Rex Ilusivii live as SNP Novi Sad Yugoslavia 1983.
The trials and tribulations of Suba in the days of socialist self-management
From the very beginning, the musical development of Mitar Subotić Suba (Novi Sad, 1961 – Sao Paulo, 1999) evolved in unconventional directions. As a boy, he studied classical accordion for seven years. As a young man, at the music high school he initially opted for music theory, but then later on switched to composition at the academy. He studied with the great composer Rudolf Bruči, but their views on music and music education diverged. Suba aimed for a synthetic sound, which they didn’t teach you at the academy back in those days. He could not complete his degree at the academy, and without a degree he could not find work…
As editor-in-chief of Radio Novi Sad I could not hire him without a degree, according to regulations in those days. However, I was able to engage him as a freelancer. Together, we came up with a brilliant idea. Every week Suba would compose an intro track for the “New Horizons – A Different Yugoslav Pop Scene”, a show hosted by Dragan Gojković Goja. He would sign it under a pseudonym, Rex Ilusivii (The King of Illusions). And this is how he’d actually earn a whole month’s salary.
Back in those days (in 1980), Radio Novi Sad had excellent sound engineers and state-of-the-art studio equipment. They fostered “radiophony” as a specific radio art form. Suba also learnt his trade in the Radio Beograd electronic music studio (Paul Pignon), which was the first studio in Yugoslavia to be equipped with a synthesizer (Synthi 100). He worked with the great maestros of radiophony (Arsenije Jovanović, Ivana Stefanović) in Radio Beograd’s Sound Workshop.
He drew on all these experiences when working with the finest Yugoslav alternative pop music composers and performers.
While pursuing his classical music education, radiophony, electronics, along with his own special interests, Suba also explored the ethnic and folk roots of music. At the radio I got him enthused about the Bence Szabolcsi’s Musica Mundana compilation. His father Radomir Subotić, a well-known travel writer, would bring Suba sound recordings from across the world. Almost without exception, all of Suba’s compositions incorporated elements of this “stock of sounds”, which later on became known as World Music.
You can clearly hear all of these elements in Suba’s early work from Novi Sad: the synthetic sound, the subtle selection of phantasmagoric materials of various origins (always with ethnic roots), classical education, “radiophony”… When he subsequently fused these with the Latin-American sound and enhanced sound technology, Suba created a musical doorway for a whole new direction in contemporary music that became known as “Suba”.
Dušan Mihalek, M.A., musicologist, Israel
credits
released August 9, 2016
Music by Rex Ilusivii
Written and produced by Mitar Subotic
Illustration by Zoran Janjetov
Liner notes by Dušan Mihalek
Liner notes translated by Tijana Mahieu
Photography by Vladan Živojnov
Cover artwork by Patrick Keuthen
Tape restauratioun and archive mastering Slobodan Misailovic
Mastered by Enrico Mercaldi for Time Tools Mastering
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