Block Out

Milutin Jovancic Mita enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, as he once said, to do a nice thing - painting. However, the social circumstances of the early nineties quickly began to turn against every form of human competence, normality and individual creativity. In order to preserve it in a spiritual sense, Mita at the Academy brings together gifted individuals around a kind of artistic community in which everyone could freely create by the means by which he was the best: lines and colors, words or tones. From such an artistic movement one of the best bands of the nineties and two thousand will be created - Block Out.

Together with his friends Dragan Majstorovic Trlet (bass), Danilo Pavicevic, Vladan Lazarevic Laki (guitar) and Dejan Dimitrijevic (drums), Mita founded the band Ad Hoc in late 1990. Soon it was determined that there is a group of identical names in Macedonia, so the band changes its name into Block Out, after a video game that was then up-to-date. A few months later, in the middle of 1991, Laki went to Holland, and in the place of the guitarist came Nikola Vranjković who, after returning from Moscow in 1990, worked mainly as a studio musician, working with various groups and authors - from the group Ruž, with whom he performed a tour , to Voja Vijatov and Satan Pannonsky.

In the period 1991/92. The band performed in London's Stick to Rock and Robby's clubs playing author's material in English, and the opportunity to record a single that unfortunately showed them unfortunately was not realized. After returning to Belgrade, in the second half of 1992, Block Out secured the position of Mita, Nikola, Trle, and the new drummer became Miljko Radonjic. A year later they published the first material, a live album titled Live KST, Academy, which included recordings from concerts played in 1991 and 1992. On the cover of this album, for the first time, a grotesque creature, a mixture of birds and wolf (potential Mita's alter ego) appears, which will soon become one of the recognizable visual symbols of the band.

The first studio album titled "Black, White and Silver" was released in 1994 by Block Out, and it was promoted on the very day of his release at the KST concert. A minor part of the lyrics on the album (4 out of 5 songs, because "Violet II" was instrumental) signed what individually, what is common, Mita, Trle and Danilo, while the next seven peaks (the bonus song "Year on Ada" at the re-issue of 2001) in its entirety to Nikola. The difference in the author's sensibility (black: white) was immediately noticeable, and the seam (silver) that joined the side of the album could not hide or the imaginatively made wrapper on which Mita's artistic picture called "My Mom" ​​was placed, can be replaced at any moment by any other image by the listener's desire. Regardless of the aforementioned authorial contrast (or precisely because of it), the album received good reviews, and the band and the first true devoted listeners.

However, only in the next edition of the "Year of the poor fun" published in 1996, the first material released on the CD, Block Out definitely drew attention to itself as one of the most influential domestic bands.

With Nikola Becoming frontman of the band; with Mita, who with his voice as a brush paints the ambience of the personal and collective hell of Serbia in the nineties; with texts describing the reality of a country better than any sociological study; with songs about everyday people who are no longer the owners of their lives, such as the tragicomic character of the postman from the eponymous song, whose verses "yesterday attacked me and took away a bag full of bills for electricity" inspired by a true event from the streets of Belgrade, then by the spirit of the elderly spouses in the song "Trenje" ("Friction") who no longer have anything to say to each other; with top production and technically perfect recording, this album is one of the peaks in the overall career of Block Out, and its title today is a paradigm that you should not even explain. At the same level, there is their next album from 1998, entitled "Dream who is happy dreaming alone". The chronicle of lost lives in a land of total alienation, a country that will succeed in saying in good times and last grain of normality in the months to come. Artistic vision or prediction: animated spacecraft for the song "Star Trek"; apocalyptic bombardment scenes that take place somewhere else, so that they might happen later in 1999 ... End of the nineties. The end of socialism in Serbia.

Block Out is publishing a concert compilation entitled "Between Two Evils" in 2001. In twenty-two songs, the material with the previous three albums is evenly distributed, and the band itself has enough maneuvering space to finish the studio material. Until his appearance, band also covered the song "Room" of the EKV group. Finally, in 2003, there was the album "If you have with whom and where" with 12 new songs. Although it was estimated by the orthodox fans as somewhat weaker than the previous two editions, it became certain - Block Out had everything in front: its recognizable sound, arrangements, production and its own poetics. Nicole's lyrics and Mitina's vocal upgrade acted as an inextricable mix.

However, it was obviously not so. Although they lasted for a decade, Block Out has not recorded any single album yet. In 2006 they participated in the Tribute album "Pankrti 06" with the song "Volks", and next year they released their DVD release. Since 2008, they have performed new songs, among which there are small masterpieces: "Armchair", "Keep Your Breath", "Never (Two Thousand Years)". CD singles "Belgrade Sleeps" with the production of the same-name song of the band In Škripcu they published in 2011. They officially stopped working on September 1, 2013, after a concert in Nis.

Epilogue: Nikola Vranjkovic protected the name of the band and most of the songs as their intellectual property. He continued his solo career by publishing a double album "Veronautika". Milutin Jovancic with other members founded the composition Čovek vuk, with which he published the album "Crna kutija". Currently the current single that announces the new material is the song "Brod".

P.S.

There is no easy way to determine the real circumstances that led to the consensual breakdown of one of the most influential domestic bands of the nineties in Serbia. Even the most knowledgeable practitioners do not know all the details, and direct actors are not ready to talk about them, even years later. The way in which they were created, by combining two creative energies, two parallel lines, can be fruitful and, as a rule, it is, but there always remains the question of the origins of such a union, because it is about the great artistic individualities that tend to be realized at the same time and which are usually not ready to compromise. On the other hand, the compromise Nikola and Mita achieved, and which lasted so long, is for every respect. The question arises as to how much trust they had in each other for 20 years of joint work. When you as a frontman of the band create songs for 20 years, many of which represent the ultimate range of Serbian poetry poetry, when you make your own arrangements and then give it all to artificial complement and transformation, then you really have an unlimited trust in that man. On the other hand, when you sing other songs for two decades, that is to say, someone else's poetry - that is, someone else's intimate, not your own - and before you enter the studio to record it, you always find the real reason why you are doing it again; when you post in front of the audience that you will look into your eyes and that you have sung it honestly, as if it were your own, then you really have the confidence in the one who wrote it, as if you wrote it. So, for twenty years, two parallel lines were completely connected into one. Then they moved away, probably that they could be as they are in their essence - so close, and yet so far.