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...according to our Brian on Fri 08 Dec, 2006.
Another Month, another impeccably packaged release on Constellation. This is by Black Ox Orkestar & features 13 traditional Jewish folk songs, beautifully rendered in a most astonishing fashion, utilizing Balkan & Slavic arrangements & instruments such as Mandolin, Countrebass, Bass clarinet, violin amongst the more regulation guitar, bass & drums. A mesmerizing & beautifully played collection of timeless tunes. This outfit contains members of the usual suspects, namely Godspeed, A Silver Mt. Zion etc.What a treat! CD/LP in the usual deluxe sleeves.Evenly split between instrumentals and vocal tunes, this debut album is a compelling blend of originals and new arrangements for pieces pulled from various Eastern European songbooks. The band aims to expand the definition of Jewish diasporic music, by learning and reinterpreting songs and rhythms from all over Slavic and Balkan Europe. Lyrics are in Yiddish and aim to speak forcefully to the bloody history and intractable contradictions of Jewish diaspora and 'return'. With backgrounds in punk-rock, free-jazz, and other liberation musics, the all-acoustic playing on this record benefits from a genuinely spirited delivery and intensely original approaches to arrangements that never feel forced. This is modern folk music from Eastern European sources played strong, unburdened by antiseptic production and/or cheap sentimentality.
Songs range from the propulsive to the sublimely restrained. "Fishelakh in Vaser" explodes with a pumping free-music rhythm section, "Cretan Song" is a staccato Balkan dance, and "Ver Tantz?" is an angry, politically-charged klezmer-punk original. Instrumentals "Shvartze Flamen..." and "Nign", along with the brilliant original "Toyte Goyes" (lyrics taken from a poem by Yiddish writer Itzik Fefer) are meditative and heartrending. Jessica Moss (violin, bass clarinet), Thierry Amar (contrebasse) and Scott Levine Gilmore (vocals, mandolin, cymbalom, drums) all play in Silver Mt. Zion, and Gabe Levine (clarinet, guitar) was chief songwriter in Sackville.
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