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Sandy Lopicic Orkestar
Balkea (Network)
$17.99

It has taken three years for this multi-cultural big-band to follow up their widely celebrated debut CD Border Confusion. In that time, the Sandy Lopicic Orkestar has received numerous awards, given countless concerts and been lauded by critics and audiences alike. In addition to numerous compositions of their own, Balkea includes exciting renderings of great traditional Balkan music. And it again crosses borders, playing about with themes from Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Turkey.

Listen:
Balkea
Bugarka
Makedonsko Devojce

"A tragic, abandoned sonority powers the Sandy Lopicic Orkestar, a muscular 15-member multiethnic brass band arisen from the wreckage of the Balkans, also integrating the Klezmer strains of the German band Deishovida. Three soulful female singers front the band, hailing respectively (and improbably, if we are to believe the region's ethnic cleansers) from Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo..." Michael Stone, from the RootsWorld review of their previous recording, Border Confusion

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Boris Kovac and Labaadaa
Zig Zag Trio
Fanfare Ciocarlia
Earth Wheel Sky Band

Press from the record label:
It has taken three years for this multi-cultural big-band to follow up their widely ce-lebrated debut CD Border Confusion . In that time, they have received numerous awards, given countless concerts and been lauded by critics and audiences alike: "These musicians from the Balkans perform their repertoire with a lot of humour: a marvellous alternative to Emir Kustrica's No Smoking Orchestra!" (Le Monde). And their new repertoire is brim-full of imaginativeness. Besides numerous compositions of their own, it includes exciting renderings of great traditional Balkan music. And it again crosses borders, playing about with themes from Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Turkey.

The band, consisting of a five-man brass section, drums, violin, hurdy-gurdy, accordion and three fantastic female vocalists, sways it audiences with a well-defined big-band sound, jazzy solos, and virtuoso arrangements in smaller line-ups. And above all this hover the "magic voices" (taz) and filigree harmonies of the three singers, one from Serbia, one from Bosnia and one from Kosovo, "each of whom adds her own particular touch, in terms of charisma and timbre: full of joie de vivre and soul, fragile and melancholic, elegant and erotic" (Badische Zeitung).

The trail-blazing Balkan DJ Shantel (Bucovina Club/Electric Gypsyland) is wild about these new recordings: "Balkan Groove of the highest order, at the interface between East and West".