Električni Orgazam’s 1981 debut is one of those rare records that instantly reels the listener in. You can hear Belgrade in every note: the restless urban energy of a city just on edge. Emerging from the ashes of Hipnotisano Pile, the band — Srđan Gojković on vocals, Ljubimir Jovanović on guitar, Marina Vuletic on bass, and Branko Kuštrin “Mango” on drums — crafted an album that feels like a snapshot of tension in Yugoslav music history. This is post-punk with a socialist urban edge: dark, gritty, strange, and electrifying.
The record opens with Električni Orgazam, a distorted, almost dystopian track where the vocals sound as if transmitted over a broken radio. It’s unsettling, strange, and magnetic — the kind of introduction that leaves you cravingmore curiosities.
Then comes Konobar, a two-minute post-punk drive-by: raw and urgent. It’s over before you’re fully adjusted, leaving you brimming with energy and anticipation. Supposedly written on a napkin in a cafe – we get a taste for the concrete grit of Belgrade as we ingest each and every fast-paced riff and jagged drumbeat.
Krokodili Dolaze hits next, a track that manages to be both tense and playful. Synths wobble underneath distorted vocals, while a brass section sneaks in halfway through. It’s experimental, weird, and somehow perfectly structured chaos. I find myself thinking: if Wire or Suicide had formed in Belgrade, perhaps this is how they might have sounded.
Tracks like Voda u Moru and Infekcija expand the soundscape further. There’s a metallic, industrial tint in the background, reminiscent of Idoli’s seminal masterpiece – faint but audible, taken from a city alive with noise and movement. Synths pulse with anxious energy, whispered vocals curl around them, and you get a sense that the band is whispering, daring you to follow along into unknown territory.
Vi furthers the raw early ‘80s post-punk momentum — energetic, original, and urgent — before we hit some of the more experimental middle tracks. Some, like Pojmove ne Povezujem and Umetnost, feel like sketches or sound experiments, not fully polished songs. They’re strange, potentially challenging, yet they remain compelling in their unpredictability.
The album ends on Nebo, and it’s hard to overstate how much this track alone defines the record. Heavenly synths lift you upward, almost dreamlike, before descending back into the post-punk chaos that has defined the album from the start. It’s dramatic, cathartic, and utterly unique — a perfect microcosm of the debut’s dualities: beauty and grit, experimentation and song-craft, tension and control.
Listening to this album today, you can hear why Električni Orgazam are portrayed alongside Idoli and Šarlo Akrobata as the most exciting Yugoslav acts of the early 80s. The record isn’t perfect — some tracks don’t land, and a cover of I’ve Got a Feeling feels slightly out of place, if not satirical. This record is entirely original, exhilarating, and, more than anything, alive with a restless energy that few bands are able to capture.
For me, this is a record that doesn’t just hold historical musical significance; it still shocks and delights. It’s a glimpse of the Belgrade Novi Val scene at its most daring, a band full of curiosity and experimentation, and an album that reminds us why Ex-YU music is so essential.
