Name: TAPAN
Members: Nebojsa Bogdanovic, Goran Simonoski
Nationality: Serbian
Current release: TAPAN's Inner Voice / High Road EP, featuring Ognen Zlatanov (vocals), Jamal Alkiswani (sax), and Adrian Lever (Bulgarian Tambura) is out now.
Recommendations: G: Ghetto Music by Eddie Gale – one of my all-time favorite jazz albums; My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk – probably the best book I’ve read in the last couple of years   
N: The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

If you enjoyed this TAPAN interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, bandcamp, and Soundcloud.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

G: I listen with my eyes open, but my mind quickly drifts away. I try to understand the meaning and emotions behind the music. I get a dopamine boost every time I hear something smart, bold, unusual, unpredictable …

I guess that’s why I’m still actively following current music in all genres, be it Hip-Hop, Jazz, Electronic music or Alternative Rock.

N: I mostly listen to music with my eyes open, but sometimes when I want to have a deeper emotional connection with the music, I close my eyes. When I listen to music like this, I have the impression that time is not passing, which helps me to connect with the music even more.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

G: Back in the 2000s I was organizing a festival of experimental electronic music called Dis-patch. There, I was lucky enough to get close to artists like Four Tet and Dan Snaith (Caribou) and talk to them about their music making approach, as I was fascinated by their music.

I downloaded a piece of software called Audio Mulch and Sony’s Acid and started messing around with samples. Soon after that I wanted to check a DAW that revolutionized the loop based music – Ableton Live (v1.5).

I think anyone can learn to be an artist if there’s even a slight interest in expressing your feelings.

N: My first musical steps were singing with my mother in the car on the way to her hometown. After that, I started playing the accordion for about eight years, but high school ruined it all.

It was only in high school that I discovered different genres of music and since then I have always been searching for a new sound.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

G: Haha. That study definitely didn’t apply to me. At that age, I loved music, but didn’t know much about its diversity. I listened to hit punk songs that (mostly) everyone of my generation had listened to. If anything, even then I liked simple and raw sounding music.

The deepest experiences came later, when I finally could connect the dots between different music styles and how they influenced one another. I love hearing a dub reference in ambient music. Or Africa-influenced techno tunes.

N: During that time period, I was mostly playing the accordion, and it is a fact that the emotion I felt then while playing the instrument still largely defines me musically today. Even today, I am still looking for deeper emotions, a melancholic sound with a strong will, if I can put it that way.

In essence, nothing has changed, only the musical genres.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

G: A few factors: mysticism and unpredictability. Also, as stated in the previous answer, interconnection of different music genres. I know there are people that can recognize those influences and it’s sort of a hide and seek play for me.

But I love the process as well. Sharing ideas with band members and seeing their take on it. Most surprising results can occur.

N: It's always the emotion that I'm feeling at the time that I'm creating. That's why often, when I go back to something that I started working on a while ago, I don't know how I got to it in the first place. That's what makes the process of creating so much fun for me.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

G: I’d say discovered. We’re all influenced by other people’s works, and wether we like to admit it or not, the idea was already there in our heads, planted by the things we heard, saw or experienced before.

N: I am discovering ideas during the process of expressing emotion thought music.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

G: Not a big fan of Paul Simon, but I’m agreeing with him on this one. Haha.

A few people asked me why the bass sound in TAPAN tracks needs to be so big and prominent. And the answer would be, because I love the overall sound with the weight of that bass. It adds a physical experience as well as an emotional one.

N: Often, when people ask me what kind of music I make or play, I don't have a simple answer. The music I make and play needs to be layered in a way that requires multiple listens to pick up on the details.

It's important to me that the music I make isn't music for one season.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

G: One room in the Jewish museum in Berlin includes the installation Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) by Menashe Kadishman.



More than 10,000 faces with open mouths, cut from heavy round iron plates, cover the floor of the ground floor void. The ceilings are high. The room has an unbelievable reverb. You can walk on those heads and the sound in that room is like nothing else I’ve experienced before. So emotional, dense, hollow ...

Not sure how “musical” the sound in that room is, but I could listen to it for days.

N: It is definitely the sound of morning in nature waking up. It is a musical cacophony that in no way burdens me as a listener.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

G: Well, a few things ... Deep sub bass, uneven rhythms, and free-form jazz solos. Deep bass for its power on the dance floor. Broken polyrhythms for their unpredictability. And free jazz solos for their (at first) unpleasant nature, which can uplift you to another state of mind.

N: Lately, I've been loving the sound of silence. It's amazing how loud silence can be if you focus on it. After a while, even that silence is filled with sounds that we don't hear in everyday life.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

G: The TAPAN process of making music usually starts with a story that Nebojsa and I want to explore and try to recreate with music. It can be about an African tribe chasing a gazelle, or the exodus of people from Syria to Europe. The latter was described on our first album, EUROPA.

We were disgusted by how we as Europeans acted towards Syrian refugees, closing our doors to them and watching our backs with zero empathy towards them.

We knew that people don’t often make political statements with electronic music, but we had to express our feelings and thoughts at that time.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

G: Erm, not really. I’m not a big fan of “happy accidents”. That’s one of the reasons we don’t use modular synths. Haha

N: Please do not tell Goran that I sometime made some sounds through accidents.


TAPAN Interview Image by Srdjan Veljovic

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

G: Music making is a hobby for both of us, Nebojsa and I. He's a lawyer by occupation, and I'm a mastering engineer. We do it when we have free time and inspiration. There's no timetable, so it doesn't affect our lives that much.

The other thing is, we try to make art, and there are no shortcuts for good art. You have to give it as much time as it needs to develop and be finished. I guess there's some similarity to life there...

N: Although music is all around us, what I find most beautiful about it is its abstraction. The fact that it is invisible yet so omnipresent. This realization has made my everyday life easier because it doesn't have to be filled with visible content.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

G: I love a good cup of coffee, but it doesn't make me feel as good as music does. Not even close. None of the mundane work can do that.

Music is a spiritual, other-worldly experience. It can make me happy, sad, angry, relaxed, and anything in between. It has made me feel things I've never felt before, and I couldn't even describe what I'm experiencing. That's how powerful music and art are.

N: As I mentioned before, music is a way for me to express emotions that often lack adequate words.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

G: Sure, there are many examples, one of which gave me almost a religious experience the first time I heard it. It's a song by the Art Ensemble of Chicago called "Theme De Yo-yo."



It evokes so many emotions in me every time I hear it. A true roller coaster.

N: This is another reason why music is so important to me, because there are songs that feel like I created them myself, as if they were written for me.

The fact that they evoke the same feelings in other people is proof to me that there is something in us that connects us all and that should remain unknown and unexplained.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

G: Most certainly not AI-generated music or the current trend (dictated by short-form content and TikTok) to immediately start the song with the chorus.

I wish people could break free from their short attention spans in the future and learn to enjoy long-form music pieces that tell a full story, not just a headline.

N: I am satisfied with fact that music will always be with us and hope that people will continue to learn how to play instruments in the future despite all technology that we can use now and will be able to use in the future.