Branko Mataja was a Serbian-born guitarist and luthier whose haunting instrumental recordings blend Balkan folk traditions with vintage surf, rock, and lounge influences. After emigrating to the United States, he built custom instruments and began crafting richly textured, reverb-drenched interpretations of songs from his homeland. Mataja’s rare, self-released recordings—later rediscovered and reissued by Numero Group—have earned posthumous acclaim for their hypnotic tone and timeless fusion of Eastern European melodies with a distinctly mid-century American sound.