Choban Elektrik: Choban Elektrik

There are two kinds of noise in this music, which is a clean-living fusion of prog rock, jazz, and Balkan roots: Albanian, Greek, Macedonian, Armenian. One noise is astringent, the acoustic side of things, the wailing-bee voice of Eva Salina Primack in “Moj Xemile”, the riq by Phil Kester; and the other noise is moist, the jellied spread of the Hammond Organ, the indulgent stretch of a Fender Rhodes, which rawls out and takes up space while the bowed folk-strings occupy a small space again and again: they nip, they bite, they squeak. The keyboard borrows an Albanian riff and the riff goes mellow. There are Hendrixisms in “Beratche from Prespa” but the musicians don’t push hard — this is not a risky album, it doesn’t shove or twist either side of the equation, the old or the new, it’s more a meeting-place than a renovation. Compare it to the violence of the Hungarians Besh o droM, for example, who cover some of the same area — an impression fuelled by the sympathetic Hammond, coming in under Primack and cooling her sharp edges.