Foltin first hit it big with their second album, Arhimed, in the winter of 2000. They wore weird costumes akin to monks’ robes and did not have a single conventional instrument on stage, except for the bass guitar. The rest was made up of percussion with strange instruments, such as combs, tubes, or pots. These are known as “ready-made instruments.” The band utilises “Foltin-speak,” which is the phonetic mimicry of words from different languages without a semantic meaning.

Using Foltin-speak, Foltin created the Latin-sounding Donkey-Hot (2003), where the name is a play on words from Don Quixote, and explored klezmer fusion music in Lo-Lee-Ta-Too (2005), which reads as “Lolita 2.” Afterwards, Foltin created This Transplanted Machine Has Never Typed a Love Letter (2008), where the inspiration for the title was cell phone text messaging. Foltin are probably the country’s greatest alternative band today. It is difficult to place their music in a category. Lately the term “pseudo-immigrant cabaret” had been used as a sort of label for what they do. Now they are back with Penelope X, a project done in collaboration with other domestic musicians, as the members of Foltin explained to Southeast Europe: People and Culture.

Your last album, Penelope X, was released recently. How did this project come about?

Penelope X comprises seven songs and the postlude of the musical “Odysseus and His Women.” We collaborated with Nikola Kodžobašija and Goce Stefkovski. These are new re-workings of already existing themes, ours and Kodžobašija’s. Nikola had the basic idea for this project and he was also in charge of the arrangements and the post-production of the material in London. The portrait on the cover is by Miroslav Masin [a well-known Macedonian painter], and Jana Acevska took care of the design.
 
You do a lot of music for the theatre. What were your recent projects in this area? And what comes next?
 
Most recently we worked at the Theatre of Drama in Skopje on a Bertolt Brecht play, which was directed by our close friend, Martin Kočovski. The play was Baal, and Baal’s character was played by Zoran Ljutkov. Typical of Martin’s work, the process was dynamic. We recently worked on the music for the play Lexicon of Yu [goslav] Mythology in Pula, Croatia. The director is Oliver Frlić and it is produced by NETA, which is led by Blagoj Stefanovski from the Macedonian side and Damir Kos from the Slovenian side. Work in theatre is the B-side of our music life. It is a different type of expression compared to concerts and club gigs. It fulfils us in a different way and the friendship with theatre folk is a lot of fun and great inspiration. We will continue working in theatre.

Where did you play this year, and what is next? How many concerts do you do a year?

We just finished the tour, which involved concerts in France, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. Touring is an adventure much needed by musicians. Playing for a live audience that does not know your music brings great satisfaction and it is challenge for any musician. Next, we have again concerts in Beirut, and in autumn we will tour in Russia. I think we do approximately 50 performances per year.

People have a hard time defining your music. How would you define it?

Well, I think that defining oneself is really not possible. I would leave it up to the audience.

Foltin today are much different compared to Foltin from the Arhimed period.  How do you view your transformation over the years?

Each new album needs to be tasted, lived, and then the need for a new one emerges. And they are all in some way different from one another. Arhimed was inspired by then the rise of electronic music, only we interpreted it with acoustic instruments, whereas in our latest album and at concerts nowadays we use electronic instruments and effects. In theatre we still use ready-made instruments.

Your fame has been growing internationally. I read that at a recent concert abroad the audience knew all your lyrics by heart.

In countries such as Slovenia for example, where we play often, we have our own audience that comes to the concerts. They follow what we do and sometimes know the lyrics. It is a great pleasure, of course.

What are your next projects?             
           
After the theatre engagement in Pula we will start working on our new material. This is what we want, but we will see where the wind takes us. The sails are up.


**The European Commission does not accept or recognise in whatever form or content a denomination other than “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. All references, direct or indirect, to this country used in this article are those of its author.