N'toko

Miha Blažič-N'toko was born 1980 in Novo mesto, Slovenia, but spent a large part of his youth in Los Angeles. His first contacts with music came through travelling around Europe, colaborating with musicians in Paris. Inspired by the French jungle, hiphop and reggae scene, he joined forces with guitarist Uroš Weinberger and bass-player/rapper Goran Balog to form Moveknowledgement, a group which explored the heritige of acid-jazz while flirting with dub, drum'n'bass and of course hiphop.

Miha Blažič-N'toko was born 1980 in Novo mesto, Slovenia, but spent a large part of his youth in Los Angeles. His first contacts with music came through travelling around Europe, colaborating with musicians in Paris. Inspired by the French jungle, hiphop and reggae scene, he joined forces with guitarist Uroš Weinberger and bass-player/rapper Goran Balog to form Moveknowledgement, a group which explored the heritige of acid-jazz while flirting with dub, drum'n'bass and of course hiphop. They soon became an 8-piece band with N'toko's rapid-fire rapping perfectly balancing the slow, dreamy singing of Sandra Tomovič.

They released their debut album Sun Sun in 2003, won the Boomerang award for best Slovene live band and headlined most of the major festivals in the country, performing with the likes of Asian Dub Foundation and winning over crowds at the Exit festival in Serbia. At the same time N'toko began establishing himself as a solo artist, Mc-ing for drum'n'bass DJs and backing reggae selectors, attending jazz jam sessions as well as competing in freestyle competitions. His outrageous improvisational skills and flow made him a force to be recond with on the hiphop scene and word of his talent spread quickly through numerous concerts, jam sessions and also a legendary radio freestyle with Sage Francis. Winning the national freestyle championship two times in a row brought him a record deal with Nika Records, which released his solo debut "Cesarjeva nova podoba!. The album revealed an angrier side of N'toko, it's heavy beats and psycho-analytical lyrics hinting at the direction he would take later.

It remains a very influential underground record, needless to say it didn't sell. His second album "Dobrodelni koncert ob koncu sveta" (also RapNika/Nika) saw a similar fate, only this time for a different reason. Abandoning typical song structure and replacing the computer with a 5 piece band, the music was a step away from the hiphop universe. Though critics were full of praise, rap purists found this new direction hard to accept. Playing everything from jazz to noise within mutant hiphop beats, the group opened up many new directions for N'toko, forcing him to take on a more poetic approach to his rapping and using his voice as an instrument.

Teaming up with multi-instrumentalist/poet Gal Gjurin he has recorded a series of projects in both Slovene and English with some of the most creative musicians in the country, taking on psych-rock, free jazz, noise, minimalism and pop. Much of this music has yet to be released and some is only available on the net. The latest release from N'toko is new Moveknowledgement album "Ant People" (Kapa, 2005), which was released in November 2005. Moveknowledgement and N'toko are temporarily promoting their cd's all over Slovenia and even somewhere in Europe.

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