The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fishtank Ensemble are true bohemians. This isn’t a metaphor meant to evoke an image of a turtlenecked grad student reading poetry in a fashionably downscale coffee shop. The band's four members have earned their sound by learning it firsthand from fellow wandering minstrels all over the world.
From 1997 to 2004, violinist Fabrice Martinez traveled from France through Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania in a mule-drawn wagon he built himself so he could find the right people to help him perfect the technique of gypsy and Transylvanian music.
Along the way, he bumped into his future wife, Fishtank singer Ursula Knudson, while she was learning the stoic trade of opera from an elderly diva in southern Italy. Since then, the band has welcomed into its fold a Serbian bassist weaned on Stray Cats-style rockabilly and a former L.A. rock drummer born in Mexico who now plays Gitano flamenco guitar that he learned in caves outside Grenada, Spain.
All together, the band, performing Thursday night at Eyedrum, taps into an atmospheric retro sound that might remind audiences of the playful throwback numbers the Squirrel Nut Zippers revived in the ’90s.
Their album “Woman in Sin,” due out May 11, shows off the band’s ethnic brew of influences, bringing Djordje Stijepovic’s slap bass prowess to the fore, which announces itself particularly in the cover of Peggy Lee’s smoky classic “Fever,” sung with the operatic authority and feminine force of Knudson’s elastic voice.
But American music doesn’t show up in their playlist so much as the Eastern European influences the band prizes.
“Roma [the correct term for gypsy] music is so diverse,” Knudson said. “There are so many forms in many different countries, and a lot of the songs we do have a different feeling for me. But one feeling I only get from playing in this group is this absolute frantic pace. Sometimes it feels like we’re going so fast we’re going to crash.
“But we don’t. Structure and form is my whole theory on art: You can’t be an abstract expressionist until you know how to draw the human form. We try to adhere to correct time signatures and harmonies. Once we get that core base down, we can really let loose.”
To anyone only superficially familiar with gypsy jazz, Fishtank’s sound recalls the ambience of an urban bistro in a Woody Allen movie. More specifically, it transmits as something of a love letter to Django Reinhardt.
"There’s this way that he’s giving his heart that very few musicians possess," Knudson said referring to Reinhardt. "I think as a group we’re very conscious about that. It’s not about virtuosity because then you’re just playing for yourself. It’s really this larger picture of dreaming of something amazing that brings your audience to new places. That’s what Django had, so in that respect we owe him a debt for being that kind of musician who would inspire us in that way."
Concert preview
Fishtank Ensemble with A Fight to the Death. 8 p.m. April 15. $10. Eyedrum, 290 MLK Jr. Drive S.E. 404-522-0655, www.eyedrum.org .
