Estradasphere is a band of multi-instrumentalists from an unlikely variety of musical backgrounds. Timb Harris (violin/trumpet), Jason Schimmel (guitar/banjo/keyboards/vocals), Tim Smolens (upright and electric bass/vocals), Kevin Kmetz (Tsugaru Shamisen/guitar/keyboards), Adam Stacey accordion/keyboards/clavinet), and Lee Smith (drums/percussion) were trained in disciplines ranging from classical and jazz to metal. This diverse instrumental and stylistic palette enables them to execute a vast array of orchestrations and even forge entirely new genres such as “Bulgarian Surf,” “Romanian Gypsy-Metal,” and “Spaghetti Eastern.”

Estradasphere’s latest album, Palace of Mirrors, marks their first release on New York-based The End Records, home to many of rock and metal’s most eclectic bands. The album’s cinematic music and production connotes a narrative that cuts across time, space, and genre. Estradasphere concerts feature the six accomplished musicians and an innovative visual team. Their live show is an extension of the surreal sci-fi storyline alluded to in the music. In each performance, as the themes of the music associate with the enigmatic video and live-camera projections, a dynamic film is created in which the members of Estradasphere are both the characters and the soundtrack orchestra.

More great videos after the jump

Speck

Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu

(Original)

Klezmer Metal you say? Sure, why not!

Smuggled Mutation

More info:
www.estradasphere.com

http://www.myspace.com/estradasphere

Jason Webley is a Seattle-born singer-songwriter known for playing a mix of gypsy, folk, and punk. He has released five albums on his own label, Eleven Records. These feature Webley on the piano, guitar, accordion, and a number of other instruments, though when touring he only brings his guitar, accordion, and a vodka bottle containing coins from around the world, which he uses for percussion.

In high school Webley played in a punk band called Moral Minority. He picked up the accordion in 1996 in his last year in college at the University of Washington when he was part of a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and wrote a couple songs for the play on the accordion. He later recalled, “I was just a geeky kid; accordion came later. It’s since playing accordion that I’ve become cool. I used to be a geek with an electric guitar. I had a guitar and played in punky bands and I had a computer. I sequenced stuff. I was much geekier.”

Webley is the brains behind the Monsters of Accordion tour, an all-accordion extravaganza that takes place on the West Coast. The tour came together when Webley was invited to play at an accordion shop in Oakland, and met two Bay Area accordionists, Daniel Ari and Aaron Seeman. They decided to do a little accordion only tour, which was the first Monsters of Accordion. The tour has since featured such accordionist as Corn Mo, Geoff Berner, Amy Denio, Mark Growden, (former Gogol Bordello member) Stevhen Iancu, and Eric Stern (frontman of Vagabond Opera).

Icarus (with Amanda Palmer from Dresden Dolls):

Check also this amazing street performance of Icarus here.

Kitchen video clips:

MySpace, LastFM, Facebook, iLike, Internet Archive, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube channel, Official page.

Bulgarian chicks

Hermetico

SundayArak

With a little bit of good luck, one of my best friends will be singing with them…

More great music on their website and MySpace page

myspace

Bon fra helvete:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kontroll Pa Kontinentet:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kaizers Orchestra is an alternative rock group, formed in Norway in 2000. The sextet is well known for their energetic live shows, the interlocking stories found in their lyrics, about the mafia, war, underground resistance groups and mental institutions, as well as their trademark 1940 gas mask. Kaizers Orchestra are notable for being among the first Norwegian bands or artists singing in their native language to become popular in non-Scandinavian Europe. The band explore many different genres of music, the most prominent being gypsy-punk and balkan brass.

Enden Av November:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bak et Halleluja:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hevnervals:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ompa Til Du Dor:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Evig Pint:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mann mot mann:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kontroll Pa Kontinentet (clip):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sigoynerblod:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Links:
http://www.kaizers.no/
http://www.myspace.com/kaizerso
http://kaizers.konzertjunkie.de/
http://www.kaizers.de/x_index.php
http://www.freewebs.com/kaizersinst/

Zdob si Zdub -- Videli Noch’

About Kino:

Footage has been taken from famous documentary about russian underground music during Perestroyka -- “Rock” by Alexey Uchitel.
The band was formed in the summer of 1981 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) as punk rock band Garin i giperboloidy (after Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi’s novel Giperboloid inzhenera Garina, published in English as Engineer Garin and His Death Ray) by Tsoi, Aleksei Rybin and Oleg Valinskiy. A year later the name of the band was changed to Kino (Russian for “cinema”). Since rock music was considered “anti-Soviet”, Kino, like the other rock bands, performed only in semi-underground clubs and at musicians’ apartments (kvartirniks). In the summer of 1982, Kino’s first album was slowly distributed through underground channels and gave a new fame to the group. Due to the beginning of the Perestroika era, the band emerged from the underground, and in 1988 the band become more popular.
During the next two years the band released another album and did shows in the USSR and abroad, attracting enormous audiences, until August 15, 1990, when Tsoi died tragically in a car accident near Riga. The tape with the vocal track for the new album survived the accident. The album was completed by the rest of the band and released in 1990 without a title, though it is always cited as Chornyy Albom (The Black Album) since it has a wholly black cover. The band’s popularity in the Soviet Union was so extraordinarily high that after Tsoi’s death, the words “Tsoi lives!” and “KINO” appeared on various public surfaces throughout the country. Writing these words became a kind of a memorial ritual among fans of the band. Even today the slogan occasionally surfaces in urban graffiti. All Kino songs were written by Viktor Tsoi. His lyrics are characterized by a poetic simplicity. The ideas of liberty and democracy were present (one song was named “Anarchy”) but, on the whole, the band’s message to the public was not overly politically charged. Their songs largely focused on life, death and love. Daily life is embedded in Kino’s vocabulary (for instance, there is a song about the elektrichka, a commuter train many suburbanites use daily).

About Zdob si Zdub:

This video of the song Buna Dimineata! (Good Morning), is a tongue-in-cheek evocation of the agro-romanticism of the Stalinist-era Soviet Union and its satellites.
Zdob şi Zdub is a Moldovian musical group, based in Chisinau, whose work for the last several years combines elements of hip-hop (especially sampling) and hardcore punk with traditional Romanian music and Roma music.
The name is onomatopoeic for the sound of a drum beat. The band was formed in 1994. Various line-ups, initial sound rather hardcore and lyrics mostly in Russian. Around 1998, their sound began to change, embracing traditional Romanian/Moldovian music and with lyrics entirely in Romanian.

Links:
http://www.kinoproby.com/
http://www.myspace.com/kinoviktorkinotsoikino
http://www.zdob-si-zdub.com/
http://www.myspace.com/zdubii

]]> http://www.discorgy.com/2008/06/kino-zdob-si-zdub-videli-noch/feed 0 http://www.discorgy.com/2008/05/devotchka http://www.discorgy.com/2008/05/devotchka#comments Fri, 30 May 2008 13:47:06 +0000 domnux http://discorgy.wordpress.com/?p=70 A great fusion between Romani, Greek, Slavic, and Bolero music with American punk and folk roots.

C’est Ce La:

Commerce City Sister:

Charlotte Mittnacht (the fabulous destiny of…):

Vengo! Vengo!:

More YouTube’s: This place is haunted, 26 Temptations, How it ends,

More songs on the oficial site: http://devotchka.net/

]]> http://www.discorgy.com/2008/05/devotchka/feed 1