Rootsworld, CD Review >>
This is the latest edition of Boris Kovac and Ladaaba Orchest's La Danza Apocalypsa Balcanica. The follow up to the critically timed Fall 2001 release The Last Balkan Tango shares the same eerie timing, delivered to my doorstep the morning the first 'coalition of the willing' bomb dropped on Baghdad. Volume two is more subtle; darker, sweeter and deeply melancholy, a work that asks you to "imagine the morning after the apocalypse... are we still alive? It appears so." The work is soaked in Balkan and western European dance styles and Ladaaba is truly a fitting dance band for the end of time. Backing Kovac's mournful saxophone is a small ensemble of bass, percussion, violin, clarinet and accordion, offering a stripped down, sometimes dire sound appropriate to the subject. But it also offers hopeful moments, bursts of merriment and simple pleasure, the same mixed emotions and rollercoaster changes that made the first volume such an effective antidote to its time. In the notes, Kovac offers that this is the final edition of La Danca Apocalypsa Balcanica. "I hope that such a theme will never inspire me again." Amen. - CF 04/21/03
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