Wild Balkan Brass Icons Slavic Soul Party Stage a Queens Blowout

How cool is it when you find out you were in the crowd when one of your favorite bands was making a a live album? This blog was in the house on August 20, 2019 when Brooklyn’s best-loved Balkan brass band, Slavic Soul Party recorded a handful of tunes which appear on their latest concert record, streaming at Bandcamp.

What was the show like? Blurry. That was one wild night. If you missed it – or the mostly-weekly Tuesday night series in Park Slope that they played for the better part of sixteen years before the 2020 lockdown – you can hear them outdoors on August 2 at 7 PM at Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City. You can take the 7 to Vernon-Jackson, walk to 48th Ave. and take it straight to the river, or take the G to 21st/Van Alst, take 45th Ave. as far toward the water as you can and then make a left.

Back in 2016, Slavic Soul Party put out a deviously erudite Balkan brass remake of Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite, and the opening number, Amad opens this record. Accordionist Peter Stan provides an intro to this version, from March of the following year, launching a suspenseful river of sound, then torrents of chromatics, then the brass kick in over the clip-clip beat of Matt Moran’s bubanj. Tapan drummer Chris Stromquist keeps a slinky groove going on as the horns pulse closer and closer to New Orleans.

Nizo’s Merak, from one of the band’s last pre-lockdown shows there in November, 2019, begins as one of the Balkan/hip-hop mashups they made a name for themselves with and shifts into bracing, chromatic Serbian territory on the wings of a trumpet solo. For a band who had so many members who play in other projects, it’s remarkable how little the lineup has changed over the years. That’s John Carlson and Kenny Warren on trumpets, Peter Hess on sax, Tim Vaughn and Adam Dotson on trombones and Kenny Bentley on tuba.

Considering how much of a party the Tuesday night residency was, the split-second precision of the horns on this July, 2018 version of Balada is pretty amazing, Stan’s liquid accordion lines holding it together. Same with the rapidfire minor-key brass flurries over the subtle side-step rhythm in Romano Pravo, from the March 2017 gig. The tantalizingly brief accordion-and-drums breakdown was always a big audience hit, and this is a prime example.

Truth is one of their rarer, slower, more balmy numbers, Stan methodically working his way from choosing his spots to his usual supersonic pirouettes. The next number, 323 is a showcase for the band’s funkier side. The three tunes from the August 20, 2019 show – Romski Merak, Sing Sing Čoček, and Missy Sa-sa – appear here as an increasingly delirious, roughly seventeen-minute suite that covers pretty much all the bases. Steve Duffy plays tuba here as the band fire off biting doublestops, enigmatic whole-note solos, and a couple of hailstorm drum breaks.

After a brief rat-a-tat “Latino Band Medley,” the band close with FYC, a feast of disquieting Eastern European tonalities with a couple of careening trumpet and trombone solos recorded in July of 2018.

Since these are field recordings that the band released as merch during the time that disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo had criminalized live music in New York, the sound is on the trebly side, although there surprisingly isn’t a lot of audience noise. At the Queens show, you won’t be able to hear any of the “amazing music that Quince puts on at the end of the night” at the Park Slope gigs, as the group mention on the Bandcamp page. But all New Yorkers will be able to see the show since the bar was weaponized to discriminate against patrons who didn’t take the lethal Covid injection.

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Quatre Vingt Neuf Reinvent Little Rascals Soundtracks, Hot 20s Jazz and Dixieland at Barbes

When Quatre Vingt Neuf launched into their most recent show last month at Barbes, it was a jazz power play. Bryan Beninghove came up with that term: it means more people onstage than there are in the audience. But by the time the irrepressible quasi oldtimey swing band wrapped up their show around midnight, the room was packed. Quatre Vingt Neuf are last-minute like that.

They played their first gig last year when the venue had a cancellation. Owner Olivier Conan emailed Wade Ripka, who would end up playing tenor banjo in the group, to see if he could pull a pickup band together. Sure, said Ripka, who’s in a bunch of other bands (rembetiko metalheads Greek Judas and retro Russian psych-pop crew the Eastern Blokhedz to name a couple) and has a deep address book. Since Conan lives in France now, all this was done over email.

And unlike most venues, Barbes actually promotes the artists who play there. So when Conan hadn’t heard back from Ripka by around midnight, European time, he sent a final reminder to make sure that the bar would have some kind of live entertainment that night.

Apparently the show was a success. When Ripka asked for another gig for this ensemble, Conan agreed – but insisted on naming the band. He came up with Quatre Vingt Neuf (French for Eighty-nine – a revolutionary year). Since then, they’ve featured as many as seventeen players onstage. Last month’s show featured a relatively small septet.

Quatre Vingt Neuf’s shtick is that they play hot 20s jazz and dixieland with a rock rhythm section, a rarity since when those styles first originated, technology hadn’t been developed to the point where bass or drums could be recorded in a full-band situation. Realistically speaking, Quatre Vingt Neuf hardly qualify as a rock band. At the May gig, drummer Chris Stromquist (who also plays in Greek Judas and Balkan brass band Slavic Soul Party) broke out his bundles and brushes and swung with an unexpectedly subtle flair – it’s a side of him not that many people get to see. The same with bassist Nick Cudahy – who also plays in Greek Judas and the Blokhedz – walking the changes and using horn voicings in a couple of wry solos.

Interestingly, bandleader Ripka stuck to rhythm and didn’t take any solos. But the band played several of his arrangements of Little Rascals theme music, from scampering Keystone Kops miniatures to longer, more coyly crescendoing, cinematic pieces. Even the ballads were upbeat. Soprano saxophonist Jason Candler sang a handful of them, when he wasn’t sending wildfire spirals upward. Trumpeter John Carlson played terse, centered good cop to trombonist Tim Vaughn’s boisterous honks and snorts and extended technique. They’re back at Barbes on June 13 at 10 PM, headlining a great swing twinbill that begins at 8 with plush singer/baritone uke player Daria Grace & the Pre-War Ponies, who excel at oldschool mambos and can also be a lot more boisterous than most retro swing bands.

Mighty, Ambitious Large Ensemble Fun with Big Heart Machine at the Jazz Gallery

Considering the economic and logistical challenges of staging an album release show for new big band jazz, that Big Heart Machine were actually able to pull one together at all is reason for optimism. That they were able to sell out two sets last Thursday night at the Jazz Gallery is even more auspicious in light of the fact that what was once the civilized world’s default party music is now serious sitdown concert repertoire. We have Ellington to thank for that.

Ellington would have called this the first of the two types of music he was able to identify. The second set was everything a concert should be. On the album, Darcy James Argue’s production is tight as a drum; live, the orchestra threw caution to the wind with a careening intensity. Sure, there were some sonic issues, but so what. This is why we love jazz.

You don’t expect a guy who grew up meticulously copying metal guitar solos to be playing a flute – unless he’s Ian Anderson, maybe. Bandleader/composer Brian Krock does not stand on one leg while he plays, nor does he ask you to let him bring you songs from the wood. Instead, he joined the uneasy lustre of the opening of the group’s uninterrupted fifty-minute suite, Tamalpais, which rose far beyond the elegant sheen of the album version.

The one person in the house who seemed to be having more fun than anyone else was conductor Miho Hazama. Like Krock, her own work is vast and picturesque, so it was no surprise to watch her dancing while directing the ensemble. During that introductory Butch Morris-like massed group crescendo and the others that followed, she sat and waited for the orchestra to get it out of their system before returning to the score.

Krock told the crowd that he’d taken its inspiration from a hiking trip around the Bay Area. But what a trip that must have been, akin to that Dawn Oberg song about literally running across the corpse of a suicide in Golden Gate Park. Those big swells reached an angst hardly alluded to on the album. Likewise, tenor saxophonist Kevin Sun ran with an allusively troubled chromatic melody for all it was worth, echoed later in a momentary, bittersweet, after-the-rain crescendo by pianist Arcoiris Sandoval and trumpeter Kenny Warren. And guitarist Olli Hirvonen, who took centerstage throughout the show – and not necessarily volumewise – built dense dry-ice tableaux when he wasn’t anchoring one of the night’s most gorgeously poignant, circular interludes with big, booming, Porcupine Tree-like chords.

The group hit a couple of mighty high points late in the suite, trumpeter John Carlson’s muted steeliness eventually giving way to a steady, circling, elegaic theme that seemed to draw on the morose conclusion to Argue’s Brooklyn Babylon as much as, say, Ligeti.

They encored with the album’s opening number, Don’t Analyze, where Sandoval switched to synth and played what has to be the most unselfconsciously buffoonish solo on any jazz stage in town this year. She didn’t blink, either, using a lo-fi imitation of the fast-click attack you can grind out of a B3 organ if you monkey with it enough. Somewhere Bernie Worrell was grinning. The song’s gusts took on cumulo-nimbus extremes; as Hirvonen did throughout the set, he worked his pedals for keyboard and bass effects – and was a choir stashed away in the pedal too? Krock’s flitting, cold ending, which on album comes across as hard to fathom, was puckishly triumphant here.

Watch this space for Big Heart Machine’s next show. And Argue has a night coming up on Aug 29 at the Jazz Standard with his Secret Society. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30; cover is steep, $30, but they’re worth it.

A Must-See Eva Salina Residency for All You Balkan Music Fans

Chanteuse/accordionist/bandleader Eva Salina is one of the world’s most sought-after singers of Balkan and Eastern European music. As a result, she spends a lot of time on the road. Right now she’s in town for an extended spell: when she’s not up at Lincoln Center, teaching New York City school kids about the thrills and chills of Romany and Macedonian and Bulgarian folk tunes, she and her killer band can be found on Monday nights at around 9 PM at Sisters Brooklyn, 900 Fulton St. (Washington/Waverly, right at the Clinton-Washington C train) where they’re playing a weekly residency for the foreseeable future. Their debut performance there was last week, followed by a deliriously fun show the following Friday at Friends & Lovers in Bed-Stuy.

The band opened the show there with an extended jam. Accordionist Peter Stan (also of Slavic Soul Party) is this group’s not-so-secret weapon, bobbing and weaving and ranging from misterioso intro improvs to endless, rapidfire volleys of chromatics and bristling minor keys. On one hand, it was surreal to see guitar shredmeister Brandon Seabrook hang on simple, ominously lingering minor chords for bar after bar, but he’d also shift into maniac mode when least expected, throwing off jagged shards of skronk, elephantine exuberance and unnameable toxic frequencies. Likewise, trumpeter John Carlson (also of SSP) alternated between moody, sustained lines, often in harmony with the accordion, when he wasn’t picking up the pace with an edgy, jazz-infused focus. Tuba player Ron Caswell teamed with drummer Chris Stomquist for some unexpectedly bouncy, spring-loaded grooves for music which isn’t known for being particularly funky.

They built from Stan’s first brooding intro to a dub-infused pulse, rising with Seabrook’s snorts and wails, then some elegant chromatics from Carlson, handing off again to Stan for a whirling vortex of a solo. The bandleader then joined them for an intense, achingly microtonal, melismatic, almost reggae-tinged cover of one of the numbers on her upcoming album Lema Lema: Eva Salina sings Šaban Bajramovic. The late Bajramovic, with his otherworldly, wounded, full-throated style, was revered in his native Serbia and remains a beloved cult figure throughout the Romany community. It’s hard to think of an English-language singer who channels heartbreak like he did – Orbison is close, but no cigar. Beyond the rock world, Hector Lavoe makes a better comparison, although Bajramovic didn’t rely on falsetto as much. Eva Salina has nuance and power to match his: that an American woman would spearhead a Bajramovic revival is pretty radical in itself, especially where that music comes from.

They followed with a jaunty minor-key strut, a springboard for Eva Salina’s torchy, brassy side. Her previous album, Eva Salina Solo – mostly just accordion and vocals, or a-cappella – is as plaintively riveting as anything released this decade. This band, on the other hand, is her fun project: up in front of the group, she swayed and shimmied, eyes closed, completely one with the songs. Check out their high-voltage take of Opa Cupa, another Bajramovic number from later in the night. The Sisters residency continues this Monday, Feb 23 at 9, features two sets of tunes and there’s no cover.

Bad Buka: Balkan Punk Rock At Its Most Intense

With Gogol Bordello on the road most of the year, Bad Buka are as close being to the ultimate party band in New York as there is these days. They also play Balkan punk rock, but they’re different. Gogol Bordello’s music draws from Ukrainian folk and, lately, reggae and dub. Bad Buka are a rock band first and foremost, with a mix of latin, Middle Eastern and Romany flavors, and also a little heavy metal swagger thrown in. Like Gogol Bordello, they don’t take themselves very seriously, but they take their music very, very seriously. Much as their songs can be droll and funny, they’re surreal rather than campy or over-the-top. Their explosive, balls-to-the-wall new album Through the Night is streaming at their Bandcamp page. They’re playing the album release show on Feb 7 at around 10 at Europa, the lovely Polish nightclub on Meserole Ave. in Greenpoint, for a ridiculously cheap $10.

The first song on the album is Demons. It sounds sort of like the UK Subs doing the Balkans until the brass comes in, then Kari Bethe’s sizzling, creepy Romany jazz violin followed by an equally sizzling trumpet solo from John Carlson. The guitars of Cooper and Christofer Lovrin take it from there. The second track, Pumping, is a ba-bump cabaret song done punk rock style: it’s funny, but it’s also got an eyeball-peeling guitar solo and spicy harmony vocals from Carla T and Lady Diana . After that, Stupid Cupid redeems the title from the cheeseball 50s bubblegum pop song with machinegun chromatic punk.

The funniest and most metal-oriented song is Bitter Sweet: frontman Slavko “EyeZy” Bosnjak sends a message to “Get the pants down from your eyes – you’ve got to drink from the cow!” They pick up the pace with I Choose, a mix of hardcore and ska-punk and then the menacing, brass-fueled Hey Now, whose breathless protagonist is waiting for a package from overseas…with vinyl in it maybe?

Elephant Police has an artsy metal edge – it’s hard to tell what it’s about, but there’s a big fist-pumping singalong on the phrase “under your dress you made a mess.” They follow that with the best song on the album, Coffee, a slinky Middle Eastern rock song with the guitars, brass and violin going full blast. Then they add a little bit of a tango feel to Sister Mary, right down to the fiery latin-tinged trumpet solo.

With its brisk swing and stark violin solo, Daj Daj is pronounced “die die,” which seems to explain the joke. The title track is the most dramatic, a big, blazing, full-on orchestrated minor-key Romany art-rock epic. The album ends up with one of those songs you know is designed to get a singalong going; it’s got some glam and some metal along with the darky bristling minor-keys and chromatics. Bad Buka are even more explosive than this live: if adrenaline is your thing, go see them at Europa.

Slavic Soul Party’s New York Underground Tapes: Intense As Always

As usual, the corporate media gets it all wrong. Brooklyn isn’t about Bushwick blog-rock. That’s a tiny clique of one-percenters who don’t really care much about music, anyway: their thing is all about fashion, and memes, and pseudo-celebrity. And much as music in Brooklyn may have become completely balkanized, there are innumerable small, self-sustaining scenes that continue to flourish just under the radar: country music, oldtime string bands, hip-hop, bachata and not ironically, Balkan music. Brooklyn’s best-loved Balkan export, Slavic Soul Party continue their Tuesday night 9 PM residency at Barbes when they’re not playing much larger clubs around the world. For those who might take this mighty, funky, genre-smashing nine-man brass band for granted, they’ve got a new album out appropriately titled The New York Underground Tapes. A little earlier this year their fellow Brooklynites Raya Brass Band put out a phenomenal album, Dancing on Roses, Dancing on Cinders and this is just as good.

How is it that this music, with its tricky tempos and frequently menacing microtonalities, has become so popular? Maybe because it’s so good! It’s about time the rest of the world caught up with what the Serbians and Macedonians and the rest of the people in the former Eastern Bloc have known for centuries. But what Slavic Soul Party does isn’t just traditional songs. Over the last couple of years, they’ve been mixing Balkan brass music with James Brown, adding hip-hop flavor and poking fun at techno; this new album is just as eclectic. The opening track, Jackson, is typical: punchy, bluesy soul trumpet over a Balkan hook, a mesh of biting close harmonies, a blazing bop jazz trumpet solo and finally Peter Stan switching from his accordion to organ to add subtle, staccato textures on the way out. And it gets better from there.

Ominous low swells anchor the rapidfire microtones of the horns on Sing Sing Cocek, with an unexpected thematic change mid-song. Brasslands – a pun on Glasslands, the unairconditioned Williamsburg sweatbox venue, maybe? – sounds like a Serbian brass band taking a stab at a Mexican folk song, while the aptly titled Romp begins with fast waves of accordion over a suspensefully stalking tune and then goes into brisk gypsy swing. Bass drummer Matt Moran’s arrangement of Draganin Cocek is one of the best songs of the year: it’s looser and more dangerous than anything else here, with dark, Arabic-tinged hooks, a tensely smoldering Matt Musselman trombone solo and a lushly delicious crescendo. It’s a song without words, basically – where is their sometime frontwoman Eva Salina Primack when they need her?

Who is Walter Hurley? There’s a band director at Oxon Hill High School in Maryland with that name, and if this song is about that guy, he’s kind of funny – the tune begins as a caricature and almost imperceptibly shifts back to the minor-key intensity of the rest of the album. Clarinetist Peter Hess kicks off his composition Ahmet Gankino, jamming out the highs over suspensefully pulsing lows, eventually building to a shivery, pulsing call-and-response with joyous syncopated low brass, followed eventually by a machine-gun accordion solo. It’s a bigtime party anthem – as are all these songs, for that matter, no surprise considering that what they’re playing is dance music.

There are three more tracks here. The brief Alcohol to Arms, by Moran, has fun with an action movie theme. Underneath all the stabbing, there’s a balmy ballad underneath Moran’s arrangement of the traditional tune Zvonce. The whole band – besides Stan, Moran, Musselman and Hess, there’s John Carlson and Kenny Warren on trumpet and truba, Tim Vaughn on trombone, Chris Stomquist on snare and percussion and Ron Caswell on tuba – tackles a brutally difficult, pinpoint-precise staccato arrangement and makes it seem effortless. The album closes with Jonas Muller’s clever Last Man Standing, the whole band having fun portraying a drunk guy as he staggers and slurs and tries to keep up with the tune. Beside the usual digital formats, the band also recorded a song on a wax cylinder in case you have ten grand to burn. Calling all Bushwick bloggers!

Slavic Soul Party are at the Jewish Museum this Wednesday, July 19 at 7:30 PM; $15 ($12 for students) gets you in plus open wine/beer bar plus free kosher ice cream.