(KM KORENI 04)
Ivo's wedding music, played first thing in the morning, provides thorough and long-lasting attitude adjustment for the busy executive.
FRANK ZAPPA
Once again, Papasov has his band as well as the listener holding onto the tail of a tiger in this incendiary romp through traditional dance styles given a contemporary facelift.
DOWNBEAT
It was some of the most wonderful stuff I’d ever heard, and it opened up a whole world for me. I didn’t care whether it sold or not. I was so overwhelmed by the music I had to record it.
JOE BOYD / produced PINK FLOYD, R.E.M., TAJ MAHAL etc.
With a huge gut and unwieldy frame, Ivo Papasov seems an unlikely source for some of the most nimble and virtuosic music you’ll be left in little doubt that he’s one of most interesting clarinettists around. He and his band race through numbers based on the complex rhythms of Bulgarian folk dances, grafting on jazzy improvisations.
SIMON BRAUGHTON editor of THE ROUGH GUIDE TO WORLD MUSIC
An amazing musician – I still remember the stunned looks on the faces of Dave Sanborn and his bandmaters during Ivo’s appearance on “Night Music” …
TON MAAS
(KM KORENI 03)
In my opinion the most wonderful CD of Bulgarian female voices!
EVA quartet convinces with its simplicity, knowledge about the traditional way of singing but also about the possibility of non-traditional arrangement effects. Eva Quartets gets the best of every song and surprises with its manifold a-cappella effects.
RICHARD SCHUBERTH / Concerto
The four young women of the Eva Quartet are all professionals who took such a chance, and their performances of arrangements and original compositions are about as good as you will find. Most of the songs, with the exception of a couple of medleys which charmingly reproduce village originals, are the work of some of Bulgaria's best composers and arrangers, and this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The polish and expertise are obvious, but everything is a miniature, and especially in the work of Ivan Spassov and Antoni Donchev there is a sense that the composer has more to say than the bounds of the style permit. The combination of these singers and an "extended piece"would really be something to look forward to.
KIM BURTON / Songlines
(KM KORENI 02)
As Bulgaria develops ever closer ties with western Europe, waiting more or less patiently to join the European Community and in the meantime hustling to find something more to export than wine, it is starting to show the first signs of a phenomenon reserved for post-peasant societies: a folk music revival.
It's not so much that the five young musicians of Korova (four tambura players/singers plus a percussionist) from the village of Draginovo in the Western Rodopi mountains have had to go far to search out their songs (they seem to have found them more or less on the doorstep); more that they are happy to present them pretty much unmediated, and the record company are equally happy to present them as such. The result is, oddly, something entirely fresh anbd the occasional cheerful adjustments of pitch and less than perfect synchronisation (on, for example, the irresistibly moving ‚Ljubili se dvama ludi') lend their performances an authority and an emotional depth that is sometimes missing from the most polished performances of the most highly trained choirs.
It's a lovely sound: the four male voices drifting in and out of harmony above the complex strumming of the tamburas (lute-like instruments a bit like long-necked mandolins), or winding around one another on the slow unmeasured ballads. Granted that the music does share a lot of characteristics with the songs of neighbouring eastern Macedonia, in melodic contour and vocal sound (more relaxed than the Bulgarian norm), but there is still something very special and different about this recording.
KIM BURTON / Songlines
(KM KORENI 01)
Soundtrack, featuring: Karandila Brass Orchestra, Anita Christy, Milan Aivazov-Mutzi, Ventzislav Takev, Gypsy Children
Children clap, do a frantic, complicated scat singing that constantly breaks down into laughter, and then the landscape explodes with a brass band that is three parts Gypsy, one part gospel shout and a dash of New Orleans second line. This is the heart and soul of a cinematic collection of Bulgarian Gypsy sound images that reach deep to find pathos, joy and above all, compelling, energetic musicianship. The heart of the album is the Karandila band, an ensemble of brass, woodwinds and drums that rips through a modern Gypsy style tinged with American jazz, Balkan folk and unnamable other elements. Their virtuosity is unassailable, but it is the subtle undercurrents that make them so interesting; a soulful blue note here, a bow to New Orleans there, and intentional or not, a bit of bebop swirling through the most unexpected places. The album also features singer Anita Christy on some beautiful ballads, accompanied by a single cimbalom on two and a violin on another. A brief bit of ambience probably best sums up the feel of the album, as a lone reed player accompanies the rhythmic clacking of a train passing in the rail station. The music is appropriately visual throughout, never contrived, always just on the edge of breaking into a spirited laugh or a despondent cry. This music not only survives, but on this album, it lives large.
CLIFF FURNALD, editor of RootsWorld
The 12-piece brass ensemble Karandila is at the center of Gypsy Summer: Tales of Sunnving [Kuker, Bulgaria], the sound track from a film of the same name about the Gypsies of Bulgaria. The CD opens with a rapid-fire vocal percussion piece by some kids on the streets of Rakitovo and is followed by a full brass band offering the same warp-speed melody and rhythm. Karandila is amazing, firing off intense dance tunes and mournful ballads for tubas, clarinets, trumpets, and saxo-phones on 11 of the CD's 18 tracks. The mix of snare drums and brass at the core of the ensemble is sometimes disorienting as they sway between military precision and improvi-sational madness. Interspersed among these are more songs from the children, three passionate songs sung by Anita Christy accom-panied by cimbalom, some uncredited reed playing in a marketplace soundscape or with the Orient Express passing in the back-ground. This is a cohesive collection of music that focuses on one region of Bulgaria and is all the more powerful for its narrative quality.
DIRTY LINEN
Suddenly the Karandila Orchestra burst in, booked perhaps for a mad tea party - typical oriental Gypsy Brass Band, with a swaggering sidedrum that sets up a punchy groove. Before long there are clarinet and saxophone solos that sound so raw and intense that you wonder whether they're just playing reeds.
SIMON BRAUGHTON / Songlines