Miusow Quartet – Alpine Merrymakers

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Venue: Sax Pub / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 01.10.2008
Attendance: 30
Ticket price: 1 dinar

Miusow Quartet are old friends of the RockLine crew. I’ve already seen them twice in the past year, and every time they’ve played out of their skin. The first time they caught me off guard, because I never expected to find such inventive, polished jazz-rock in Slovenia. This time they honored us with a gig at Sax Pub, which has room for about five people, though in a pinch you can squeeze in ten. Good thing there’s a garden outside where the music from the bar carries perfectly, otherwise there would have been riots. The guys were crammed into roughly one square meter of space, and it was a minor miracle how nimble they stayed under those conditions.

The guys again fell back on their iron-clad repertoire, old evergreen hits from the album Smejmo Se Skupaj, where they show off their passion for the latest developments in folk-pop party music. It all kicked off with Alma mater, which I missed part of, because I wandered back a bit too late from the nearby tavern. Next came Cynical, the only vocal song on their one and only album. After that, Tibor (bass) and Marko (accordion) left the stage, and we were left to Konfrontacija, a face-off between Blaž on drums and Andrej on sax. Wild rhythmic jumping around and solos on both instruments – definitely a good sign for the rest of the show. The two tired souls came back to the stage rested, and what followed was nothing but classics – Skandiranje Skandinavcev, Amn’Ha, and Vrvež v mestu, tunes with those proper jazz-rock melodies that are bouncy and wildly complicated at the same time.

At the end, after the crowd’s whooping (really it was just one overexcited guy), the Miusows had to come back out, since otherwise a mob of enraged fans would have scalped them. And so they were forced to resort to a sneaky tactic. They played a real feast for the ears, Šuti Bolan, a song fit for intelligent Serbian village parties, where a jazz rhythm props up the Balkan melos. So everybody got what they wanted, and Miusow Quartet won again across the board.

Given that they have an accordion in the lineup, I’d have expected more of the cheerful folk-pop tunes from Miusow Quartet, but instead the guys prefer a jazz-rock foundation, which they build on with tango, avant-garde, assorted world music motifs and Balkan melodies. Sure, they’re no Vesele Štajerke, but in the style they play they’re simply top-notch and, for me personally, one of the most interesting acts on the world music scene. All they need is a new album and everything will be even more perfect.

That this band is gaining a reputation (at least among musicians) was clear when two renowned wind players came stumbling into the venue – Lovro Ravbar from Leeloojamais and Vasko Atanasovski, who likes to collaborate especially with Bratko Bibič, where he often blows into some pipe or other.

After so many “big” concerts in recent days, it would be all too easy to forget about Miusow Quartet, who sadly don’t draw as many followers to their shows as the likes of Living Colour or Stooges. And that’s unfair. Miusow Quartet are exceptional musicians who, with their professional approach, which never lacks for fun either, toss plenty of famous names in the trash. I doubt they’ll ever get the recognition they deserve, but those of us who know their music and enjoy it can count ourselves lucky that these guys are so fired up about what they do that they more or less “don’t give a damn” whether they earn a single dinar from music at all. Their passion definitely shows during their performances and on the album, where the quality is beyond dispute.

Words: Rok Podgrajšek
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik