Kiril feat. Ras Tweed & Esma

Kiril Dzajkovski is a musician born in Macedonia, best known for his solo releases combining Macedonian ethnic music and electronica. In addition to his solo albums, Kiril is one of the most sought-after composers for film, television and theatre in the Balkans.
In Western Europe Kiril caught people’s attention with his contributions to the compilations Balkanbeats vol. 2 & 3, which turned out to be hits. By now he has gathered an excellent live band, even featuring a Jamaican MC. Exclusively for BALKAN GROOVES Kiril has assembled a new hit, where he has teamed up with Ras Tweed, formerly of Rockers Hi-Fi, who delivers a Sing Jay stylee on this track. Also featured here are vocals by the legendary queen of Roma music Esma Redzepova.

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Anima Sound System

Anima Sound System is a Hungarian electronic band founded in 1993. They are one of the first and most important Hungarian electronic acts, a unique fusion of Eastern-European folk music and modern electronic styles. The band has released records on Mole Listening Pearls, Hungaroton and EMI.. They worked together with numerous featured guest artists, such as Asian Dub Foundation, Transglobal Underground and many Roma musicians. They are one the most innovative Hungarian bands. Here they collaborate with their countrymen Goulasch Exotica on this exclusive, unreleased Balkan bash.

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Valentino Vallente Balkan Project

Composer, producer, dj – Valentino Vallente is a jack of all trades and thus exactly represents that gypsy spirit of talented improvising and creating.
From the Balkans to Andalusia the pro vagabond gets the inspiration for his ethno creations. Regularly Valentino also composes gypsy film music for acclaimed directors.
Berlin resident Valentino Vallente knows not only classic, but also modern production techniques. He creates modern folklore with beats and thus hits the zeitgeist as well as the Balkan club scene. Valentino himself calls this stylized Balkan Roma music for worldwide dancing and listening.
This track, which he recorded exclusively for BALKAN GROOVES, Valentino played, sung and produced all by himself.

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 Goulasch Exotica feat. EtnoRom

Goulasch Exotica was originally a fusion of 3 Hungarian DJs (Jutasi, Nafta, Suefo) and a multi-instrumentalist (Maszkura) who plays accordion, jew’s-harp, etc. They push a unique freestyle mix from jazz-funk-hip-hop-swing-dub-electro-break with a Balkan twist and lots of samples. Later some other musicians joined the DJ’s on violin, tin-can and viola as well as a singer joining the formation. Since then, they have had two different projects – the original dj version as Goulasch DJs and a live band called Goulasch Exotica. Their exciting debut album has just been released.
On this track on BALKAN GROOVES they are joined by the Gypsy ensemble Etnorom. Their members are some of the best virtuosos of Gypsy music in Hungary.

Homepage – Goulasch Exotica
Homepage  – EtnoRom

 Shazalakazoo

Making electronic music since 1998, performing it live since 2000, these two Belgrade DJ’s have made themselves a name rocking various European clubs and festivals. Their style, called folkstep is a unique blend of computerised music, folk samples and vinyl scratching melting rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Out comes a very tight and dynamic sound. This is almost like Balkan techno in a good sense: folk music with a Prodigy attitude. 

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 Leni Kravac

Leni Kravac aka Matija Jasarov started getting involved with music by learning piano at the age of six. That wasn’t enough for him, so he picked up the bass guitar and played in three local bands until moving to the UK to attend the ACM music academy. He focused on music production, being shown the ropes by the likes of Phil Ramacon and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Coincidently he ended up with the d’n’b live band Dust 21. His love for drum and bass has led to more electronic music production. When returning to Slovenia he joined the crew Sinkronics and started to play around with live dj-ing. He fills his time with remix work and doing live programming for numerous bands. Today his music is a unique amalgam of Balkan roots, drum and bass and brass.

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 Watcha Clan

Thanks to spectacular live performances and a successful album with Jewish, Balkan and most of all Mediterranean grooves, French Watcha Clan have over the past years earned themselves a top position in the field of modern world music crossover. Their hit Balkan Quoulou from Balkanbeats 3, is here being taken to another club level by turntable wizards Shazalakazoo from Serbia. Shazalakazoo single-handedly invented a genre called folkstep on their debut album. They mix traditional Balkan folk with dubstep and sometimes almost techno. Their motto is Less talking, more dancing, and tomorrow is a new day. Thus they turn the proud Balkan Quoulou into a hypnotic club hit.

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Fagget Fairys

Fagget Fairys is the story of the Bosnian Ena, who as a 1-year-old baby emigrated together with her parents from war-struck Yugoslavia to Denmark. In her youth she succeeded as a handball player and fête model and with less success, as drop out of High School. It’s safe to say she is the black sheep of her Muslim family. At 17 she met DJ Sensimilla aka Carla Cammilla Hjort. One night at a club she fell hard for the DJ ten years her senior and two and a half years later they got married and released their explosive debut album in autumn 2009. ’Feed the Horse’ was recorded in New York with Rasmus Bille Baenche as producer. He is one of the most talented pop-producers with Backstreet Boys and Elton John credits under his belt. Still ’Feed the Horse’ has become something as unique as a hardcore club album with lots of catchy riffs and variation on the melodies. Thank God, Edna has also remembered her Balkan roots. They are so damn smartly wrapped up in cool beats on ‘Oci’, though, that one rather thinks of Santigold or M.I.A.

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Kottarashky

Kottarashky is a 21st century digital master musician with his hands sunk deep in the past -vintage Balkan field recordings; classic jazz and blues, psychedelic sounds, club beats and extraordinary, archetypal Gypsy voices, guttural shouts and lyrical laments are all molded and thrown into new shapes. Kottarashky is an architect by vocation, which perhaps explains the palpable sense of place in his music. Summer trips to small villages and the marginal regions of Bulgaria were key source of inspiration for the songs on his debut album.
The resulting digital pick-and-mix hits you like a panoramic puzzle of sounds collected and put together from a night’s walk through the streets of Sofia.
It is an ethno-music born of a city lacking cultural identity that is torn between contemporary European globalism, Balkan provincialism and a living if largely forgotten folk tradition. It’s a music inspired by that environment but also in reaction to it, a journey down roads less travelled, through the Bulgarian backwoods and back via the laptop to the 21st century.

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 Dobranotch & DJ Click

This international band consists of musicians from Russia, Moldova and Lebanon and play music inspired by traditions of these countries. Founded in 1997 in Nantes (France) by some Russian musicians, Dobranotch moved down to Saint-Petersburg (Russia) to find the new line up. For the last few years they have toured extensively all over Europe. Their new material, entitled “In The East The Sun Decides All” is a mixture of Klezmer, Balkan and oriental influences played with charm and energy and is to be released soon. Compared to their previous material you can hear some
“new music” elements like scratching, electronic instruments etc, but still the core of the Dobranotch sound is acoustic.
So it’s no surprise that they let French DJ Click have a go at a remix. For years Click has been one of the well-known names on the worldtronics scene. He mixes world beats, Balkan, Oriental, Flamenco, Klezmer, Gyspy or Indian music with electronic sounds, theremin, beat box and scratches. Beside his own projects he has also done countless remixes. This one here is brand new and unreleased!

Myspace – Dobranotch
Myspace – Dj Click

 Riva Starr

As we at Eastblok are fans of Stefano Miele, we approached him for BALKAN GROOVES. We couldn’t decide which track to take. Then we came across the video with Kusturica footage for this tune ‘I was drunk’ by someone called Riva Starr. We took that one, but only when we got the bio from the label, we realized that Riva Starr is Stefano Miele!
Stefano Miele, aka Riva Starr hails from Naples in Italy. He has been producing and releasing a wide-range of sounds under different guises for the past 10 years, including 2 albums.
Stef uses the term “Snatch!” to describe his bootleg remix style of snatching other music styles for his own. It’s also a play on words with the type of folk/Balkan/rock music he draws inspiration from, often carrying that gypsy spirit.
Riva Starr is now an internationally booked DJ and has done remixes for the likes of The Gossip and Fatboy Slim. His debut album as Riva Starr has just been released.

 [dunkelbunt] & Cloud Tissa

The Viennese Ulf Lindemann a/k/a [dunkelbunt] combines the many facets and faces of Southeast European music with various stylistic elements of electronic- and world music. The results of these efforts are fusions Lindemann calls Balkan-Dub or simply Balkan-Electronics! 
His first album MORGENLANDFAHRT is a mix of Dub, Reggae, Bossa, Jazz, Electronics, Trip Hop and Break Beats woven with a Balkan twist. Numerous co-operations with both Viennese and international musicians from the Balkan and Klezmer scenes have enriched many of the tracks on the album, namely performers like Fanfare Ciocarlia, Amsterdam Klezmer band, The Cat Empire, Harry Stojka and many more.
On “Kebab Connection“ [dunkelbunt] is inspired by the theme of the same-titled German movie. “The track  is pure Balkan-Dancehall madness and features the Ragga MC Cloud Tissa on vocals.

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Imam Baildi & DJ Panko

Imam Baildi were formed in 2005 by brothers Orestis and Lysandros Falireas, who started sampling and remixing Greek tunes of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. They found probably the best Rembetiko record collection in the world, belonging to their father. Imam’s sound is like injecting a Greek band of the 1950’s into a modern sound system. To begin with, take samples from old Greek tunes and Balkan music. Base them on a solid rhythm section and sampled hip hop, rumba and samba beats. Mix all that with Balkan sax, clarinet and trumpet. Spice it up with rembetiko inspired bouzouki parts and gipsy guitar riffs and you get a splendid debut album, so far only released in Greece and Turkey. On BALKAN GROOVES we exclusively present a remix done by dj Panko of Spain’s Ojos de Brujo fame.

Myspace – Imam Baildi
Myspace – DJ Panko

 Mere Mortals feat. Mara

Dan Handrabur is the mastermind behind Shukar Collective from Romania. For more than twenty years he has been making music, mixing the folk roots of his native land with his know how as electronic musician and producer. Besides the successful Shukar Collective once in a while he re-activates his other project Mere Mortals. Under this moniker he has already released two records. The down-tempo side-project reflects his otherworldly and indigenous influences. The result of these explorations has brought about a richly distinct  dub’n’bass flavored sound that often glides between the worlds of pop substance and avant-garde electronics.
This Mere Mortals tracks features Mara, a Romanian of aromanian origin. The aromanian minority of northern Greece, Bulgaria and southern Romania is an ancient people whose language and culture have been mentioned in historical writings for the first time around the year 600. Pop as cultural ambassador.
www.outersanctum.bsgmultimedia.com

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La Caravane Electro

The music of the French La Caravane Electro is a fusion of electro and Gipsy music, a concept they call “Tziganotronic”, where traditional music (from India-Pakistan to Eastern Europe) and electronic beats create an original sonic atmosphere.
On stage, La Caravane Electro mixes musicians with various background (hip-hop, rock and world music), 2 DJ’s, a sitar player, an MC, a tabla player and a sound engineer as well as a female dancer and a VJ. On the previously unreleased Rebetiko Song they tackle, of course, an old Rebetiko tune from the Golden Age of Greek music. With subtle beats they transform this into a haunting little masterpiece.

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Balkantronika

Since 2003 DJ Beatshock has been throwing Balkantronika parties in Berlin where he plays Balkan music mixed with modern electro sounds. He also played at big festivals in Germany and started to produce his own music. Today Balkantronika Production has six members who come from distinguished music styles.
In the summer of 2008 Daniel Speckhardt from Frankfurt joined the crew and started to produce tracks with DJ Beatshock and DATAX from the label Unexpected Audio Productions.
Daniel Speckhardt has been making electronic music for nearly 10 years with analogue synthesizers and software. He never bought vinyl discs but he always did his music live with groove-machines, synthesizers and his laptop in several clubs in Frankfurt (Germany) under the name AMH. Inspired by the Balkantronika parties and the style of DJ Beatshock, Speckhardt started to mix Balkan sounds with his minimal-electro style. Here is the first official result! Exclusively on iTunes only.

 
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