Let’s go back to the start: what prompted you to start Discom?

The reasons are both personal and professional. It is very hard to describe to someone who doesn’t live in Serbia the feeling caused by the total destruction of values after the breakup of Yugoslavia. We wanted to show that this vast geographical territory had a lot of cultural values, including a love for good music. It is not a question of nostalgia or escapism from everyday reality, it’s about recovering a lost cultural identity.

After finishing our education in late 2000s, we were both unable to find jobs with our MA degrees [Vanja studied Philology and Cultural Studies and Luka holds a degree in Business Administation] and were forced to take various freelance jobs over for years. In war-devastated, post-communist Serbia with its omnipresent corruption, it is almost impossible to build a career in the profession you have been training for. It seemed natural to incorporate our love for music, our knowledge and expertise from the years spent collecting records, into a venture like this. That said, we would never have imagined that we would be in such a position — it was incredible to think that one day we would be a married couple with our own independent label.