Since its release in May of 2006, Beirut’s internationally celebrated Gulag Orkestar album has soundscanned more than 45,000 copies, and the band has done a tsunami of interviews, photoshoots and features (including NY Times, Spin, Pitchfork, Urb, and Village Voice). This great fervor developed around an album conceived and constructed in a teenager’s New Mexico bedroom. Six months of recording has led to The Flying Club Cup, an homage to France’s culture, fashion, history, and music. Two years ago, Zach Condon immersed himself in Balkan folk, absorbed sounds, scales, styles, and the sonic joys of a skeletally structured, cacophonic ensemble—and moved west. Soaking up the likes of François Hardy, Charles Aznavour, and, most notably, Jacques Brel (a huge influence on both Scott Walker and Mark E. Smith), Condon has been articulating his conversational French. Most of the album was created at a nondescript Albuquerque office space, a.k.a. A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s practice room; Heather Trost plays violin and viola on three songs. Engineering and production assistance came from Griffin Rodriguez (A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Man Man). He helped separate the many instrumentalists involved in recording, as opposed to Gulag’s largely solo flight. The orkestar, which has solidified into a core group of eight members, has grand plans for replicating the album live, and is now an integral part of Beirut’s identity. Additional recording was done with Owen Pallet (Final Fantasy) at the Masonic church studio owned by The Arcade Fire. Within the spectacle and intimacy...
LP $16.00
10/09/2007
CD $12.00
10/09/2007
While it may sound like an entire Balkan gypsy orchestra playing modern songs as mournful ballads and upbeat marches, Beirut’s first album, Gulag Orkestar, is actually the work of 19-year-old Albuquerque native Zach Condon, with an assist from Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw). There are no guitars on this album; instead, horns, violins, cellos, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiel, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions all build and break around Condon’s deep-voiced crooner vocals, swaying to the Eastern European beats like a drunken twelve-member carnival band. Though young, Condon has already recorded several albums of astonishing diversity. He recorded under the name Real People when he was fifteen, crafting an electronic record inspired by his love of the Magnetic Fields. At sixteen, he recorded an entire doo-wop album that sounds a bit like like Frankie and the Teenagers. Although he was a straight-A student, in 2002 Condon dropped out of school to travel Europe, cavorting and partying with the locals wherever he went. During one of these evenings that he was first exposed to Balkan gypsy music, blasting from an upstairs apartment. Condon went to investigate, and stayed up all night with a Serbian artist, going through albums country by country, note for note. Gulag Orkestar is the direct result of what he learned that night. This past winter, Condon headed to Sea Side Studios in Brooklyn’s Park Slope where, along with Barnes and A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s Heather Trost, he added...
LP $16.00
05/09/2006
CD $12.00
05/09/2006