Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Moveknowledgement
Label: Goga
Release: 2003
Running time: 67:14
Rating: 4/5
Hymns of praise are a great thing, and even better when they’re earned. I’ll admit that a few years back I didn’t know the earliest, dewiest era of Moveknowledgement all that well. Maybe it was the completely different aesthetic expectations on my side and the fairly poppy offering on theirs (or so I judged it, anyway), but we just weren’t on the same wagon for quite a while, and the sand in the hourglass kept running and running. And so a whole ten years went by, in which a lot changed, and I changed most of all. Don’t get me wrong – the exceptional Novo Mesto crew, the Muveki, have also morphed since those first studio offerings into something wildly, unforeseeably different, yet just as irresistibly attractive and magnetic. But let’s take it nice and slow, one step at a time, and first scatter a few facts that the album Sun Sun selflessly shares with the masses. The story of the beginnings of Moveknowledgement goes something like this: it was the turn of the millennium, and around then a young, ambitious rap enthusiast named Miha Blažič enrolled in theology to find the center of his spirit, all the while carefully nurturing his passion for music and rich verbal expression. In his youth he spent his dewy years in LA (if memory serves, of course), colored his heart and taste thoroughly with the hues of sincere love for hip-hop, and after returning to his native Slovenia he shared that love and refined taste with the masses in Novo Mesto and, of course, later further afield. So the contextual background, as far as the rapping goes, is right here. And what about the juicy prog-rock alter ego in the background, you ask? Around that time Miha’s phone rings, and on the other end is the voice of Goran Balog, asking Miha whether he really lived in the US and listens to hip-hop, and what he thinks of the Fugees album Blunted On Reality, which the two of them knew inside out and loved for that gorgeous groove and flow of thoughts. One word led to another, they met up right away and talked as if they’d known each other their whole lives and even past lives, and every weekend they listened to music in the shelter of N’Toko’s room, until at last one word led to another yet again and the thing started rolling. Goran’s best friend was Wein, a cosmically gifted, atypical rocker with dreads and a very special feel for the guitar, which he sent off with half-closed eyes into the intergalactic stratosphere, first up in Goran’s attic. Goran invited Miha up to the attic and gave him a taste of his own musical nectar – the music the young rapper had always wanted to hear without knowing it even existed. Thrilled and enchanted, he asked: »Whose is this superb music?« Goran and Wein looked at him, astonished and proud at the same time, and said: »Ours!« And after that fateful contact, nothing was ever the same again …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R73M_L99Yzw
A pinch of romance is necessary for things to unfold the way they should, but a talented and potent collective of collaborators matters too. Besides N’Toko, who poured his heart and thoughts into an avalanche of gorgeous verses and a waterfall of words for Moveknowledgement, on paper and into the sonic ether, there are also the tender female vocals of the sweet-sounding Sandra Tomović, Wein’s above-and-beyond dreamy, multi-genre-melting guitars, and, after Goran’s far too early death, young Tadej Rozman picked up the bass. Behind the drums, since the very first moments, sat the excellent rhythmist David Cvelbar, and in that early period the Muveki also wanted the brassy sounds of the Turk brothers’ trumpet and sax (Gec kissed the trumpet mouthpiece with his lips, Micc the saxophone’s), while the cherry on top of the core lineup was the percussion add-ons of young Primož Malenšek. To make it even better, for the sake of completeness the guys were ready to let talented local wunderkinds into an already half-orchestral setting, and they contributed scratches and keyboards, but above all their own slice of knowledge and fervor, enough that a newborn supernova sun could shine brighter than all the peripheral goings-on of a scene already pretty well robbed of its alternative. 2227 had disbanded, Miladojka too, Heavy Less Wanted had sailed into far safer but lukewarm waters of near-commercial stuff that gave up on edge and uncompromising spirit, and the same kind of crap was wafting from practically every corner of a scene in which Siddharta passed for the peak of creativity. Until 2003, when Moveknowledgement slapped their first ace on the table – the album Sun Sun.
You sense the potential and the burning desire to improve from the very first chord of the debut album, and the Novo Mesto octet (or nonet, if you insist) fearlessly threw hip-hop, jungle, dub, drum’n’bass, tasty potent funk, reggae, free-flying improv freestyle into a multi-genre melting pot of delicious musical stew, and above all a ton of original music for which borders, limitations, purisms and the need for rules are not a field they’d ever want to walk on. Multi-genre musical excesses used to be more the domain of already established, mature musicians who, after brief experiments, lost their potency and their connection with the listener base, and mostly became ends in themselves, which, of course, drove away audiences hungry for dancing and proper rhythm. So the thing starts, just like a forgotten soup pulled off the stove, to quickly lose its nutritional value and cool down, and finally either oblivion or a breakup follows, the termination of the whole operation, since the real reasons to keep going died off long ago. Moveknowledgement signaled with their very name that they had no intention of neglecting these postulates and that they’d learned their lessons well. After the opening Intro, which Miha sings in his own room, recorded with his acoustic guitar straight onto the external mic of a home cassette recorder, a true spectral spill of beauty follows. Sun Sun wins you over with Sandra’s vocals clinging to the cosmic magic of Wein’s guitar and David’s playful drums, and Miha’s sharp rhyming tongue joins in nicely, though in these first steps of the song it only tints things lightly. Sun Sun is a much poppier, much sunnier-bright product, pointing to the vision and, sadly, the incompletely squeezed-out potential of the exceptional Goran Balog, who laid down the first rules of the game and the above-standard gravity in the Moveknowledgement universe. Sound comes first here, and with its Fugees associations the playing recalls stepping into the Morcheeba world of shimmering fractals, joined by the full funk beats of Jamiroquai, and in the end the collective vibrates and resonates with an expression that’s purely its own and not puffed up. Slovenian musicians from the funky fonky waters have blown it big time quite a few times, trying to forge success with someone else’s goods since they evidently had none of their own, or what, while the Muveki like to adorn themselves only with their own plumage. And that’s tasteful and aesthetic. After the delicious, dreamy, gently gliding Connect Your Mind and the sweet substrate of the slightly too mainstream little number Turn, here comes the almost psychedelic candy of the super catchy and danceably venomous Universe, where N’Toko opens all his registers, while Sandra, over the sounds of a metallophone and fat bass, is there purely for caressing and hypnosis. The Muveki get a bit more edge, while also knowing how and being able to drift progressively into spheres of dreamy vagueness. Badoo Badoo rushes into your ears like some track off the MTV airwaves, though I don’t mean to offend the sentiments of the alternative creative side of the Novo Mesto wunderkinds. Almost RHCP sexy funky groove (from the earlier records with Hillel Slovak, or with the then still virginal, uncorrupted Frusciante …) or a taste of some James Brown is what the lovely tune of Sonic Fruits pours out and serves up, where the dirty undertones of the brass section leave their mark, while Sandra dominates the whole structure with her full voice.
Trend settles scores with trendiness in samba-rap fashion, and the lovely meditation of Deep Cosmo Marathon Jam is a really pleasant surprise. The bass can sound like a sitar in the hands of a meditation master, and the progressive element nicely foams up the crowd’s passions at gigs too, already in this early period of personal building and self-definition. The Pink Floydian intro of delay-based bass and gorgeous drums builds a suspenseful bridge, offering a plush excuse for another jump into the unknown. If that’s not the old-school sweetish Given The Gift, then after the guitar overture of Meditation it’s undoubtedly the exceptional Monolith, which already in this early period hints at the outlines of what Moveknowledgement would become over the next few steps. You can feel the mystique, a bit of darkness and open-endedness that the originally given form doesn’t quite allow. Sandra’s vocal is like a nymph’s whisper, and the dirty groove of the Moveknowledgement machinery here unexpectedly edges close to the conceptual textures of Nebukadnezar! But let’s leave the later peaks aside and pretend that time doesn’t matter here, that this is a brand-new work we’re consuming for the first time and can’t compare with later releases. Belly is a decent track, but what really puts the cherry on top is a truly outstanding homage to the band’s gifted visionary, Goran. Crystal Tears shows the range of musical playfulness and extraordinary chemistry that the Moveknowledgement collective managed to root firmly in its being with the very first seeds of its own genius. And a real bonus on top of the bonus is the hidden track on the record, with beat box inserts from the mischievous N’Toko, who keeps playing with the idea of a perfect play of thoughts and ideas, and the verbal substrate this time foams up not in English but with a lucid stream of thoughts forged in Slovenian words. And here the first outline appears of the word-exegesis announced back then in the record Cesarjeva Nova Podoba, which swept away all the idiotic, idealess, spineless competition as if it were nothing, but that’s another story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k0tm9VyMaI
The facts, my dears, are these: even the poppiest product from the hands of talented people, which Moveknowledgement undoubtedly are, can be lengths or even light-years ahead of all the pretentious crap and clutter that indiscriminate »masters« so love to pile up to show off and prove their brilliance. This time the Muveki don’t preach and don’t jerk off over their own funky excellence, which was pretty much taken for granted in our white Ljubljana, and in the Savinja region’s offshoots too, but come into harmony with their creative, bright, elusive and unenslaved nature. Sun Sun is the record that gave them wings and let them pay worthy tribute to the memory of their departed companion and spiritual father, the exceptional Goran Balog. The question of what would have been if Goran were still alive is out of place this time. The fact is that evolution went its own way, partly through tragic coincidence. In 2013 Moveknowledgement sound better than ever, rubbing the potent tincture of their own genius into the ears and hearts of a crowd hungry for good music, with confidence and an edge not corrupted by an inch. Sun Sun was the moment before a quantum leap into the future, and the quantity of members didn’t dent the quality of a collective that was then still in the phase of idea-building and polishing. So the first step was taken, and even after this first entrance onto the Slovenian scene you could safely say that Ljubljana and the whole world were right to tremble, because the name of the Lower Carniolan capital was being inscribed on the map of creative superiority – in golden letters of sunlit positivity and creativity that does not tolerate mediocrity, and gladly, constructively settles scores with it! And that’s the only road winners can walk!
Lineup
Uroš Weinberger – Wein: guitar
Miha Blažič – MC N`Toko: vocals
Sandra Tomović: vocals
Tadej Rozman: bass guitar
David Cvelbar: drums
Primož Malenšek: percussion
Gregor Turk: trombone
Mitja Turk: alto saxophone
Goran Balog – bass guitar on track #14
Guest musicians:
DJ Dado – scratches and effects
Gorazd Tompa – keyboards
Tomislav Jovanović – Tokac – backing vocals
Andrej Resnik – keyboards on track #14
Production
Tomislav Jovanović – Tokac
Tracklist
1. Intro
2. Sun Sun
3. Connect Your Mind
4. Turn
5. Universe
6. Badoo Badoo
7. Sonic Fruits
8. Trend
9. Deep Cosmo Marathon Jam
10. Given The Gift
11. Meditation
12. Monolith
13. Belly
14. Chrystal Tears (bonus song)
