Modern Quartet is a band who have been making music in Serbia for over ten years, creating a fusion of modern dance music with the distinctive rhythms of jazz. So you could call it electronic jazz. It is music for modern times, composed and synthesised on computers but also played live on stage and in clubs in multi-media performances that combine music, dance and video. The core members of Modern Quartet are Leche, Mastabear and Vanjus three guys and three computers, who collaborate with various musicians depending on the nature of each project. MQ means music and movement, sound and vision. Modern Quartet is a collaboration of music technology artists who play their original electronic music live, in a multi-media music presentation where the musicians interact with dancers, computers, video screens, electronic music editing machines and synthesisers, on stage, in concert and at music festivals. Modern Quartet aims to provide a total entertainment experience, exploiting computer technology to create a show that is stimulating and exciting, both musically and visually.

At the request of the elite Belgian label Crammed Disc, Modern Quartet have done remixes for Suba’s “Tributo” album and Kochani Orchestra’s “Electric Gypsyland”, alongside an impressive list of artists (Juryman, Arto Lindsay, Shantel, Bigga Bush, Phil Asher) while the cover artwork for these releases, along with the MQ album, was created by Zoran Janjetov.

MQ’s debut album “The Dark Side of the Mood” implants a cosmopolitan sound of modern electronic music onto the scene, transcending borders and presenting personal reflections by colliding musical styles and singing in a variety of different languages, sometimes all within the confines of one song. The result is a subtle blend of various forms of downtempo, jazz, deep house and broken beat filtered through the talents and fine taste of these passionate consumers of modern electronic and dance music. In addition, the already recognizable MQ sound receives a breath of fresh air with the appearance of Mastabear, whose songwriting and suggestive voice and lyrics dominate the vocal part of MQ’s repertoire.

With this album, MQ presents itself as a candidate for the title of local champion in the realm of freeform creativity, which in the end translates into a strange and exotic artistic voyage from the first musical tone to the last tiny scribble on the album’s inspired cover art.

It’s somewhat paradoxical that Novi Sad’s Modern Quartet are among the most regular participants on the Belgrade Coffee Shop compilations. This eclectic group of artists along with their friends and collaborators, from musicians Vanjus, Leka and Daniel (aka Mastabear) to comic book artist Zoran Janjetov, have cemented the band’s place in the domain of electronic music here in Serbia, at the same time breaking into the global market.