• Music

    Baklava – From Skopje With Love

    Our friends over at the indomitable CPL-Music have released a charming disc of traditional music from my second homeland of Skopje, Macedonia!  Baklava, the subject of today’s listening, work with folk music and does sterling work reinterpreting it for a more modern, updated sound.  Speaking of that sound, the band develop it with a wealth of instruments, including ancient local ones like the tambura, the kaval and the daf, as well as bagpipes, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, accordion and (the very much non-Macedonian) ukulele.  The music is upbeat, fun, and shines a good light on the wonders of (North) Macedonian music.

  • Music

    Anna Michaels & Yordan Kostov Quintet – Abstract Attitude

    Anna Michaels is not the Toni Morrison-kind of poet I can’t get into.  Rather, she has the power of a street storyteller, the sort of person who you can engage at a New York or Los Angeles coffee shop talking about her experiences across the world, her observations of American life both as a local and a foreigner in some sense, and at her best, her words can be rather spellbinding.  She is the sort of person I would utterly enjoy a coffee with. It’s quite a treat to know that she has paired up with Yordan Kostov’s band, one…

  • Music

    Toni Dimitrov – Live at SlovoKult literARTour 2020

    Composer, radio presenter, label owner, philosopher and old friend Toni Dimitrov has released a new album on the ever-interesting Kalamine Records.  Here are some of the details regarding the release, courtesy of their Bandcamp page: Performance at SlovoKult literARTour 2020 in Gevgelija, as a part of Bosh Festival. SlovoKult literARTour is a small international festival of contemporary art, text and poetry, taking place in Skopje and Gevgelija, Macedonia and Berlin, Germany. www.slovokult-literatur.de