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Written in fRoots issue 216, 2001

DD SYNTHESIS
Swinging Macedonia
SJF Records SJF 113 (2000)

The title certainly isn’t promising, but the packaging implies something better and classier than that, and indeed this is - a great deal. Macedonian traditional themes writ large-scale, big soaring anthemic songs with edgy traditional-style vocals, wailing gaida and breathily weaving kaval, chime-thrumming tambura, dry darabuka and thudding tapan, sometimes with a full orchestra, moving to more intimate sections featuring piano or cellos or straight traditional instrumentation, always mightily melodic and beautifully wrought with understanding not kitschy brutality.
      DD Synthesis is a group of five Macedonian instrumentalists and a female vocal trio. The first album was released in 1997 (Ellipsis Arts’ Unblocked compilation featured a track from it), and since then they’ve been appearing around mostly the easterly end of Europe, and in Japan, but not yet in the UK. If the band delivers live like this album (minus the symphony orchestra of course), Macedonians doing it for themselves starts here.


© 2001 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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