album of the Year by several Serbian music critics and marked the band’s first proper tour. You can hear why. U Nedogled feels like a turning point — a band catching momentum, growing more confident, and unafraid to blur the lines. It’s also an album of two halves: the first sharp and electrified, the second more downtempo and impressionistic. Somewhere towards the end, it loses some cohesion, but it retains its ambition.
U Nedogled kicks off the album with pounding alt-rock energy and post-punk abrasion. The lyrics come fast and repeat like a mantra — poetic, raw, circular. Treći Vavilon (”Third Babylon”) opens in a haze of synths before collapsing into a jagged, uncut mix of punk, rap rock, and turntablism. It’s closer to Disciplina Kičme than Rage Against the Machine — less brute force, more elastic tension.
Sudar (”Clash”) plays with tempo — laid back at first, before swerving into another nervous, distorted groove. That dub-punk hybrid returns in Antena (“Antenna“), a short and twitchy cut full of unpredictable turns and sharp edges.
Kolotečina (“Everyday Rut“) is something else entirely — a hypnotic, dub-drenched sprawl that stretches to nearly eight minutes, slowly shifting between tones and textures. It might be the band’s most ambitious moment on the record — psychedelic, fluid, and quietly epic.
Not every track lands as firmly. Karavan Osećanja (”Caravan of Feelings”) leans into a slower 90s alt-rock mode, but the vocals feel strained. The instrumentation keeps it afloat, but the magic fades a little. Hej! Gringo! is a detour into trip hop — sampled vocals, dusty beats, and moody atmospherics. It’s like a Portishead B-side: compelling, but maybe a minute too long.
Ja Te Potpuno Razumem (”I Completely Understand You”) returns to the album’s alt-rock roots, now threaded with electronic effects and trippy delay. Babalu reintroduces that punk-rap delivery over sharp guitar stabs — another moment that calls Disciplina Kičme to mind.
The tension peaks again with Imamo Situaciju (”We Have a Situation”), full of jagged post-punk guitars and anxious repetition. Čigra (“Tern“, a type of seabird) takes that energy into darker territory, distorting the vocals into a panic-state — one of the record’s most underrated tracks.
The final stretch starts to drift. Moa offers a soft dub interlude — dreamy and spacious. Chromi (“Chrome“) continues the mood with a fully instrumental ambient piece that feels like a gentle extension of the last. U Novoj Epizodi (”In the New Episode”) shifts gears again into jazzy, downtempo electronica — stylish, groovy, albeit a little disjointed from what came before.
The next two tracks are slight low points for me. Filadelfija (“Philadelphia“) dabbles in alt-country — not a bad experiment, but it doesn’t quite fit this album’s universe. And the closer, Petit Dejeuner, adds some strange funk-electronica, which feels unmoored at the end of the record.
All in all, U Nedogled is the sound of a band stretching out, pulling at the edges of their sound — sometimes until it unravels. But the best moments — the raw, poetic grooves, the dub-infused dissonance, the tension and release — are among the most compelling in 90s Ex-YU alternative. A fearless album from a band in motion.
