Voodoo Ramble 2025
Celebrating fifteenth anniversary of their urban drive, Croatian bluesmen invite a few guests on board and blow the night away.
In The Heart Of The City
As a place where the country’s first electric generator got installed about 150 years ago, the town of Duga Resa was bound to produce a cracking combo one day, and indeed, the ensemble Boris Dugi-Novacki, or Zamba, has been steering towards international recognition are possessed with a lot of charge and charm. After a decade-and-half of touring across the world and four albums under their belt, the collective felt like defining what it’s all been about, and “In The Heart Of The City” emerged as a record on which dark magic and frivolity feed smoldering riffs in equal measure. Dwindled to a trio now, at least in the studio, to focus creative energies, the band increase their allure here by incorporating popular scribe Pete Feenstra’s lyrics and also calling three prominent European guitarists to trade licks with the team leader. However, the results of this shift seem deliciously raw, rather than polished, and if the players whip up clichés sometimes, their chosen genre is based on those anyway.
As the platter’s title track demonstrates spring in the step of its nocturnal creepiness to open the proceedings – with Zamba’s guitar and bass immediately locking into Damir Šomen’s drums, and Neven Resnik’s piano adding playfulness to Boris’ voice that’s seductively backed by female vocals on refrains – it’s impossible not to get into the spirit of things. Still, it would be wrong to assume the record will follow the Chicago template, although there’s the Windy City’s rumble propelling the organ-oiled “I’m A Bluesman Baby” which Mick Pini’s flurries underpin in style, because the sparser “Take You Home” glides across the moonlit ground on acoustic strum and opts for romantic sentiment. Contrasting the infectiously heavy strut that “Walk Away” takes to the fore further down the line, the unhurried “Midnight Ride” relies on Muddy Manninen’s slider roll and sweet six-string unison to tether the singer’s simmering emotions to the ether, but “4000 Years Old” uses Marcus Flynn’s fretboard pulse to cinch the piece’s “Green Manalishi” vibe to sleazy industrial glitter and enter the dancefloor.
Yet while “Don’t Leave Me 4 Good” offers warm balladry, “Cold Hearted Woman” heats up the same brass-boasting panorama and goes for funky swagger, and “I Refuse (To Feel The Blues)” engages in a swampy swirl, leaving “Addicted To The Rush” to throb under its hard-rock veneer and deliver the album’s finale. In the wake of such ending the listener should long for more – or, at least, for another spin of these cuts.
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