Artist: Dalaj Eegol (ex Alien)
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Length: 68:02
Rating: 2.8/5
He used to be a rapper, and before that he left his mark on the scene with the funk-rock edge of Heavy Less Wanted. Now, past forty, it’s time for something new, I guess? Dalaj Eegol, Ali En, born in Kranj in 1973 and known to family and friends as Ali Džafić, is a man I struggle to see as one single person, despite (or maybe because of) all those incarnations and artistic expressions. I’ve long suspected that people who can squeeze in high musical standards, illustration, multimedia work and spiritualism all at once, plus a newfangled, calmer, provocative spirituality that pokes at the narrow-minded, limited defenders of the purely clerical side of our Cow Valley, simply can’t be contained in one person. Fine, so this time the same guy comes with several names and monikers. To keep a proper artistic distance, and to dodge lawsuits from people you can knock off balance just by showing them your spine is sturdier than theirs, a bit of schizophrenia was probably a must for pulling off all those lofty goals. Don’t get me wrong – I personally rate the talented schizophrenic I’m presenting this time. The record Leva Scena, which I heard in 1994, was empirical proof of something so originally sharp: that the Slovenian language is just as good a blade for settling accounts with the universe’s benign nonsense, that all the self-proclaimed musical heroes could be exposed to the world as total fake lefties, and that Ali En could squeeze out, in a phenomenal way, a record that actually made rap listenable and likable to me. Slovenia could finally boast one of the first records with real rap potency. That’s the past, though, and by 2013 Mr. Round Ocean (Dalaj means ocean in Mongolian, Eegol means circle) had pretty much been forgotten. The albums Smetana za prijatelje, the spiritual-electronic experiment Red’a’red and the comeback rap fiasco D’Rap faded into oblivion faster than last year’s snow, so I’d more or less forgotten the former enfant terrible who never minced words, until the record Recycleman landed in my hands.
Let me first give a general, surface-level take on Recycleman, which is decked out in Jamaican-Rastafarian colors. The album is production-wise exceptionally polished, a laid-back, mainstream-leaning universal funk-rap excursion into more centrist waters that doesn’t completely renounce every predicate and attribute of the past. Instead of the spiritual and not always understood Dalaj, it’s often the ghost of the buried Ali En that peeks out from under the well-brushed surface. The product doesn’t hide its recycling of tried-and-tested recipes, not even in its name. Still, despite the warning that mushroom soup reheated several times can hurt your stomach, I was hoping for a good hearty stew, goulash or pasulj, since those dishes can come out even tastier after repeated reheating and recycling. The main culprit behind this dose of otherwise fresh dance grooves already had funk and rap on the table half a century ago, so you always wonder: can the record be as sharp, potent, solid and direct as Leva Scena was, or is this a desperate attempt to resurrect the famous corpse of the past? It’s nice, of course, to get a pat on the back after all that studio grind from a few critics, publishers and radio hosts, and not just praise from friends who skip the criticism so they won’t offend you. Don’t get me wrong – the album Recycleman is definitely very listenable, a trip through the imaginary world of the international Kranj wunderkind, who has meanwhile gone gray and grown up, spiced with the Balkans, sex and sentimental memories of a bygone life. From the start, though, it gives up on any political note and on highlighting anything other than danceable likability. Opa Opa is the Balkan equivalent of chicano rap’s Latino rhythms. Instead of rattling guns and the expected gnashing of teeth out of anger and bitterness, the intro this time is rather soft-hearted and pleasantly harmless. Cekini padajo z neba is the first potential hit, taking the golden glitter of coins as its main subject. Dalaj’s nice flow of words on monetary laws and the gravitational pull of recession doesn’t burden you with either the sound or any particularly juicy wording.
The latter is what the funny-fuck-fest and even pedagogically instructive track Kako nataknt kondom tries to dress itself up with, as Dalaj teaches you about sexual diseases and woes. Great, because kids these days don’t read lyrics or safety tips, but they’d surely listen to music, right? Still, the track doesn’t really get under my skin, since I expected a lot more bite and edge on the record, the kind with which Ali En’s debut etched itself deep into my soul. The Balkan party then continues with a study of mosquitoes’ insectoid habits in Koomaraci. The bilateral hop across the southern border works nicely language-wise, and the track’s main strength is the tribal fusion of rhythm and gypsy brass, where Beats Antique have undoubtedly left their conceptual mark too. The verbal diarrhea about the bloodsuckers’ eating habits flows without hitching or straining. I put the emphasis on the rhythm of the words, which keeps the mood rolling nicely, rather than on the meaning of the admittedly humorous story. Surprisingly, you haven’t yet been tempted to stop the record early out of sheer tedium. I think that with growing up and the midlife crisis, men’s hard slab of meat gets softer too, the very thing that once served both their own libido and the expectations of the fairer sex a lot better. It would be a bit boring, or even exhibitionist, if Dalaj rambled this time about his bedroom adventures from the days of the marital yoke he’s in now. It’s much better to hop into a time machine and return to early youth, when dreams were life’s main guide, alongside the golden age of MTV, raging hormones and the wish to lose one’s innocence. The man, who became a legend that way, boasts of all his achievements, visions and experiences. Not the least bit modest or refined, I think, but Turbo Trdi certainly ticks every box of recycling on this record.
In recent years Dalaj has found a new home with his wife in India, with the smell of intoxicating substances in Hindu temples, the polytheistic universe of a caste-stratified world where everyone shares a love of Bollywood, rhythm and dance. The track Jamiya weaves that into the record: an electro mix of East and West, and Dalaj introduces himself once more with a repeat tango of the intro babble from the track Start, just so you won’t forget him. Slovenia dala je gol turns the clock back to the golden age of football, but the ecstasy over the third most important thing in the world for many (if the first two are food and drink) doesn’t really move me. Probably also because I couldn’t give a damn about a piece of round leather, I think, though Recycleman nicely repeats its Atari metrics and juicy eighties flavor and blows them into your ears with determined resolve. I recently managed to watch The Great Gatsby, and what stuck with me from the new version was mainly the hyper-explosive mix of electronics, rhythm and old melodies that almost recalled the golden age of the Charleston. The track Skateboarding manages to recreate something similar. Retrospection is the central thread of the recycling, and Dalaj Eegol is a master of going back to the golden age, at least as far as sound goes. Content-wise, I believe, each era and context would deserve its own content and metaphors. Peace is an Anglo-Italian-Francophile warbling smooth jazz lounge trip, after which Dalaj decides, I don’t know how, to weave in the ultramarathon cviček drinker whom all of Slovenia laughed at, yet who still managed to achieve and surpass everything nobody before him had. Martin Strel (Water Funk) can’t decide whether to be a tribute to the feats of the valiant Dolenjska native or to mock him to the end with a mere listing of his achievements. It’s banal that I’d need to prove my own greatness only through the successes and accomplishments of people who dare to reach for their dreams, when we forget them damn fast if they fail. And it’s precisely oblivion that Dalaj fights against this time. The lounge trip continues with the track Luka Piran, and Dalaj, as if he’d fallen completely into a Morcheeba groove, spins a new string of rhymes, this time dedicated to the talented bassist Luka Ličen (though I don’t know if Dalaj means the bassist of Istranbul or someone else).
Red Hot Chili Rappers is, as far as lucidity goes, clearer and more direct. It’s an Anglophile moment of bowing to modern culture, yet it doesn’t bring as much spice as you’d expect from the red, hellish representative of peppers. The empty rambling off the bat, apart from the rhythm, doesn’t hit the heart’s bullseye, the kind that could earn it verses of praise. Language Shit, like its predecessor, is rhythmic filler, a bridge between content and the fade-out into emptiness, nothing, a vacuum of thought. Since the time somehow has to be filled and the record’s running time stretched, this kind of filler was entirely expected. The instrumental finish with the tracks Slovenia dala je gol and Turbo Trdi doesn’t dot any meaningful i either, and the record of retrospective sentiments fizzles out into a rather lukewarm ending. I’ll borrow a thought from one of the more potent and content-rich fast-talking rhymers in Slovenia, the Novo mesto orator per excellence N’Toko. As he once said in an interview, the rap and hip hop scene was much richer and more numerous way back when. Everybody wore baggy pants and snapbacks and hung thick gold chains around their necks to be »in.« There was no shortage of MCs back then, and almost all of them got their two minutes of fame and attention. Then suddenly came a quick turnaround, in which all the young guys and girls took off their uniforms and switched to whatever was current. And rappers and MCs, hoping to get anybody at all in front of their stage, switched to lukewarm, middle-of-the-road, radio-friendly fluff that has nothing in common with the essence of rap and quality sharp-tongued critique. N’Toko distances himself from that kind of thing and stays loyal to the underground, to thematically juicy rap with balls, while others deliberately strayed from their steel path and don’t know how to return to it with full confidence. Dalaj is among them: he’s certainly capable of making a well-produced record, but it’s missing a lot of balls. Recycleman is thus just one more attempt at pleasing and likability. Apart from a few bright musical moments, there’s little on the album to build on for a new success story like the one Leva Scena managed to sustain for so long. If I may be a bit sarcastic, I increasingly get the feeling that, with the changes of his own identity, message, sense and mission, Dalaj himself unwittingly crossed over to the very scene he once hated and criticized. Sadly, that has left precious little of the credibility that once made Ali En so important to the milk-toothed kids of the time. This recycling of what we’ve already heard and seen is therefore only a commercial attempt, an experiment Dalaj has no reason to be ashamed of. Still, I have a feeling that in 1994 Ali En would have spat on something like this, thick, good and, above all, critical. So it’s a matter of time distance, taste and personal preference, and I’d rather talk about the value of recycling in ten years, if Recycleman survives the test of time, of course.
Lineup
Dalaj Eegol – vocals, arrangements
GUEST VOCALISTS:
Lara Baruca
Amela Agič
Asiana Jurca Avci
Vlki Beko
Luka Ličen
Vasko Vidmar
Martin Belac
Martin Bjelič Beltek
Production
Boštjan Perovšek, Luka Ličen, Martin Belac Belko, Vasko Vidmar, Tadej TadiMan Tratnik, Peter Penko, Torul Torulsson,, Borut Čelik, M’siou Rigolitch, Anže Igličar, Žiga Koritnik
Track list
1. Start
2. Opa Opa
3. Cekini padajo z neba
4. Kako nataknt kondom
5. Koomarci
6. Turbo trdi
7. Jamiya
8. Slovenia dala je gol
9. Skateboarding
10. Peace
11. Martin Strel (Water Funk)
12. Luka Piran
13. Red Hot Chili Rappers
14. Language Shit
15. Give Me What I Want
16. Slovenia dala je gol (instrumental)
17. Turbo trdi (instrumental)
