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.

Fitting in a nice double bill would be Matt Moran's Slavic Soul Party, whose new CD "Teknochek Collision" takes a more traditionalist approach to the sounds than Balkan Beat Box, but still stands firmly in the 21st Century. The brass instruments move along with Moran's percussion work with a jaunty amiability and it's all peppered by the mesmerizing accordion work of Peter Stan, who may just be the Charlie Parker of the squeezebox.

The title track presents ambling musical duels that has Stan blazing trails you can barely keep up with and this energy continues throughout the album, graduating to weird heights in the drunken funk of "Have a Beer" and the boppy little oompah of "9 At the River." This time around, the band adds a couple vocals tracks -- "Opr Cupa" and "DJelem DJelem" -- featuring the powerful lilt of Eva Salina Primack in a variety of moods. (Downloadable through iTunes)