We bring you a selection of Balkan-related artists to keep your eye on this year
In his own words, Neki Stranac was imagined as a Robin Hood of modern music – stealing tracks from famous artists, transforming them and giving away for free to the mob on Soundcloud. But things went a bit out of control, so he started working legally, selling his tracks online and contradicting the initial idea.
Neki Stranac’s mission was to bring the tropical bass and moombahton genres to the Belgrade audience, but the Belgrade audience doesn’t give a fuck about that. As in the case of Shazalakazoo [Stranac’s native folkstep band with Scratchmaster Uce], his largest following by far is outside of Serbia, mostly in the US (more than 30%)
Neki Stranac is relatively new – not older than a year and a half, so the list of his live performances is not impressive: Pancevo, Zajecar, Zrenjanin, Belgrade and Paris, booked for Minsk, Vilnius and Antwerpen. Nothing special, so for that kind of praise, come around in a year or so. Neki Stranac has never shared decks with this or that, famous or half-famous. Neki Stranac doesn’t even know how you’re supposed to share decks, but he reads about it all the time in other DJ’s biographies.
Neki Stranac blogs for Generation Bass, the biggest website dedicated to global bass (generic term for the kind of music such as moombahton, tropical bass, cumbia digital, kuduro, baile funk, etc).
Stranac’s edits and remixes have been released (somewhere for sale, somewhere as official freebies on official websites) for Man Recordings, No Brainer Records, Overcooked Records, Mad Decent, Downright (Ministry of Sound Australia’s label) and Top Billin. He has 160 edits so far, 15 remixes and 10 original moombahton tracks. More than 50 000 downloads from his soundcloud only.
*Check out Neki Stranac’s selection of psychedelic Balkan folk music exclusively for BTURN and download a bunch of his moombahton edits for free here
