Bones in Butter and the Art of the Hand-Off on Cosmopolis, a Belgrade Album Built in Layers
Bones in Butter and the Art of the Hand-Off on Cosmopolis, a Belgrade Album Built in Layers
Thirteen Tracks Pass From Synths and Samples to Bass, Drums, Voices and Guitar
The video for Dumped, posted on the day Cosmopolis came out, borrows its pictures from Dodge City, a 1939 western. It is a sly piece of presentation from Bones in Butter. An old genre film sits over a breakup song by a Serbian post-punk band. Cosmopolis, the Belgrade album it comes from, came out on 24 May 2024. It works the same trick in sound. Each song passes through several pairs of hands before it is finished.
Bones in Butter are in the playlist below, and the Bones in Butter artist profile collects the coverage so far. Cosmopolis came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Hit play, then keep reading.
The project is built around the songwriting of Milutin Krašević. He was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, to Yugoslav parents. He spent years as an English and German translator, then moved to Belgrade and founded the band in 2019. Through all of it he kept writing. By his own account, composing is “something I need to do to stay alive.”
Cosmopolis is the second full-length album, after Songs For A Sane Society. It runs to thirteen tracks and just under fifty minutes. Rexius Records released it as a one-album collaboration, and the band has since gone back to working independently.
Two of the touchstones the band names explain the palette. Magazine, formed in Manchester in 1977 by Howard Devoto after he left Buzzcocks, had keyboards in its original line-up. Critics count its debut, Real Life (1978), among the first British post-punk albums. The Velvet Underground, formed in New York in 1964, joined rock and roll to the avant-garde. It sold few records at first, yet became one of the most influential bands of its era. The band’s own description points to that mix. It pairs the darkness and rigour of post-punk with melody that arrives unexpectedly.
The Arrangement on Cosmopolis Starts in One Head and Moves Through the Band in a Set Order
Krašević writes by ear rather than on paper. He hears a finished arrangement in his head first, then builds it from synthesizers, loops and samples. That foundation goes to the rhythm section to lock down. Only then do the voices and the guitar arrive with harmony and colour.
The hand-off shows in the credits. On Dumped, Krašević plays synths and samples and sings, and Luna Škopelja sings with him. Todor Živković plays guitars, Dejan Škopelja plays bass and Stefan Pejatović plays drums. The drum chair changed hands across the album, with Tom Fedja Franklin and Marko Milivojević also taking turns. So the same writing method meets different players from song to song.
The closing track goes further. The credits under the lyric video for Escape list loops alongside synths, voices, guitar and bass, and no drummer at all. At 2:05, it is also the shortest song on the album.
The track lengths show how freely the arrangements stretch. They All Shine For You runs to 5:05, the longest piece, while I Can Love is over in 2:13. Meanwhile, A New Generation, Pt. II returns to a song the band put out on YouTube in 2022. That first version had a different line-up around Krašević, so the sequel doubles as a before and after of the band itself.
Srdjan Popov’s Mix and Master Give the Belgrade Album Cosmopolis One Finish Across Thirteen Songs
With so many players passing through, the finish matters. Srdjan Popov mixed and mastered the music, and his name sits on every credit list we found for the album. The band recorded Dumped, for one, at HillRiver Studio in Belgrade in 2023.
Spotify credits Krašević as producer, composer and lyricist on Going To Cosmopolis, the title song near the end of the record. So the person who hears the arrangement first is also the one who signs off on how it lands.
The writing gives the mix plenty to carry. Dumped tells a story from a crowded gig, where a narrator meets someone while the guitars shriek. Years later, he finds himself reduced to a footnote in her story. It is the darkness and melody pairing again, this time inside one breakup.
Where to Hear Cosmopolis, the Belgrade Album That Rewards a Full Listen From Start to Finish
The best route is the running order. Start with You Just Drowned, then let Dumped and its western footage set the tone. Stay for They All Shine For You in the middle. Finish with Escape.
From the AltPop.News Curator Team: “What stays with us is the patience behind it. Krašević played in a band called Kasual in the mid-1990s and set music aside for a translation career. He still came back to make an album this sure of itself.”
Since then, the band has kept the door open, posting new demos on YouTube during 2026 alongside the single Zero Hour.
Follow Bones in Butter on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, the YouTube channel, SoundCloud and Bandcamp. The album is also on Apple Music.
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