Balkan Beat Box - Balkan Beat Box
ARTIST.....: Balkan Beat Box
TITLE......: Balkan Beat Box
LABEL......: Jdub
URL........: http://store.jdubrecords.org/products.jhtml?method=view&category.id=1&product.id=83
RIP DATE...: Nov-22-2005
STORE DATE.: Sep-20-2005
GENRE......: Beat
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 78,1 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Cha Cha 04:11
02 - Bulgarian Chicks 05:53
(Ft. V. Tomova, M. Alexieva)
03 - Adir Adirim (Ft. Victoria Hanna) 05:20
04 - 9,4 Ladies 04:04
05 - Shushan 04:43
06 - Yaman 03:35
07 - Gross (Ft. Boom Pam) 06:09
08 - Sunday Arak 05:08
09 - Hassan (Ft. Hassan Ben Jaffar) 05:36
10 - Meboli (Ft. Vlada Tomova) 03:54
11 - La Bush Resistance (Ft. Tomer Yosef) 04:25
─────
52:58 min
Release Notes:
Blending electronic music with hard-edged folk music from the
Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East, the exciting and
internationally acclaimed collective Balkan Beat Box is out to
prove that all the world is indeed a stage -- and that we are all
gypsies.
Equally influenced by Boban Markovic, Rachid Taha, and Fanfare
Ciocarlia as well as Manu Chao and Charlie Parker, Balkan Beat Box
presents a wild mixture of styles and sounds on their self titled
debut which the Denver Post called "An Eastern Bloc party turned
to 11 at 4:30 a.m. - only live and with musicians hailing from
Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Bulgaria and Spain."
A band of New Yorkers, Israelis, Africans and Bulgarians, led by
ex-Gogol Bordello member Ori Kaplan and Firewater/Big Lazy's Tamir
Muskat, BBB brings together folk traditions with electronic beats,
video projections, and a rotating cast of vocalists including the
Victoria Hannah, Tomer Yosef, Buglarian Chicks, Jeremiah Lockwood,
and gnawa player Hassan Ben Jaffar.
With the tag "world music" applying to everything in an easy
catch-all umbrella category, it's hard to disseminate between a
quality exercise in the fusion of cultures and a bargain-bin,
second-rate throwaway imitation. Beyond some sort of
run-of-the-mill world music act, Balkan Beat Box's eponymous debut
fuses Arabic, Hassidic, and other traditional music with hip-hop
beats without sounding generic and obvious. The opening number,
"Cha Cha," is easily a standout among this session with its
dubbed-out beats and blend of tension and release. The haunting
Middle East-inspired guitar playing on "Adir Adirim" is another
highlight. But like Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, and other large ensembles,
the energy from this group stems from its vibrant and high-energy
live performances, where songs are stretched and twisted every
which way and the improvisation runs high. Sometimes albums are
only documents that attempt to capture the essence of the
performances and the results fall flat, doing the groups a slight
disservice by misrepresenting what they're all about. Thankfully
this is not the case here.