Search - Kletka Red :: Hijacking

New Jack Klezmer

l_image-temps | Portland, OR, USA | 02/05/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is aptly named. Berliner Leonid Soybelman, the incomparable guitarist Tony Moor/Ex of Dutch art-punkers The Ex, and drummer Tony Buck (Peril, Ground Zero, The Necks) are holding canonical klezmer at gunpoint in the cab and turning cookies with it. An even mix of klezmer traditionals and stuttering, no-wave originals, this album cuts deep into the Jewish musical tradition until it flies apart into splinters of angular guitar, pounding, skittering drums, and the occasional shouted Yiddish or Hebrew vocals. But whatever nouveau jazz and punk is pressure-injected into the music, the essential beauty of the compositions isn't disregarded-- Street Tune and Seaside, in particular, are measured, achingly pretty masterpieces that recall Marc Ribot's work in John Zorn's Bar Kokhba. The intensity in many of the other tracks is just that-- intensity. It's never gratuitous, but rather--to my ears--provides an old music with a brilliant, wrenching immediacy still suffused in the tragedy of the ages. Say what you want, but Naftule Brandwein, in his day, was an edgy and almost downright dangerous player. His music deserves this."

This is what it's all about.

Shaun Martin | Whittier, CA USA | 01/26/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Beautiful, complicated, pure, this is a perfect blend of melody, noise, skill and culture. Every once in a while, I encounter some work of art that immediately generates in me the thought "I wish I had made that" or "if I were a musician/filmmaker/artist that's what I'd aspire to do". This album was one of those."