BLACK OX ORKESTAR
NISHT AZOY [180G] LP

LP is pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl and comes in a thick paperboard jacket with 10"x10" artwork insert.

The second record by Montreal’s Black Ox Orkestar placed the group at the forefront of a ‘new Jewish music’ that rejected contemporary fusion and musty nostalgia in equal measure. With backgrounds in folk, punk-rock and free jazz, the group’s four musicians distilled Balkan, Central Asian, Arabic and Slavic sources into a coherent, impassioned sound that gave teeth to old Jewish songs. Never relying on museum-piece reverence or an obvious, forced collision of musical forms, Black Ox rewrote a Yiddish songbook in ways that sound organically anchored to tradition without being suffocated by it. Nisht Azoy (Not Like This) built dramatically on Black Ox’s debut (Ver Tanzt?), striking a similar balance between vocal and instrumental tunes, but with more intensity, mystery, and a readiness to stretch things out, whether in the incantatory opener “Bukharian” or the clomping crescendos of “Az Vey Dem Tatn” and “Tsvey Tabelakh”. Further upping the ante with greater use of percussion and group singing, the band’s entirely acoustic instrumentation pumps and pulses with explosive energy and emotion. Radwan Moumneh captured the 4-piece band (at Montreal’s (original) Hotel2Tango studio) with a detailed warmth and authority, and a large cast of guest players expanded the group to bona fide orchestral size on “Tsvey Tabelakh”. Taken as a whole, the cycle of songs on Nisht Azoy further opened up a world, inspired by Jewish diasporic culture and politics, that challenged conventional appropriations and forged music that is highly original, deeply felt and very much alive.

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UPC: 666561003814
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