Moving Home

From Bosnia to Brisbane via Sweden and Slovenia, the Australian-based trio East of West span all points of the compass with a fusion of the music of the Balkans and the Mediterranean, jazz and Middle Eastern classical forms to create a sound that defies simple categorisation. If pushed, we could probably settle for something like ‘Balkan ethno-jazz fusion,’ although such a clumsy phrase fails to do justice to the elegance and subtlety of Moving Home, the follow-up to 2019 debut Little Harbour.

Bosnian-born double bass-player Goran Gajić is the main composer of the tunes here, played by oud maestro Philip Griffin and percussionist Malindi Morris, who studied folk music in Sweden and Slovenia, where she played with the band Lastovka. Although all 11 tracks are instrumental, there's plenty of variety, both rhythmically and in terms of mood, from the 7/8 groove of ‘Tablelands’ to the Persian influence of ‘Lahor’ via a Hellenic flavour on ‘Windswept’, on which Griffin switches from oud to the Greek laouto. Perhaps best of all is ‘Stringybark’, containing a slow atmospheric bass and oud duet.