By John E. Mitchell

As the summer winds down, the New England gloom ahead can be dispelled if you just have the right music to keep you going for a while longer. Best to turn to an area of the world that takes anything from the gloom of weather to the gloom of war and turns it around into a reason for a party -- Europe. This has been a great year for sounds from mainland Europe -- whether they actually came from Europeans or just Americans enamored by them.

Balkan Beat Box are the prime practitioners of this aesthetic and their new release "Nu-Med" continues to wrap electronic dance and hip hop trimmings around superior and exotic musicianship -- Eastern European grooves, Klezmer, brass band, even Arabic sounds and reggae -- make the mix and it's always thrilling to hear the fruits of these sessions.

BBB's sophomore effort features a number of collaborators, most interestingly their live audiences, whose cheers and claps and more are often mixed into the songs to recreate the party atmosphere that their live shows are renowned for. Jamaican toasting and Middle Eastern tinged saxophone ramblings lace the music to sway by quality of "Hermetico," while "Balcasio" is a fast and ponderous instrumental number that sounds like something you might hear performed by mice on AM radio in Yugoslavia. "Delancy," meanwhile, has beat box workings that, at times, echo Gene Knipa and horn work mixed with synths and yelping voices that suggest Balkan Beat Box has as much in common as the combos of the smoky jazz clubs of '50s New York City as any other genre they seem to fit in. (Downloadable through iTunes)