Hotland is our debut release — an EP, too long to be a single and too short to be an album. We released it in August 2016, as the culmination of years of shared work and music-making, as well as a particular energy that is uniquely ours.

The EP features three compositions by Aleksandar Gajić, a Canada-based violinist and composer.

At the heart of Hotland lies the Glamoč silent circle dance. The piece was composed in the late 1990s, when Gajić returned to his native Bosnia, ravaged by war. The melancholy that rises from these notes carries the weight of that devastation — and yet, as you listen, it is not impossible to find yourself somewhere else entirely: a distant, cold, and solitary place.

Souvenir from Marinkova Bara draws on Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence as its point of departure — but as it unfolds, it is not images of imperial Russia that pass before the mind’s eye, but black-and-white photographs of old Belgrade. Marinkova Bara is the city’s oldest Roma settlement, a place where, for decades, hardship and a certain ease of living have found themselves intertwined.

The Hotland EP is distributed through Phonofile Balkan.