Hiša

Hiša is a Slovenian folk rock band from Trbovlje, formed in 1981. Their own songs grow out of the folk and country rock of the American west coast in the 1960s and 1970s, the world of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the Eagles. They carried that "west coast" sound of close vocal harmonies into Slovenian, creating a soft rock of their own with multi-part singing as its trademark, and they add touches of modern blues and pop jazz.

As teenagers the founders, Martin Koncilja, Andrej Guček, Vili Guček and Blaž Kovačič, sang and played acoustic guitars at house parties. The name came by chance at an acoustic music festival in Litija in 1981, where they turned up without one: a counting game landed on the letter H, and somebody said "as long as it isn't Hiša". In the 1980s military service kept them apart. Andrej Guček went into the army with the memory of a Neil Young concert he saw in Verona in autumn 1982, then played in rock and pop bands at home and abroad, Blaž Kovačič moved to America, and Vili Guček twice became Slovenian champion in free climbing.

In 1991 they met again in Laško and decided to take the band seriously, with the aim of turning the west coast sound into modern Slovenian rock. Drummer and singer Iztok Pepelnjak joined, and for a short time the band was called Bela hiša. Nino de Gleria on bass and Klavdij Skrt on keyboards helped on the first record, after which Vili Guček took over the bass and the line-up has stayed the same ever since.

The studio albums Hiša (1994), Neskončna pot (1996), Kompas srca (1998), Nevarna razmerja (2000), Silicijevo nebo (2002), Za en dotik (2006) and Skoraj poletje (2011) all came out on ZKP RTV Slovenija. Their live albums include Illusion Anyway - Tribute to Neil Young (1997), Čas ali svoboda (2010) and, in 2015, Peaceful Riders, Illusion Anyway 2 and Radiolive, and Trenutki 1992-2002 (2004) collects their first decade.

Hiša were best debutants at the Slovenijarock festival in 1995 after a Zlata nota nomination for their first album. Illusion Anyway won a Zlati petelin in 1997 as the best record in a foreign language, "Kompas srca" was nominated for best rock song in 1998, Za en dotik was album of the year 2006 in a poll of Nedeljski dnevnik's music journalists, and Dragan Bulič put Skoraj poletje among the ten best albums of 2011.