Music from the Balkans and Eastern Europe has become a natural source of inspiration for DJs, bands and producers around the world aiming to create new ethnotronic hits to scorch dancefloors across the globe. Nonetheless there is a lot of material hastily labeled nu-balkan which is of dubious quality.
However, this month, we are delighted to come across one of these happy moments which still occur once in a while within a genre that’s too often hackneyed. All the way from Sofia, Bulgaria, the debut album of Nikola Gruev, young designer, producer and musician known as Kottarashky, reaches the airwaves of Groovalizacion. Kottarashky delivers a fresh and original album, astutely titled “Opa Hey” in which he fuses traditional music, jazz melodies, psychedelic spirit and suggestive electronic beats.
In this album, Gruev uses a collection of samples that he recorded himself while venturing to the most remote and isolated villages of Bulgaria, a country which, most ethnomusicologists will agree, possesses a prodigious folklore based on vocal techniques. Using this as a skeleton structure Kottarashky assembles a collection of magnetic songs using Balkan percussions, string and wind instruments, jazzy pranks and elegant electronic beats. All this to promote the wonderful charm of a few voices that conjure up the atmospheric flavour of the celebrations and rituals of the humble villages on the impressive Bulgarian plateau, impregnated with an ancient mysticism, that, after Kottarashky’s careful treatment, is animated and dances a global beat dervish for our listening pleasure.
Translation Erik Pereira
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