Brooklyn Gypsies – ‘Sin Fronteras’ (album stream) (Premiere)

The all-too-easy to make generalization about the state of the Brooklyn music scene in 2015 is that it’s comprised of a bunch of white guy-led indie bands all trying to out-falsetto Thom Yorke. However, like any music scene, such sweeping generalizations don’t fully encompass the diversity of musical exploration that one can find if he really digs beneath the surface. Enter: Brooklyn Gypsies.

Featuring members from Spain, Japan, Russia, Italy, and the United States, Brooklyn Gypsies regularly engage in cross-cultural and cross-genre songwriting, throwing Russian folk, Reggae, and flamenco into a stew pot and getting exciting results. “Cross-genre”, though, is a phrase that the group’s music actually contests; as their polymorphous song structures evince, genres are just names that any musician can toy with to whatever extent she likes. This is in part what informs the inclusion of the word “Gypsy” in the band’s name; as the press materials for Sin Fronteras explains, this word is used to denote “the nomadic spirit and way of life within this musical journey”.

So, go ahead, then: hop aboard Sin Fronteras and be ready for a free-spirited and inventive musical ride.

Sin Fronteras is out on 5 May via Wonderwheel.