Earth-Wheel-Sky-Band - Waltz Rromano (2003)

«There's definitely a concept of a journey about this album, but it's the kind of trip you'll be happy to make. Yes, it's gypsy music, coming from a Serbian home, but traveling everywhere — note the Indian inflection on "India Rroma," where guitar sounds like sitar, balancing a delicate violin line over chord changes that could almost have been lifted from "Get Back," filtered through, well, China. Odd, but enticing, which is also true of the rest of the disc, like the breakdown that comes at the end of "Me Sem Rrom," where cimbalom and violin take off like Serbian bluegrass, after a track that gives a nod to the U.S. with its bluesy inflections. Considering that Olah Vince has been playing professionally for 40 years, this is a major step forward not just for himself, but for gypsy music in general, an adventurous, daring disc. On "Vranje-Rromans," with guest trumpeter Boban Markovic heavily overdubbed in a fanfare, Vince's guitar work connects the dots between flamenco, the Balkans, and the Middle East in a magnificent way. And he's not afraid of being quieter, either, as on "A#-Rromans," a lyrical piece with echoes of a fading past. A magnificent record.» (AMG)

Link in comments

Ana Popovic - Comfort to the Soul (2003)

«The international appeal of the blues comes home with a fiery flourish on the breakout album by youthful Serbian singer/guitarist Ana Popovic. Her 2001 debut disc Hush! effectively displayed her potential and Comfort to the Soul demonstrates she’s well on the road to realizing much of it. Popovic, who relocated to the Netherlands in 1999, is much more than just the best Belgrade-born blues act. Although it’s her rockish energy, expressed on tunes like the opening Melissa Etheridge-style “Don’t Bear Down on Me”, that will garner the majority of the attention, the most impressive aspect of her music is its diversity. She exhibits some Elmore James-inspired slide guitar on a couple of tracks (most notably on an innovative up-tempo take on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Sittin’ On Top of the World”), shoots off more than a few hard-edged rocking blues solos elsewhere, and utilizes her affinity for jazz guitar in several creative contexts. Popovic’s music, like her blues persona, is obviously still a work in progress but her second album provides as much pleasure in the present as it does promise for the future.» (Michael Point, Amazon)

Link in comments

Sandy Lopicic Orkestar - Border Confusion (2001)

«Lo sterminato patrimonio musicale dei paesi dell'Est europeo, le radici e l'immutata carica vitale e spesso eversiva riescono a sorprenderci sempre. Sandy Lopicic Orkestar è nata e cresciuta intorno al suo leader che ha dovuto emigrare per portare avanti il suo progetto musicale e per portarsi dietro un pezzo della sua amata patria. Bosniaco di Sarajevo, si trasferisce in Germania a causa dei noti tragici avvenimenti, e là forma appunto la S.L.O., assieme ai trombettisti Bojan Petrovic e Imre Bozoki, al bassista Sasha Prolic, ai locali Martin Harms (sax), Richard Winkler (clarino), Jorg Mikula (batteria) e Michael Bergbauer (tuba). Al fine di caratterizzare la band, vengono reclutate tre ottime cantanti, le quali formano da sole un incisivo spot contro la follia della guerra e delle atrocità etniche: Natasa Mirkovic-DeRo viene da Sarajevo come Sandy, Vesna Petkovic è serba di Belgrado, Irina Karamarkovic è kosovara! Ecco come viene a spiegarsi il titolo del primo album della band, "Border confusion", album al quale danno un contributo essenziale i membri dei Deishovida (Kurt Bauer al violino, Matthias Loibner all'hurdy gurdy, Lothar Lasser alla fisarmonica) che in seguito diventano membri fissi della formazione.

L'impasto slavo-teutonico è in una parola sensazionale, i traditionals sono rivisitati con estremo gusto, passionalità e ricerca sonora. Le interpretazioni delle tre vocalists sono di altissimo livello, nello stile delle Voci Bulgare.» (MusicBalkan)

«The Sandy Lopicic Orkestar are a Balkan brass band like no other. With musicians drawn from various parts of former Yugoslavia and further afield, they put a contemporary and ancient spin on the genre. Mattias Loibner plays the ancient Hurdy Gurdy in a post-Hendrix style and the rhythm section switches between Balkan and funk feels, while the brass and saxes do the same with jazz and Balkan. Add three feisty female vocalists and you're in for a wild ride indeed.» (ABC)

Link in comments

Boris Kovač & Ladaaba Orchest - Ballads at the End of Time (2003)

«At first sight, the band’s name looks a little bit like the Dadaist answer to Lambada. But in fact the orchestra is named after the driven fantasies of bandleader, composer and multimedia-artist Boris Kovač when confronted with the grim reality of living and working in the war-ridden territory of the Balkan states. Written out in full the orchestra’s name actually means La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica, a perfect match to their music: an eccentric cycle of dances like tango, waltz, calypso or rumba, played in the style of a syphilitic salon-orchestra, switching rapidly between the atmosphere of a decadent café in 1920s Vienna and the Titanic half an hour after every drink came with ice. […] Brought up in what was once the cosmopolitan and multicultural society of Novi Sad, capital of the multiethnic region of Vojvodina, Boris Kovač feels as if he is, in many ways, locked behind bars. La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica is Kovač’s artistic answer to the pressures from both the internal political situation and the fact that his country is only slowly recovering from international pariah status – and he’s on a furious ride across the musical languages of the Balkan with only one thought in mind: Dance! Right here and right now, for it could be your last!

Boris Kovač, born in 1955, is a composer, instrumentalist and multimedia artist. He writes music for chamber groups that he leads. Many of his projects are to some extent connected with theatre. Since 1989, he has been the leader of the Chamber Theatre of Music Ogledalo from Novi Sad. During the period from 1991-95, he mainly lived and worked in Italy, Slovenia, and Austria. In 1996, he moved back to Yugoslavia. By leading his Ritual Nova ensemble, LaDaABa orchest, Chamber Theatre of Music Ogledalo, Academy of Fine Skills, and working with students he is also trying to reestablish the contemporary music/theatre scene in his country. He has performed his works in around 30 festivals of new music and contemporary theater in many countries.

“Our advantage is, that people from 20 different nationalities lived together in the Pannonian plains,” Kovač explains. “So today no one can say from which folklore my music comes exactly. Anyway for us, living in an urban situation, having no contact to the little villages, it is not comprehensible where the music comes from. But I think that is not even necessary: decisive is, to use the sources as food for my own creativity.” The mixture of Boris’ music continues in the background of his band member’s lives: accordion, violin, bass and drums are played by Half-Serbians, Half-Hungarians and Half-Macedonians, the guitarist is Roma and the clarinetist a proper Serbian, but lived for several years in the Vojvodina and took over many musical techniques from the Hungarian and Romanian.» (RockPaperScissors)

Link in comments

Kal - Kal (2006)

Thanx to Goran (eXy) from Serbia, another very interesting reality in contemporary Serbian avant-folk scene.

«Kal are the hottest Gypsy band from the suburbs of Belgrad, rock`n`roll in attitude, fuelled on urban beats and rooted in the Balkan blues. In their wit, imagination and ability to throw disparate sounds together they mark themselves as both part of Balkan Gypsy tradition and 21st Century lifestyle. Kal - the word is Romani for `black` - were formed by the Ristic brothers, Dushan and Dragan, to confront the prejudices and clichés the Roma face. Ristic`s vision of how Kal embrace 21st Century Roma music is a generous one: bhangra rhythms underpin one song, a violin dances around a two-step rhythm played on double bass, weeping Hawaiian steel guitar drifts over a lovely waltz tempo, an accordion feeds tango flavours, Montenegran rock satirist Rambo Amadeus delivers an acerbic, hiccupping rap whilst the striking voices of Zumrita Jakupovic, Adil Maksutovic and Dragana Berakovic lend earthy, sensual qualities to the songs. Recorded on a bare bones budget at Dragan`s ramshackle home studio this brilliant, intuitive album shifts Gypsy soul into cyberspace. To help achieve this mix Kal employed Mike Nielsen to mix, arrange, find beats and produce the album. Nielsen`s experience involves everything from mixing Dizzy Gillespie`s live sound through working with Maori and Turkish musicians to producing/ engineering Underworld, Jamiroquai and Natasha Atlas.» (More on CDRoots)

Link in comments

Pavle Aksentijevic i Zapis - Šareno pile (2002)

«Dragoslav Pavle Aksentijevic was born in Belgrade in 1942. He graduated and acquired a Master's Degree from the University of Belgrade Academy of Sciences and Arts. His art is devoted exclusively to the icon-painting style inspired by the old Byzantine and Serb fresco-painting. Apart from his icon and fresco-painting he is active in researching of the old spiritual music. The chants he interprets with "ison" based on "neumes" transcribes and on his own related to the living oral tradition are widely heard. He has won many awards and has performed abroad in France, Austria, Germany, Greece, USA, Russia, Finland, Hungary.

In 2000, Dragoslav Pavle Aksentijevic and four young musicians gathered round a group, Zapis (Inscription). The group's programme is based on secular melographic inscriptions originating from the areas of east and south Serbia and Kosmet. The group uses authentic traditional instruments.» (Serbiaunity.net)

From the Press:

“Human voice is a wonder, word cannot grasp it. Voice, that secret both heard and unheard, passes through our existence through this light, through the matter and breath of all the living beings. Whenever I listen to Pavle's voice a heavenly feeling is roused in me! It's a preciousness that brings to life the inscriptions of a forgotten tradition... He was that natural, self-made, beautiful tenor voice of a rare, clear chanting beauty, painted with ancient hailing.” (Enriko Josif)

“With his remarkable concert performances Aksentijevic presented himself as a serious researcher – the restorer of medieval sound. He chants with ease in a specific voice technique that these melodies demand with regard to breath, intonation and melodious ornamentation. He wants to seize, as he himself says, 'the simplicity and beauty of chanting of a plain monk from Sveta Gora'.” (Milena Pesic)

Many thanx to eXy from Serbia for this post!

Link in comments