Packaging Notes
LP is pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl and comes in a thick printed jacket with lyrics insert.
CD comes in a custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket with a printed CD dust sleeve and lyrics insert.
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Tracklist
1. Shvartze Flamen, Vayser Fayer
2. Papir Iz Dokh Vays
3. Fishelakh In Vaser
4. Cretan Song
5. Ver Tanzt?
6. Stav Ya Pitu
7. Nign
8. Toyte Goyes In Shineln
9. Kalarash
10. Forn Forstu
11. Skocne
12. Moscowitz Terkisher
13. Di Khasene
Running time: 00:43:06
Packaging Notes
LP is pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl and comes in a thick printed jacket with lyrics insert.
CD comes in a custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket with a printed CD dust sleeve and lyrics insert.
Description
Evenly split between instrumentals and vocal tunes, this debut album is a compelling blend of originals and new arrangements for pieces pulled from various Eastern European songbooks. The band aimed to expand the definition of Jewish diasporic music, by learning and reinterpreting songs and rhythms from all over Slavic and Balkan Europe. Lyrics are in Yiddish and speak forcefully to the bloody history and intractable contradictions of Jewish diaspora and ‘return’. With backgrounds in punk-rock, free-jazz, and other liberation musics, the all-acoustic playing on this record benefits from a genuinely spirited delivery and intensely original approaches to arrangements that never feel forced. This is modern folk music from Eastern European sources played strong, unburdened by antiseptic production and/or cheap sentimentality.
Songs range from the propulsive to the sublimely restrained. “Fishelakh in Vaser” explodes with a pumping free-music rhythm section, “Cretan Song” is a staccato Balkan dance, and “Ver Tantz?” is an angry, politically-charged klezmer-punk original. Instrumentals “Shvartze Flamen…” and “Nign”, along with the brilliant original “Toyte Goyes” (lyrics taken from a poem by Yiddish writer Itzik Fefer) are meditative and heartrending. Jessica Moss (violin, bass clarinet), Thierry Amar (contrebasse) and Scott Levine Gilmore (vocals, mandolin, cymbalom, drums) all play or played in Silver Mt. Zion, and Gabe Levine (clarinet, guitar) was chief songwriter in Sackville.
Credits
Thierry Amar: contrabassScott Levine Gilmore: mandolin, cymbalom, guitar, drums, violin, harmonium, voice
Gabe Levine: clarinet, guitar, bass clarinet
Jessica Moss: violin, bass clarinet
Guests
Jesse Levine: piano on TRACK 5; accordion on TRACK 9Nadia Moss: piano on TRACK 12
Recorded and mixed at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal by Howard Bilerman, winter 2003. Mastered by Harris Newman.
Reviews
"[A]n exhilarating and painfully beautiful blend of modern and old sound… Black Ox Orkestar run the gamut from hyper tunes full of blood-pumping rhythms and grin-producing melodies to the heart-wrenching guitar playing of disaster and rememberance." – The Brain
"[I]t's haunting, poignant and carries a whiff of history so heady you'd probably drop whatever it is you're doing to give your undivided attention to the notes coming out of your speakers." – Betamusic
"In mixing a variety of influences and traditions, the band has created an album that's backward looking and forward thinking, as well as challenging and moving." – PopMatters
"[L]istening to "Fishelakh in Vaser", as it slowly grows more forceful and discordant was absolutely wonderful - a modern, Yiddish street bolero… All-in-all, this is an auspicious recording by an interesting ensemble." – Klezmershack
"Black Ox Orkestar has intentionally avoided nostalgia, breathing the life of innovation and improvization into forms thought to be long dead in the official Jewish histories... [N]othing less than awe-inspiring." – Deep Fry Bonanza
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