Tel Aviv, Israel — If there were a soundtrack to our days, there is just one tune that really turns strutting around the streets of Tel Aviv into music. “Stereo Love” is our theme song, our jam at the club, and the collective ring tone of our lives, but it doesn’t quite capture the essence of the hip cat that runs this town with her sunglasses on and her too-cool-for-school frown (me), day-to-day, moment-to-moment in the White City. The only beat that envelops all that is “Hermetico” by the Balkan Beat Box.
“Hermetico” and the Balkan Beat Box’s sound generally is the fusion of so many kinds of Western and Eastern music to make something that is super sophisticated and new, which at its essence is what Tel Aviv is about. A product that is bigger and cooler than the sum of its parts. They’d describe themselves as gypsy-punk, which makes sense considering one of their founders is an ex-member of Gogol Bordello, but their sound is like Beirut meets hip-hop, klezmer meets Jay-Z … Middle East meets Europe and North America via Africa. It’s hard to find any other musical melting pot that competes with Israel’s melting pottyness the except for the melting pottymouths of Balkan Beat Box.
This ain’t your grandma’s gypsy-hip-hop fusion band. Don’t you dare listen without your sunglasses on. Ray-bans preferred.
1 year ago • 0 notes