Shazalakazoo - Speaking Balkanian (CD) - OUT NOW!

Now you can listen and buy online the debut album from Shazalakazoo: "Speaking Balkanian"!


Shazalakazoo - Speaking Balkanian by shazalakazoo

And for those who can't afford to pay, we have a special bonus track for download:

Shazalakazoo - Southern Railroad by shazalakazoo


Opa!

Kottarashky - Opa hey! (CD) Out now!

Kottarashky is a 21st century digital master musician with his hands sunk deep in the past - vintage Balkan field recordings, classic jazz and blues, psychedelic sounds, club beats and extraordinary, archetypal Gypsy voices, guttural shouts and lyrical laments are all molded and thrown into new shapes. The songs of his debut album “Opa Hey!” sound like tales told by a people who have all the time in the world: time to contemplate, enjoy, engage and dream; to take pleasure in unexpected twists and turns; to be inspired by the details and vividness of marginal existence.

Kottarashky is an architect by vocation, which perhaps explains the palpable sense of place in his music. Summer trips to small villages and the marginal regions of Bulgaria were key source of inspiration for the album, and his music samples a broad palette of sources and influences - enigmatic field recordings by artists unknown alongside Boris Kovac, Les Yeux Noir, Fanfare Ciocarlia, Jony Iliev and compelling Hungarian singer Mitsou.

The resulting digital pick-and-mix hits you like a panoramic puzzle of sounds collected and put together from a night’s walk through the streets of Sofia.

It is an ethno-music born of a city lacking cultural identity that is torn between contemporary European globalism, Balkan provincialism and a living if largely forgotten folk tradition. It’s a music inspired by that environment but also in reaction to it, a journey down roads less travelled, through the Bulgarian backwoods and back via the laptop to the 21st century.

Titles

1. Chetiri / 2. Opa Hey / 3. Tempe / 4. Tebe / 5. Mandra / 6. Long Song / 7. Lele
8. Blatoto / 9. September / 10. Myanmar / 11. I Want You To Sleep / 12. Bell

All titles published by Asphalt Tango Records

Total playing time 46:05

Buy: http://www.asphalt-tango.de/records/kottarashky/artist.html

Mahala Rai Banda - Ghetto blasters (CD) - OUT NOW

New Mahala Rai Banda CD out now! ;)

In Romania, the most famous and the most gifted musicians live in two villages. In Clejani, just south-west of Bucharest, the violinists, cymbalists, double bass players and other accordion players notably formed the extraordinary Taraf de Haidouks. In Zece Prajini, north-east of the capital in Moldavia, you can find the greatest density of wind players per square meter, including the brass players of the famous Fanfare Ciocarlia. It is in these two villages, lost in the dust, the mud or the ice, according to the season, that you find the crème de la crème, the instrumentalists who are half-genius, half-rascal, capable of stirring up a wedding party with a single solo launched at supersonic speed.

Knowing this, how do you find THE great Gypsy group, a sort of Balkan equivalent of the Memphis Horns with the rhythm section from Muscle Shoals, these two being the gold standard of soul music, combining power and finesse, groove and virtuosity? It's easy, just bring together the musicians from Clejani and of Zece Prajini!

The story of Mahala Rai Banda begins at the end of the nineties with Aurel Ionita forming the group Rom Bengale in Bucharest. Their success had hardly begun - when this ensemble of young musicians was plagued and divided by addiction problems. Aurel then created the initial line-up of the Mahala Rai Banda - a name inspired by the Gypsy suburbs of the big Romanian cities - which released a CD on Crammed Discs in 2004.

Now the band is back with its mix of Romanian musical traditions, oriental pop, rumba Catalan, reggae and manele, the Roma pop with ambigious commercial success. Keeping the spirit of an orchestra playing exclusively live, Mahala Rai Banda, with the tremendous "Ghetto Blasters", has released a disc where the pure pleasure of playing and partying overflows. May your nights be long, very long indeed!

Musicians

Ionita Aurel - violin / vocals
Ionita Florinel - accordion
Cantea Georgel - tuba
Bosnea Aurel - bariton horn
Trifan Andrei - tenor horn
Zahanagiu Marian - trombone
Cantea Cristinel - trumpet
Oprica Viorel - trumpet
Mihai Cristinel - saxophone
Dinu Marian - drums
Mihai Enache - darabukka

Manole Nicusor - vocals
Florentina Sandu - vocals

Titles

1. Tu Romnie / 2. Nu Mai Beau / 3. Zabrakadabra / 4. Avante Me Fante
5. Zuki Zuki / 6. Balada / 7. Solo Para Ti / 8. Hora Din Mahala / 9. Ding Deng Dong / 10. Balkan Reggae / 11. Na Janes / 12. Kolo Baro / 13. Am Plecat De Jos

All titles published by Asphalt Tango Records except title 1 by Piranha Musik AG und title 3 by Dr. Sauter Musikverlag GmbH.

Total playing time 45:40

BUY: http://www.asphalt-tango.de/records/banda/artist.html

New Fanfare Ciocarlia CD/DVD "Live" out soon!

CD / DVD - package Fanfare Ciocarlia "Live" - including a CD with the recordings of the Fanfare April concert 2004 at Kulturbrauerei in Berlin and in addition to it the DVD "Gypsy Brass Legends - The Story of the Band" released in 2004 already.

Release date:

Germany 25th September 2009

UK 21st September 2009

France 24th September 2009

Thanks to Asphalt Tango Records for the preview! Great album!

www.asphalt-tango.de

ErsatzMusika - Songs Unrecantable (2009)

Release: 10th April 2009

Thanks to Asphalt Tango Records we've listened the new album from ErsatzMusika: "Songs Unrecantable" and we can tell you: it's a must have!

"For the lovers of Russian Folk: Now in English, so you won't miss a word!" - Balkan Beats Kollektiv

"Songs that mix slinky balladry and echoes of Gypsy music with a dash of Kurt Weill or the blues… The results sound like a disjointed east-European answer to Tom Waits" - The Guardian

"One of the most remarkable debut albums of recent years" - BBC Music

"FRONTED by the achingly melancholic voice of artist and singer Irina Doubrovskaja, and people by a half dozen Soviet émigrés who escaped the turmoil of Russia following the end of Cold War for the artistic communes of East Berlin, ErsatzMusika are the ghost in the machine of 21st century music.
Their sound is unique - a rootsy Russian urban folk without insulation and throwing off sparks. Lurking in their condensed, gritty bass and guitar riffs is a pure, unrefined and unruly spirit that's redolent of 1980s Fall, 1970s Jamaican dub, 1930s Berlin cabaret, and Soviet ska-like beats chopped out in the style of the dissident singers of the Soviet era - whose "criminal songs" - vicious vignettes of Soviet realities - were secretly circulated in their millions on cassette.
Theirs is not a nostalgia for an old world, however, but a reclamation of its fierce creative underground. The 13 strange and singular tracks on their second album, Songs Unrecantable, is like a hall of mirrors reflecting the psychic landscapes of old Russia back onto the crazy realities of 21st century Mittel-Europa and turning them loose into some of the strangest songs on the planet.

From the opening old-world elegance of Song on a Gypsy Air with its exquisitely dry piano melody, through the dread, subterranean beat of Tver, the Neolithic rock n roll of Oy Pterodactyl or the image-drenched tone poetry of Antediluvian, Songs Unrecantable draws you inexorably into a conspiracy of organs, raw guitars, clipped, arcane riffs, jerky dances, haunting vocals, and a vast image bank drawn from past and present, east and west.
Their acclaimed 2007 debut, Voice Letter, took its name from the flexidiscs that people would mail across the Soviet Union as musical postcards. The album's songs were sung in Russian, but you didn't need to speak it to feel their power and their soul. Now with Songs Unrecantable the band's jagged, surreal poetry has been rendered into English, mixing cinematic images with surreal voices and dislocated epithets peopled by pterodactyls, pawned clocks, rotting rafters, cactoid skyscrapers, and psylocybine panic.



New world orders come and go, and ErsatzMusika are the soundtrack for what's gone and what's to come. Theirs is a reclamation in sound of the old weird Russia on the other side of the mirror, suffused in the gothic tremolo of duelling guitars, subterranean bass, off-kilter dance beats, the sepia-street sound of an accordion that sounds as if it's been filtered through winter fog. With Songs Unrecantable, ErsatzMusika brings you the Russian beat dancing on a chain to the lyrics of Irina Doubrovskaja and others; her melancholic, dispossessed voice wanders like a haunted spirit across a terrain of old borders and broken idols. Normality will never feel the same again."- Tim Cumming

ERSATZ MUSIKA - Upon The Earth (not from the new album)



Track list:

1. Songs on a Gypsy Air 0:41
2. Wild Grass 03:33
3. Train-slow Adagio 03:06
4. It's the Russian Beat 03:32
5. Berceuse 03:31
6. Tver (feat. Unterwasser) 03:59
7. Oy, Pterodactyl 03:00
8. HMS RIP DTs 02:45
9. Winter 19..04:55
10. Unredeemed 04:13
11. Letter from Baltimore (feat. Unterwasser) 03:48
12. Antediluvian 03:12
13. Incantation vs. Causation 03:17

Musicians:

Leonid Soybelman - guitar
Ruslan Kalugin - guitar
Phil Freeborn - guitar
Konstantin Orlov - bass
Michail Zhukov - drums, percussion
Irina Doubrovskja - vocals, accordion, piano, keyboards
Thomas Cooper - vocals

Upcoming shows:

07.03.09	D-Berlin	Stella
30.04.09	D - Kassel	Weltmusikfestival
01.05.09	D - Stuttgart	Laboratorium

____________________________________

Asphalt Tango Records: www.asphalt-tango.de
MySpace: www.myspace.com/ersatzmusika

Ahilea - Café Svetlana (2009)

Macedonian producer and DJ Ahilea has brought together a fantastic group of musicians for a wild ride along the Autoput. So fasten your seatbelts and brace yourselves for a new and visionary take on Balkan music. This man is so hot that he gets daily requests for new tracks from DJs the world over. But Ahilea has taken his time on this one. Where others might cut corners, he has crafted his tracks with care, using his heart as well as his head to kit out the virtual juke-box of Café Svetlana. Café Svetlana? It is the stuff of legend – frequented by the great anarchist, poet and prominent Munich bohemian Erich Mühsam. Today, tucked away in a little side-street in Vienna, it can only be found by those who are humming the right tune as they turn the right corner... and when they do, they enter a whole new world. As Shantel discovered one day:

"I've been around a lot in the last few years and I've met so many musicians, producers and DJs. Ahilea from Vienna is a wonderful shlaviner* who does his thing with real style and substance. The music he brings us is in his blood. He's one of my favourite drinking buddies. I'm thrilled that he's making his international debut with Essay Recordings!” Shantel

The sound of Café Svetlana recognises the multi-ethnicity and culture of the Balkans. But instead of flying the nationalistic flag, this is music to be savoured with a glass of sljivo, palinka, raki or tsuika, an open mind and respect for the musicians. Every style comes into its own here: Greek rembetiko, Turkish and Macedonian belly-dancing, Serbian and Rumanian folk dances, Roma songs, Albanian-Epirotic clarinet sounds, thunderous brass and the mournful yet cliché-free lament of the fiddle. All with a touch of fresh beats & grooves, basslines and finely chiselled loops from the master of the mixing deck. That's the sound: Nu Pop Music from the Balkans to take you from the bar to the dancefloor and all the way to the sofa back home!

Track list:

01. Cafe Svetlana
02. Come On Bejbe
03. In Da Balkan Style
04. Kalabalak
05. Oldskulski
06. Coffee & Tulumba
07. Let Me Show You More & More
08. Monopolis
09. Dont Call Me Al
10. Dolsko Kolsko
11. Spiritus Tango
12. O Mangas
13. Autoput
14. Kolo Moser
15. Usti Usti
16. Out Of Town
17. Electro Carsija (Secret Bonus Track on Promo CD only)

MySpace: www.myspace.com/exportimporttunes

Record Label: www.essayrecordings.com

La Cherga - Fake No More (2008)

"Ripe, bright and tasty as stuffed peppers, LA CHERGA create 21st Century electro-roots music with a pan-Balkanic consciousness. La Cherga consist of six musicians, all from former Yugoslavia. Lead singer IRINA KARAMARKOVIC is a refugee from the Kosovo conflict while NEVENKO BUCAN, a Croat electronics wizard with a taste for dubbed out Balkan grooves, also fled the fiery nationalism that destroyed Tito's Yugoslavia. Other members come from Bosnia and Macedonia.



LA CHERGA came together in Germany and Austria as these musicians began to feel out a new musical identity, sharing what Irina calls a "Post Pessimist" philosophy, working on cultural exchange projects, differentiating between war profiteers and anti-war profiteers. LA CHERGA (named after a Balkan rag rug, appropriate for these musical recyclers) began weaving a sonic collage, inventing a Balkan internationalist music & manifesto: their sound drawing on the best of both East and West (skanking rhythms and sour horns/boiling dub versus Detroit techno) while Irina sings of freeing your mind from mental slavery.


Bringing together Balkan brass, jazz vocals, Jamaican grooves and electronic beats might sound like a musical recipe for disaster but LA CHERGA rip up the rule book and demonstrate how to build musical and cultural bridges. Grab some friends, something good to drink and turn up the music: LA CHERGA create radical unity party music.

Released by Asphalt Tango Records, 2008"

Track List:

1. Cooking Dub
2. Fake No More
3. Ciganka
4. Don't Go This Way
5. Lajka
6. Muki's Pub
7. Rembetiko 22
8. Trouble Dub
9. Wedding Song
10. What A Wunderful Life
11. Down Domination Part 1 & 2

MySpace: www.myspace.com/lacherga
Buy CD: www.asphalt-tango-shop.de

Russendisko - Ukraine do Amerika (2008)

"Author and journalist Wladimir Kaminer from Moscow and DJ Yuriy Gurzhy from the Ukraine immigrated to Berlin in the 1990s; they burst on the Berlin nightclub scene with their first Russendisko in 1999. What started as a party became an international hit and created a lively interest in Eastern European music. Russendisko combines Russian songs with a powerful bass beat that draws all to the dance floor. It is akin to a mix of ska played on the accordion, or grunge with a reggae riff thrown in. And most of the singers sound like Frank Sinatra with a three-day hangover and a 60-cigarettes-a-day habit. "Weird, unpolished and sometimes awful-sounding music which is, in the end, really good to dance to," boast the sleeve notes of their CD. None of it is subtle. All of it is loud. Most of it is catchy. And everyone dances pretty much all the time." - The Guardian

Tracklist:

01. Mandry - Kolo Mlinu (3:09)
02. Perkalaba - Boogay (2:34)
03. Svoboda - Marusya (2:35)
04. Mad Heads XL - Smereka (3:04)
05. Yurcash - Patriot (3:01)
06. Konsonans Retro - Kurka Chubaturka (3:20)
07. Chornobryvtsy - Nese Gal'a Vodu (3:35)
08. Mad Heads XL - Ya Na Mori (3:45)
09. Konsonans Retro - Freylekhs No.5 (3:01)
10. Mandry - Kohanochka (4:29)
11. Rotfront - Ya Piv (3:48)
12. Perkalaba - Char Dash (2:47)
13. VV - Gal'u, Prihod' (2:20)
14. Vasya Club - Oy Vey (2:49)
15. Golem - Odessa (2:30)

Official Website: www.russendisko.de
MySpace: www.myspace.com/russendiskoberlin
Buy Album: www.amazon.com

K A L - Radio Romanista (New Album)

They have the trilbies, baggy suits, accordions and fiddles of traditional gypsy bands, but this Serbian outfit also like Fender guitars and beatbox. Taking the Clash as a role model, their charismatic frontman Dragan Ristic describes their sound as "Rock'n'Roma", and their runaway rhythms and lightning-fast playing come fronted by angry lyrics about the marginalisation of Roma people. This second album, more raw-edged than 2006's debut, reflects their live show, swinging between high-energy pieces like Turkish Blues and sentimental cabaret excursions Laj laj and Luna. There are numerous guests, lashings of vocal scats and an irrepressible sense of a band on top of its mission. - The Observer



Tracklist:

01 - Krasnokalipsa (Feat. Marcel [02:42]
02 - Ding Deng Dong [02:53]
03 - Turkish Blues [03:04]
04 - Laj Laj [03:56]
05 - Pour Enfants Et Personnes S [03:16]
06 - Romozom [03:10]
07 - Chiquita [03:15]
08 - Oh Ma Cherie [03:45]
09 - Madame Boucxereaux [02:57]
10 - Liza [03:19]
11 - I'm Gypsy [02:23]
12 - Pelo IV [03:31]
13 - Radio Romanista [02:40]
14 - Luna [03:45]

MySpace: www.myspace.com/romakal
Buy CD: www.asphalt-tango-shop.de

Amsterdam Klezmer Band - Zaraza (New Album)

In Slavic languages zaraza means infectious or contagious, in Polish it is the word for epidemic. Zaraza is indeed an infectious album from an extremely virulent and passionate band. The album contains 15 brand new tracks, all original compositions rooted in the Klezmer tradition and infused with Romanian, Turkish, Serbian, Russian and Macedonian sounds. With Zaraza the band has achieved the optimal CD recording of their unique sound and qualities. The AMSTERDAM KLEZMER BAND is showcased in its purest form, with virtuoso and provocative performances by the musicians. On Zaraza the musical fire so characteristic of the AMSTERDAM KLEZMER BAND is stoked to an even greater heat.

"Not only do the horns play the signature Klezmer parts like they could do it in their sleep, but also the cool sounds of Dutch hip-hop. Could this be the future sound of Klezmer?" - Franz Zipperer


Tracklisting:

1. Banat - M: Gijs Levelt
2. Takaj Zhizn - M: Janfie van Strien/ L: Alec Kopyt
3. Alles Kan Beter - M: Theo van Tol
4. Kesikköprü - M: Jasper de Beer
5. Op Een Goppe - M and L: Job Chajes
6. Vesna - M: Janfie van Strien/ L: Alec Kopyt
7. Netty - M: Joop van der Linden
8. Sîrba Katoomba - M: Janfie van Strien
9. The 7th Seven - M: Jasper de Beer
10. Zlabya - M: Joop van der Linden
11. Doina - M: Jasper de Beer
12. Tarantula - M: Jasper de Beer
13. Kolodobre - M: Job Chajes
14. Zaraza - M: Gijs Levelt/ L: Alec Kopyt
15. Gde - M: Joop van der Linden/ L: Alec Kopyt

Special Bonus

Shantel & AKB: Buchalter Joint – M: Job Chajes & S.Hantel
_______________________________________

Official website: www.amsterdamklezmerband.nl
MySpace: www.myspace.com/amsterdamklezmerband
Record Label: www.essayrecordings.com

Max Pashm - Never Mind The Balkans - 2008

The ‘Max Pashm Band’ is a collective of some of the finest UK based Jewish, Greek and Balkan musicians, including the bouzouki maestro George Kypreos, the imfamous Merlin Shepherd on Klezmer clarinet, Bulgarian singer Eugenia Georgieva, guitarist Rik Harrington and of course Max Pashm himself on vocals, percussion and electronics.

After the release of the new ‘Max Pashm’ album ‘Never mind the Balkans’, the ‘Max Pashm Band’ have performed over 40 shows in 12 different countries in 2008.

Tracklist:

1. Imnul
2. Fight On The Streets
3. Rembeteli
4. I Neno
5. Klezmernaki
6. Anarchy
7. The Calling
8. The Tongue
9. Once Upon A Time In Hellas
10. Manea-k
11. Angels
12. Maximus Taximus

MySpace: www.myspace.com/maxpashm

Buy CD: www.maxpashm.dloadshop.com

Top 10 - Albums you must have!

Top 10 - Albums you must have! (The order it's not important!)

1 - Balkan Beat Box - Nu Med



















2 - Dunkelbunt - Smile on your face



















3 - Shantel - Disko Partizani



















4 - Balkanizacija (Various Artists)



















5 - Gypsy Beats And Balkan Bangers (Various Artists)



















6 - Balkan Fever (Various Artists)



















7 - Fanfare Ciocarlia - Gili Garabdi



















8 - Balkan Beats - Volume 3 (Various Artists)



















9 - Municipale Balcanica - Road to Damascus


















10 - Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta!