Bubamara Brass Band’s Infectious Oompah Oompah

Bubamara Brass Band igniting a Russian nightspot

Question: What’s stranger than a brass band recording what seems to be a square dancing album for Greek weddings? Answer: A Russian brass band who creates jazzy toe-tapping swing dance music out of Balkan folk melodies using a complete horn section, the tuba’s oompah-oompah, a jazz vocalist, and an ever-increasing tempo on some songs as to leave dancers and listeners breathless.

Listen to this sample track “Vasja Prelijte Rakijom!” which showcases everything that’s good about this EP and this group: humor, jazz, and infectious rhythm

Their EP Bubamarija / Kashtanizma out on the always interesting Clinical Archives netlabel is a mixture of 1950s American jazz and European folk song and features four of the best tracks from previous albums Bubamarija and Kashtanizma. It’ll sound perfect as a soundtrack to a Jewish wedding, a German beer drinking party, a middle eastern belly dance routine, or simply a short break from the fatigue of work. Too bad it’s only four songs long!

It’s easy to picture the Bubamara Brass Band (led by Aleksandar Kashtanov) as hep jazz cats out of Russia who probbaly explode onstage when they play live. I mean, if this EP can get me dancing in my seat at work, then they could probably whip a live crowd into a frenzy that would put Zumba exercisers to shame.

Summary:
Get this because it’s happy, energetic and exotic music that’ll pump some Russian good will into your blood.

Details:

• Download the 4-song EP from the Internet Archive.

• The band’s official website is at: http://www.bubamarabrass.ru/

• Listen to more of their tracks on SoundCloud.

• And join them on Facebook too!
  

Eliethel’s Haunted Dreampop in Ding Dong

Eliethel's album: Ding Dong

Once you listen to this music, you get drawn into the dream. Especially if you’re a musician. And just as in Inception, you’re never really sure whether you want to ride the kick back to reality.

Eliethel (aka Greek multi-instrumentalist Evangelina Alexaki) creates dainty, haunting pop music laced with downtempo electronica, carefully pieced together and balanced to the point of obsession. You can tell when music has been slaved over. And this collection sounds like it took upwards of half a year. Possibly more.

Her album Ding Dong is eight tracks of folktronic, keyboard-based vocal pop that showcase some unique arrangements and instrumentation (the drums and bells of the title track for example). When she sings in English, the words come out with a pretty Greek accent that adds to the entire mystery of the experience. The music is sometimes world music, other times, folksy, and sometimes even ambient.

It makes sense when you realize she’s an undergraduate in music composition in Ionio University, Greece. Hence the attention to sonic detail, and the brilliant use of arrangement and texture.

SUMMARY:
With vocals like Dido or Kate Bush, and instrumentation like Sophie B. Hawkins, Eliethel’s music is the sort you listen to at night while writing heartfelt pleas for love on your LiveJournal blog, or while finding yourself lost in a strange country where every corner holds a promise of adventure.

Details:
As of June 2011, you can download her latest album Ding Dong for free by registering with your name and email on her artist website. A truly worthwhile deal if you ask me.

Fan her on Eliethel’s Facebook page.

Follow her on Eliethel’s Twitter stream.

Allison Weiss’ lovelorn yet buoyant acoustic live album

Artist: Allison Weiss  | Album: Live at Sidewalk, NYC

A cross between the witty prose of Suzanne Vega and the young poppy angst of Avril Lavigne, Weiss is shiny and buoyant, even in her lovelorn pain. You can tell she’s thoroughly enjoying herself onstage, performing her music and conversing with her audience intimately. She performs the entire set on acoustic guitar, making this sound more like a jam session on your back porch after dinner than an actual album. But that’s the appeal of Weiss’ music and the personality that shows from her spiels in-between songs. Her pop is the approachable kind, like that of a talented friend’s, or a beatnik cousin’s — the person you can count on to break out her original songs around a campfire. Favorite tracks include the jump-up-and-dance album opener “I’m Ready,” the Suzanne Vega-ish “July 25, 2007,” the bittersweet end-of-relationship “I Had to Do It,” the angry “Yer Goin’ Down,” and the cover version of Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

She knows her guitar well, and plays it with enough variety to keep it interesting. Can’t wait for her to finish her studio album. Interestingly enough, this Athens, Georgia-based artist raised a bunch of money via Kickstarter in order to record her album. Her initial goal was $2,000 but by the end of the campaign, she got more than 7k pledged.  In gratitude, she performed a marathon live-streaming concert of her singing all 50 of her songs on one afternoon, and she’s releasing it as a gift to all her donors. Talent + skill + indie marketing savvy = an artist living out her dreams.  More power to her, we say. 

DETAILS:
12 MP3s encoded at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. Total run time of 44 minutes. 

Download page for Allison Weiss’ live album (one zip file around 41 MB) 

Artist website.

The Wave Pictures’ lament on the fate of the artist

Artist: The Wave Pictures.     Album: Puncture my Pride

The Wave Pictures sounds like they belong on the film soundtrack to High Fidelity. They have that anachronistic tenderness that was last seen in late ’60s folk songs or ’80s UK new romantic bands like The Smiths, New Order, and The Waterboys. The proof? They mix strummed acoustic guitars, fiddles, pop saxophones, Beatles-esque backup vocals and melodies that borrow from folk songs.  In “Now You Are Pregnant,” singer David Tattersall lilts like Morissey, while “Holding Hands” rocks out in full psychedelic, post-punk mode. The topics that Tattersall writes about include: love (of course), the angst of being a writer, scultpture and marmalade, alienation, isolation, and forgetting about all the pain in alcohol and cigarettes. And he uses repetition to drive the point home, as well as sometimes awkward and dramatic pauses in the middle of his tunes.

Some the lyrics border on the inane, but with the band rawk-ing out underneath, it doesn’t matter. You get carried along in the wave of their testosterone-laden, alcohol-tinged whining. Puncture My Pride is then a lament on the hubris of the modern day world that relegates the artist to the pub, written in the key of folk. 

 

DETAILS: 

12 MP3s encoded in 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. All files: 65 MB. Total runtime: 47:09  

EP released for free exclusively on the Team Love Library. (Requires a signup.)  http://library.team-love.com

Artist website:  http://www.thewavepictures.com/

Lauren Zettler’s live album gives somber folkpop teeth

Artist: Lauren Zettler
Album: Live in L.A.

Soundling vocally like a younger Paula Cole or Vanessa Carlton,  Zettler comes across as a somber, mature folk artist. When she lets loose on tracks like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (a cover of a Bob Dylan tune) and “Over My Head,”  her midwestern drawl begins to show its teeth, and her bittersweet lyrics and melodies grab your throat.  The fact that she performs with a live band on this album (mandolin, clarinet, drums, percussions) greatly increases the tonal variety of the music here. From jump-up rock-n-roll to tender folk ballads. “Thank You” is a quick, folksy ditty  that would put the Indigo Girls to shame. And then there’s the Radiohead cover “Creep” which encapsulates her alienation in a pretty package with ribbons and bows.

She changes tempo midway through some of her tracks, bringing surprises along the way (which her band gets through without a hitch). You can tell that she’s trying to make music that lasts, that aims for something greater than a 4-minute track on a CD.  Look past the limitations of her guitar playing,  and the live recording’s imperfections (clipping /distortion at some of the louder sections) and you will find a fearless young artist baring her aspirations and experiences on the stage for all to hear. To listen is to feel voyeuristic anxiety. Am I supposed to hear this? Or is this a private conversation between her and the universe? Turns out it’s both. And we are lucky to be included in the audience.  Bravo, Lauren.

Note: The YouTube video above is footage taken on her recent “Midwest or Bust” tour.

DETAILS:
7 MP3s, encoded at 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz stereo. Zip file is approx. 30 MB in size.

Download the free album (approx. 30 MB ) by signing up for her artist newsletter on her website.

Artist Website: http://www.laurenzettler.com