It’s Balkan music via Brooklyn, with those alternatively mournful and thundering brass sounds playing over electronic beats, hip hop, even Latin rhythms spiced up with elements of reggae and dancehall. Balkan Beat Box are fusionists. It’s not about purity or the past, it’s about bringing the party – hell the album begins with what sounds like tabla.
It’s their third LP and it possess a much greater complexity in its arrangement than its predecessor 2007’s Nu Med, in fact it took this writer a long time to actually understand the key to Blue Eyed Black Boy. It’s volume. It’s an album that wants to be cranked, and will reward you if done so. The bottom end of the tuba just throbs and those incredible horns just screech triumphantly, soaring hyperactively above the beats. The energy is relentless and you just know their stage show would be incredible. For much of the album the recipe is pretty much the same, the beats start followed by some vocal verses that alternatively take on elements of hip hop and reggae and then almost like pushing a button the horns kick in and then the party starts and it’s infectious.
Bob Baker fish
