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Black Sea Hotel at Pete’s Candy Store, Brooklyn NY 5/12/08 « Lucid ...
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Black Sea Hotel at Pete’s Candy Store, Brooklyn NY 5/12/08 « Lucid Culture/* */ var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? Ee-ya ramalama obama, HEY!” Anyone who was in college during the early 90s knows the Bulgarian Voices, as they were commonly known (the official name of the band is Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares). Even more impressively, the group sings phonetically: their rustically accessorized black outfits may look Balkan, but the group members are all American. Harmonically, this stuff is difficult to sing, especially for ears raised on the major and minor scales of Western music, but Black Sea Hotel pulled it off magnificently. In an interesting coincidence, Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares are playing Symphony Space this month (May 30 at 8, tix $35). It’s this a-capella quartet singing Balkan music.” “Oh, like the Bulgarian Voices. Perhaps the most telling endorsement of all is that their next gig is at the Bulgarian Embassy (121 East 62nd Street on May 24 at 6:30 PM): since it’s on the band’s myspace, it seems safe to assume that the event is open to the public.  The best two songs of the night were a gently troubled nocturne in 6/8 time, and the last song of the set, a showcase for leaping pyrotechnics and strange guttural trills that stopped something short of being a yodel. The overall effect was as intense as it was hypnotic, despite the ease of the performance and the singers’ casually amusing interplay with the audience. They had the second big “world music” album (after The Irresponsible Beat of Soweto or whatever that debacle was called), just as the term, meaning “anything indigenous and not American,” was entering the lexicon. When the music at the front bar wasn’t clashing with the sound from the stage, as it did early on, you can have heard a pin drop.