Nu Med
Artist(s):
Balkan Beat Box
Label: Jdub Records
Publisher(s):
Jdub Records
Studio: Jdub Records
Manufacturer: Jdub Records
Binding: Audio CD
MPN: 106
List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $10.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Track Listing
1.
Keep 'Em Straight (Intro)
2.
Hermetico
3.
Habibi Min Zaman
4.
Bbbeat
5.
Digital Monkey
6.
Balcasio
7.
Pachima
8.
Quand Est-Ce Qu'on Arrive?
9.
Mexico City
10.
Delancey
11.
Joro Boro
12.
Gypsy Queens
13.
$20 for Boban
14.
Baharim (Outro)
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
It seems impossible to avoid the fusion and clash of cultures in world music these days. Connectivity means it's all within your (everyone else's) reach. Here on their second album, Nu Med, Balkan Beat Box continue to play at the nexus of Eastern European, klezmer, Arabic, hip-hop, rock and electronic music. Headed by Israelis Tamir Muskat (drums, programming) and Ori Kaplan (saxophone), the band's sound is far from forced, easily summing up the musicians' lives in their homeland as well as their current experiences living in New York City. As with all great folk songs, the melodies are insistently catchy enough to get listeners to sing or hum along before the song ends. Highlights include the Saharan dancehall cut "Digital Monkey," the insistent "bbbeat," and the Dead Sea surf guitar sound of "Joro Boro," which features singer Dessislava Stefanova. Like the first album, this one is as fun as it is far reaching. --Tad Hendrickson
Customer Reviews
The madonnas of Turkish shlock rock
Are these bad boys of eurotrash lounge the inevitable grand tumor of scenester rock or just a really bad joke that got taken seriously? Seriously, much of the disc mixes the dying howls of a cat in the clutches of a crocodile with DJ bleeps, dancehall grunts and other trivial sound trinkets. It's a pretty package with nothing going on underneath the plastic wrapper. Beirut these cats ain't. Mostly, BBB is annoying more for the intense boredom it breeds. My ears felt like prisoners at Gitmo during one particularly fetid ELP-tinged organ solo.
I suppose it's just fine for a friendly suburban community center bellydancing competition with the meth-laced Red Hat Ladies and the drunken Lions Club orcs. Me, I'll just stick to salivating over the upcoming Earl Scruggs/Metallica banjo/metal crossover project.
Music that fills the house with life!
This musical CD makes it difficult to stay still. It is an interesting combination of music styles that brings back memories of Klezmer updated with a driving, exciting modern beat. This is my second Balkan Beat Box CD, and I really enjoy the liveliness and quality of their music, as well as the middle eastern and Israeli flavor of their passionate sound.
Great stuff!!!
These guys are a lively mix of Middle Eastern, Klezmer, and hip hop styles. This is very fun stuff, very different. I'm turning people on to this CD everywhere I go and I get very enthusiastic response. Bonus: Their politics and style of mixing Israeli and Arabic musical traditions and vocals gives us hope for a better world.
No complaints
CD was in perfect condition. Took a little longer to arrive than I'd expected but this may not be the fault of the vendor.
New "med!"
Just look at the camels parachuting into a striped desert. Who wouldn't want to listen to what's inside?
Well, hopefully lots of people will. East European fusion music is moderately hot right now, with bands like Beirut and Gogol Bordello on the rise. But one of the best ones is Balkan Beat Box, whose second album "Nu Med" further polishes their ethnic hip-hop/rock sound -- it's just a thoroughly colourful, flavourful album.
It opens with a deliciously funky "Keep it Straight," which sounds like an Arabian market being invaded by hip-hop gypsy brass bands. It's followed by the deliciously colourful rap song "Hermetico," riddled with brass blats, handclaps, horses, and a voice telling us, "We're comin' straight through your ears, no complications... here we go, you better listen..."
They follow it with the exotic "Habibi Min Zaman," which sounds like a James Bond soundtrack in the Middle-East, and lead in to a bunch of even better songs: bootyshaking marches, sinuous rap, gypsy music wrapped in electrodance, folksy horn-rock, funky Balkan dance tunes, and colourful folk pop filled with yipping, yowling vocals.
If anything, "Nu Med" is even better than Balkan Beat Box's debut -- it's more polished and melodious, and more relaxed now that they have their sound down. But they don't change much musically, with the core of the music remaining the same: Middle-Eastern and East-European folk music, interwoven with modern dance, rock and hip-hop.
Musically it's a big hodgepodge -- you can hear some steely guitar buried under all the other sounds, which is the most normal part of it. Then you have nimble horns forming sinuous melodies and funky edges, solid drums, some colourful electronica, some accordion and some murmuring violins in "Mexico City," which is the one dud in the album. It's too sedate and mellow for the raucous overall sound.
But they also spice it up with samples and odd sounds -- babies laughing, horses neighing, a man calling out in another language. And in some songs, we get some very heavily accented rapping, usually pretty nonsensical: "I'm the digital monkey/supply the freakin' season with the rhythm that's funky/I come from Belize/but don't belong to no country..."
"Nu Med" takes what Balkan Beat Box had to begin with, and polishes it to gem status. Despite that one dud song, it's a wild, colourful festival ride, full of gypsy music and dance flavour.
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