Tank full of Oil: Mario Marzidovšek

Mario Marzidovšek

Mario Marzidovšek (Born, Poljčane, 21.10.1961 -- Died, Poljčane, 20.9.2011) is one of the key figures of the Yugoslav 1980s underground: an old-school industrial musician, cassette culture pioneer, versatile artist, scene organizer and a unique personality from Slovenska Bistrica (SR Slovenia). Even though he had been engaged with audio experimentation since the beginning of the 1980s, Mario Marzidovšek started releasing tapes only in early 1984. In the international casette network of the late 1980s he was a relatively familiar name having contributed to around 120 international cassette compilations (by his own account). Among his best known exploits were two solo cassettes published for two Dutch experimental music titans – a studio recording titled Suicide In America & Bavarian Aquarels (Staalplaat-Amsterdam, 1987) and a rare live show titled the other Live on the air (Art & Noise Editions-Nijmegen, 1987) ‎– as well as several appearances on various nowadays-legendary cassette compilations like Thee Book (Graf Haufen Tapes-Berlin, 1984) or Insane Music for Insane People vol. 23 (Insane Music-Trazegnies, 1988).
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As was often the case with 1980s hometapers, Mario Marzidovšek started out as a member of the mail-art network involved in xerox art, collages, concrete poetry, etc. As an artist, as well as a musician, he was strongly influenced by a variety of contemporary ideas, especially conceptualism. In that sense, Mario Marzidovšek perfected a whole array of Cagean stunts for extracting sounds with non-musical objects that he used in his performances. He even used to ‘make sounds’ in Laibach shows for a period of time. From 1984 to 1988, Mario Marzidovšek ran his legendary Marzidovshekminimallaboratorium (or MML) label which was responsible for more than 80 tapes in total. Mario Marzidovšek’s MML proved to be crucial in connecting and solidifying diverse scenes within former Yugoslavia – from punk and hometaping communities to people engaged in mail art and sound poetry, as well as serving as the only link of Yugoslavian hometapers to the worldwide network of hometapers and vice versa. He was also the author of the fanzine Štajerski poročevalec, in which he published his essays on music and art. In 1988 or 1989, Mario Marzidovšek aborted all his artistic activities, quit his day job as a technician in the chemical plant in Rače (SR Slovenia) and moved to Netherlands and later Germany. Not much known about his whereabouts in Western Europe, apart from the fact that he rarely performed there. Eventually, in 1990 or 1991, Mario Marzidovšek returned to his native Poljčane, a hamlet near Slovenska Bistrica, where he removed himself from public life.