Recalling Ennio Morricone spaghetti
westerns, the electrified belly dance music
of Omar Khorshid, and '90s bedroom
psychedelia at once, the music of Branko
Mataja is from its own epoch. Snatched
from the streets of Belgrade as a teenager,
Mataja spent World War 2 in a German
work camp, escaping the insanity of postwar Europe to settle in North Hollywood
to live out the American Dream to its
fullest. Crafting handmade music on
homemade guitars throughout the 1970s,
Mataja taught himself to play in order
to pay homage to his ancestral home of
Yugoslavia, a place he would never return
to except through these guitar meditations.
