Ahilea Café Svetlana
What, Balkan electro-pop isn’t on your dance radar? It should be—a quick spin around Café […]
What, Balkan electro-pop isn’t on your dance radar? It should be—a quick spin around Café Svetlana reveals 17 hip-shaking, perspiration-inducing tracks by Macedonian producer Ahilea Durcovski. While this scene has found a home in Vienna, its music is multi-ethnic, with strong Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Croatian, and assorted Slavic flavors found in this rousing collection. What sounds like a bass clarinet leads a mad waltz called “Out of Town,” a pumping accordion and howling vocals by Bella Wagner (“You connect your whole body full of vodka to the beat,” she tells us in the raspy spoken word intro) breathe fire into “Spiritus Tango,” and an electrified fiddle and more clarinets rock the hell out of “Coffee and Tumbula.” Opa!