U VREćI ZA SPAVANJE

"U vreci za spavanje" (Eng. "In The Sleeping Bag") is the second and the last album of TAKO, released in 1980 by PGP RTB label. It is an all-instrumental work, done with more ambition and seemingly more serious planning.

The title track is sort of "new age" ambient easy piece with nice flute/recorder solo, carrying the atmosphere of certain Andreas Vollenweider's albums of the 1980s. "Senke proslosti" starts with furious MAHAVISHNU-like guitar frenzy, melting slowly into a dark and eerie bass/synth section. "Na putu ka sebi" is another fusion-style composition with nice solo parts of guitar, piano and synths. "Price o Leni" is the longest track on the album, running at almost 10 minutes, but it seems that "Lena", whoever she was, is not a good inspiration for TAKO. After the so-so namesake song on the first album, here we have at times brilliant moments with some folksy melodies, but often some dull and repetitive themes played more with technical virtuosity than with heart. "Dolina leptira" is a nice odd- time track with chimes, piano and acoustic and electric guitars, somewhat reminiscent of CAMEL. "Igra devojcice" is a short closing number similar to previous "Minijatura" from the debut in that it reminds again of JETHRO TULL due to a flute solo, but there is also a harmonica part added here. Given that the only two vocal songs from the debut were in my opinion among the best, it seems to me that the all-instrumental concept on this one was not the best solution - some nicely composed vocal parts would add a bit of variety.

In time of its release in autumn 1980, Yugoslavia saw the outbreak of New Wave music movement, which did not welcome the "old-fashioned" progressive rockers. I remember some negative reviews in the renowned music magazine "Dzuboks" that, modelled on the NME trend setting, denounced TAKO as "lost in space and time" or something like that. I never saw this album in reality on the market and I imagine it was printed in very small circulation copies. TAKO disbanded soon after this commercial failure. In spite of this, "U vreci za spavanje" is a worthy prog album that should be listened and perhaps the foreign (non-South Slavic) prog fans would not mind lacking of vocal parts like I do, because this way there is no language barrier.