- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 334, 2011
 

BENGALO
Foy
Etnisk Musikklubb EM85 (2010)

NO BORDER ORCHESTRA
Arctic Cinema
Iboks IBCD 1001 (2010)

Jovan Pavlovic is a Serbian accordionist, composer and arranger who lives in Norway and has gathered around him a selection of very fine musicians. In fR 309 I wrote a piece on Belgmagi, the Serbian/Bulgarian accordion trio of Pavlovic, Lelo Nika and Petar Ralchev. The three of them haven’t made an album together, but here are two by other Pavlovic bands, one of which includes Ralchev.
     In Bengalo the core trio of Pavlovic, singer Anne Fossen and guitarist Christian Fossen has remained constant, among a shifting cast. For Foy (Serbian for something like ‘yuk’), their third album, the other key participants are regular Bengalo participant Norwegian-Greek violinist Oluf Dimitri Røe and, delivering a hugely funky, zippy bass drive, one of Norway’s most astonishing bass guitarists, Mattis Kleppen. The material and approach varies widely, opening with Fossen’s very strong vocals in her own song Vandring, moving through Pavlovic originals, Serbian tunes and Greek traditional songs, all given full-blooded passion and energy. The only low point is an odd and unsuited choice, a version of Donovan’s First There Is A Mountain.
     www.emcd.no, www.myspace.com/bengalomusic
    
     No Border Orchestra is a powerful new venture, an eight-piece instrumental band bringing together Pavlovic and Bulgarian fellow-accordionist Petar Ralchev with Norwegian musicians and others initially for a tour across into eastern Europe. It’s a big, impressive sound, the two accordions joined by a string section of violin, viola, cello and bass, plus Harald Devold’s sax and Helge Norbakken’s percussion.
     There’s surging strength, fiery intricacy, quirky innovation and dark corners in these tracks, most of which are compositions by Pavlovic or Ralchev reflecting the former’s experience with classical music and the lightness of touch and inventive flair of his and Ralchev’s Balkan roots – the latter is right at the top of Bulgaria’s accordion pantheon - with the strings often giving a truly orchestral sound, their players working finely as a unit playing ingenious arrangements that really get inside, topped off by Devold’s sax and propelled by the gutty throb, smack and click of Norbakken’s ever-unusual drumming. It’s a remarkable, rich and involving piece of work.
     www.myspace.com/noborderorchestra


© 2011 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -