Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Smaal Tokk
Label: Celinka
Released: 2015
Rating: 4/5
A few more words on rhythm pushing forward in poetry, on poetic »recitation,« in Slovenia of course. This time from the Littoral end of the country. Smaal Tokk is a gangsta rapper from the Littoral, an insatiable blabbermouth, a lecturer in the language of rhythmic poetry. »Unotisto« is his studio debut, with a full 16 tracks, quite a few of them kind of a-few-seconds-long comic »breaks« between the real songs, meaning the ones that run a few minutes. What sets this musician’s approach apart is that he sticks strictly to the Goričko dialect. On every inhale and exhale he takes in his preaching across the album.
The poetry is, as I said, honestly gangster. Stuffed to bursting with the juiciest vocabulary that a confession from the Goričko end of our little chicken coop of a country can muster. The guy approaches his poetry with a sparkling wit, filling it with stories from the harsh everyday life of the little guy living in Goričko. So, in Slovenia. The voice is piercing, softly howling, accusing, also furious, biting,… In tune with the sharpness of the sermon. Simply ideal for endless complaining and grumbling, which Smaal Tokk delivers in a truly one-of-a-kind way through a bottomless sense of sparkling sarcasm. The more down-to-earth the content of the verses is, the more lucid and entertaining the way it’s served up. The more this thing makes you laugh, the more soberingly grounded you get once its last moment runs out in the CD player.
Smaal Tokk picked quite a crew of collaborators. The musical backdrop is built by Nula Kelvina, a band that has put out three albums full of perceptive humor in a short time. No wonder they landed on the same mental wavelength as Smaal Tokk’s sharp-tongued, razor-witted lyrics. What’s more. Most of the music’s arrangement was shouldered by Klemen Kotar, who, besides playing bass, keyboards and wind instruments, also took care of programming and »special makeup,« like the obligatory contrasting of the chorus parts with extra backing vocals. Kotar’s colleague Marko Boh also joins in on the album, mostly contributing backing vocals and keyboards on just two tracks. Considering they’re involved in writing the music of Nula Kelvina, the foundation they lay under Smaal Tokk’s poetry is delicately »smooth« jazz, easy to fall for musically, stuffed to the gills with bouncy elements of funk, soul and pop. In the choruses this musicality is underlined even more by a contrasting interplay of female vocals, which pleasantly and very skillfully complement Tokk’s boundless grumbling.
The result is a fascinating piece of work, full of varied ideas in colorful arrangements between the tracks, which in its blackness of genius humor never stops entertaining and inspiring. Everything’s packed into the package. From juicy Goričko curses to typical street tales relived and carried over straight from the pulse of the streets, and all sorts of intrigues, especially in man–woman relations. Throughout the album Smaal Tokk keeps turning for advice to the mysterious Radmila, an imaginary muse who constantly feeds him creativity and inspiration.
The jesting preacher is of course full of striking provocation, which the packaging itself already points to, encouraging piracy and mercilessly trampling all over the kitsch and the glitter of fakeness of the music business and industry, which long ago destroyed healthy creativity and stamped out a healthy artistic sense in musical expression. In that sense this release can be understood as a genuine cry of rebellion and a caustic blow to the whole conformist brood of the music business, who with a fraud of artificial pleasing seek attention on the music scene and cheaply exploit the buyable favor of »sold-out« media.
Smaal Tokk for president! No less, no more. He’d put things in their place in a flash. Slovenia needs a »good Putin« in this day and age, no doubt about it anymore. Smaal Tokk will probably never become among Littoral rappers what Iztok Mlakar became among singer-songwriters, even though Smaal Tokk actually is a kind of singer-songwriter, but of rhythm in poetry, still. This document doesn’t run short of insight and truthfulness, masterfully wrapped up in a lucid satire of the misery and glitter of Slovenian everyday life. Let’s hope the creative inspiration of self-grown authorial insight keeps guiding the guy along with his muse Radmila, and that he keeps growing in maturity by releasing new installments of the soap opera of peri-urban to urban city street culture and the houses of the Goričko–Littoral end of Slovenia.
Lineup
Smaal Tokk – vocals
Gašper Kržmanc – guitar
Marko Boh – keyboards
Klemen Kotar – bass
Enos Kugler – drums
Ana Šimenc – saxophone, backing vocals
Blažka Oberstar – flute, backing vocals
Production
Klemen Kotar
Track list
1. Alora dejmo zčnt z introtom
2. Intro
3. Apokalipsa
4. Cjw car
5. Dejlejmo watrwake
6. Egon
7. Eko, ena wd Radmile!
8. En knc wade
9. Gengsta u akciji
10. Jzn
11. Naši an vaši
12. Položnice
13. Precednik konceptualizma
14. Smaal Tokka za precednika
15. Oporwka
16. Zaključk
