Besh o droM20

The first track of Besh o droM's new album, ‘Atom Csocsek’, kicks off with a low-slung bassline coupled with rousing sax preamble, promising great things. Thirty seconds into the track, the sax launches into a circuitous, tripping, punchy melody leading us into familiar Balkan territory – into the native zone of Besh o droM. After a nine year's hiatus, the legendary Hungarian outfit – a good-time party band with an intellectual cachet, have just come out with a new album, their eighth, commemorating 20 years of raucous, hip-shaking Hungarian spiced music.

In the past Besh o droM were billed as a ‘Balkan music band.’ In the time since the Balkan music scene seems to have run out of steam, or perhaps better said, milked dry. However, while other artists and acts have sought to distance themselves from the Balkan appellation and rebrand, aligning themselves with the next trend du jour (like Shantel discovering Turkish music as a way of staying alive), Besh o droM still stick by the band's original bread-and-butter: ‘We are a non-traditional East European, Balkan dance music band, co-founder and sax player Gergely Barcza, now living in Israel says. ‘And we want to keep it that way.’