Our Routes

It 's somewhat quaint in late 2014 to get a new album that faithfully treads the Balkan beats formula popular almost a decade ago. B ut London duo Gypsy Hill – DJ Kobyashi and Herbert Newbert, accompanied by a variety of musicians – do their best here to emulate Shantel, Balkan Beat Box, Amsterdam Ska Orchestra and others as they serve up a smorgasbord of soft electro beats, brass-lite, generic ska rhythms, standard surf guitar, over-busy scratching, the occasional sampled vocal effect and the like. They do so in a professional manner, never just going for a lazy techno thump, but every tune of the 11 here replicates what someone else has already done a good while ago – and a good deal more effectively. Gypsy Hill may well be a fun festival band but as a recording outfit they have yet to create a sound they can call their own.