• creativity
• singles
• Slovenia
• Thomas March
• Thomas March Collective
• videos

Published on 13/12/2022 11:00 am

This week on Balkan Express, we’re taking a look at a band that is really just one man, but also many different people. The Thomas March Collective is a project by, obviously, a musician Thomas March. And he puts together a different musical lineup for almost every song he makes, working with a new collective every single time. Hence, the Thomas March Collective.

Thomas March, who goes by Tomaž Marič in civilian life, started writing, or shall we say, creating music at least a decade ago. Maybe even earlier than that. But he is not your average studio musician. Quite the opposite. Depending on what he has in mind, he approaches other musicians and together they bring his musical ideas to life.

Placeholder act

So The Thomas March Collective is actually a placeholder for whatever ensemble of musicians Thomas March puts together. And the list reads like a who’s who of Slovenian music industry, with an occasional theatre actor as a bonus. That said, the one mainstay of his music is vocalist Vesna Potokar, who appears on virtually every single on his, well, singles.

As the actual composition of the collective changes, so does the music of Thomas March Collective. Even more importantly, so do their videos. The first couple of singles were purely in black and white, reflecting the way he saw the world at the time. But colours did appear eventually and as he released more and more singles, he also started getting invitations to work with other Slovenian bands.

Curiously, The Thomas March Collective have yet to release a single album. And there is nothing to indicate one is in the works. And to be honest, it would have been a breeze to put one together, what with more than twenty tracks under his belt, and such. But it is as Thomas March doesn’t care about that. He considers himself a child of the YouTube era and acts accordingly.

Overall nice guy

Thomas March writes and produces music almost exclusively in Slovenian. Which makes his choice of an English nom-de-plume all the more strange. But the explanation is as simple as it is lovely. When Tomaž Marič is not doing music, he is an excellent tour guide who has travelled half way around the globe. And it just so happened that no-one in Thailand was able to pronounce his name properly. Instead, they came up with Thomas March. And it stuck.

Thomas March is more than just a musician. He is a producer, songwriter, director, the man with the plan and – critically – an overall nice guy who is a joy to work with. And the host of this here show should now, because he knows Thomas March aka Tomaž Marič from the before time, when he set up your truly  with his first real DJ gig in downtown Ljubljana. But while I may claim bragging rights, Thomas March claims rights to some really good music.

And that’s all the time we have for today. Check out Thomas March Collective on YouTube, Spotify and wherever you get your music from, and Balkan Express will be back next week.

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Balkan Express takes weekly trips into contemporary musical production of, you guessed it, the Balkans. Forget gusle and tamburice, this show is about rock, pop and a sense of humour. Well, at least there’s guitars. On air most Tuesdays in a new-and-improved time-slot at 1100 hrs. Usually. Your train conductor is Aljaž (aka @pengovsky) who once did the world a solid and decided never to sing again in public. Which is why he ended up doing radio.