Romantech

The New York Gypsy All Stars are a young five-piece band, playing contemporary Turkish and Balkan music. I was lucky enough to see them at one of their regular venues – Drom, in New York's East Village (see You Should Have Been There, p104). I'm glad I did, because they are much better live than this CD suggests. At their centre is Macedonian-born clarinettist Ismail Lumanowski, who is in constant motion around the stage, sometimes squatting down then jumping up and playing to the rafters. His clarinet cuts through like fire. Alongside him are Turkish-born kanun player Tamer Pinarbasi, Greek-born electric bass player Panagiotis Andreu, Australian Turkish drummer Engin Gunaydin and American piano and keyboard player Jason Lindner. Gogol Bordello probably created a similar vibe in their early days, although NYGAS are less punk and more rhythmically interesting.

The album title is a pun on the Turkish word for Gypsy – Roman – with ‘tech’ suggestive of the contemporary, urban approach to the music, with heavy basslines and electronics. Some of the material is traditional and there's an excellent cover of an Arabesk song by Orhan Gencebay, but most of the tunes are original (by Lumanowki and Pinarbasi). ‘Balkan Bollywood’ is set over a bhangra beat and the closing ‘EZ-Pass’ is very rhythmically intricate. But the excitement of their live show doesn't translate into the CD which is just too clean and clinical. It needs some of their live raw emotion.