Bucovina Club
Label: Essay
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WorkNameSort: Bucovina Club
Bucovina Club is the boisterous sound of Eastern Europe’s folk music bands arranged for consumption by resourceful Balkan electronic producer Shantel. But this is no block-rocking beatfest. Shantel leaves the original recordings of Macedonian brass bands and flaming Gypsy swing units intact save a few subtle machine beats, creating a soundtrack for drunken dancing with a distinctly mysterious and unknowable air. Melancholy, weird, fantastic, rustic and surreally sexual, Bucovina Club is like attending some private Mafia wedding where dangerous things are happening behind closed doors. Ancient melodies and clever electronic production fills The Rootsman’s “Ta Travudia,” Fanfare Ciocarlia’s pungent “Tu Romnie” and Taraf de Haïdouks’ classic “Carolina,” which sounds like a polka of car horns and bullfrogs. That Shantel can retain the beauty of these old songs while making them plausible for dance floor inanity is cause for celebration.
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2005.