My Own Little Big Bang

After years of heaping scorn upon the practice of blogging, I’m surprised to find myself here, tossing more junk into orbit. I’m not so vain as to think that anyone cares about what’s written here as much as I do, but I do promise you, dear reader, whether you are here because you’re my grandmother (hi Baba!) or because you got lost on a lonely midnight search for nude pregnant Britney pics, I will do my best to entertain you with some interesting stuff and to gain your trust with properly placed apostrophes. And, yes, I AM that much of a dork, but that’s why you love me.

And now without further ado, I present to you my Discovery Du Jour:
Balkan Beat Box and their recently released self-titled debut album

If the Basement Jaxx took over a UN committee on refugee resettlement in the eastern Mediterranean, it might sound something like this album, which is the most delightfully and indefatigably eclectic thing I’ve ever heard. Densely and danceably odd, it blows my genre classification system to smithereens... It’s Israeli accordion funk peppered with digital whooping and girls yelling “cha cha.” It’s a frenzy of klezmer horns surrounding the smooth rhythm of a happy African dude. There are Bulgarian angels charming muted jazz trumpet snakes out of disco baskets. We’ve got roosters, we’ve got cowbells, we’ve got reverb! We’ve got Hassidic Sephardic Arabic breakbeats! And above all else, this album has a sublime sense of how to shake your tochas.

Though I don't have any pictures of the actual band (the architects of this madness are Tamir Muskat and Ori Kaplan, denizens of the New York hardcore Hebrew underground scene), I thought I would submit a few helpful visualisation tools nonetheless. Imagine the lovely, fresh-faced youths on the left amping up their lutes, unbuttoning their blouses, and dancing until the thatch catches fire.
That’s kind of what this album sounds like.

Alternatively, imagine a heaving nightclub where this woman is the bouncer.


Recommended tracks: Hassan’s Mimuna, Adi Adirim.




Finally, in closing, I would say a few words of thanks to you for encouraging my little blog adventure. Thank you. This has been fun already. And in the words of Eddie Vedder: “I set a gnome what a whale and a paxil on the blegck. AhyayeeyayeeyayAAAA…”