Armadillo Music

Reviews:

Gogol Bordello is the brainchild of Eugene Hutz, a Ukrainian with a fixationfor punk, American culture, Agit-prop Theater and Gypsy music. After meetingaccordion player Sasha Katztckoff, guitarist Vlad Solovar and fiddler SergeiRyavtsev in New York City, he began merging Ukrainian/Russian wedding musicwith rock theatrics and punk energy.

Multi Kontra Culti is undoubtedly the best (only?) CD ever cut by a gangof Ukrainian/Russian ethno-punk terrorists. The music surges out of the speakersand like a Slavic typhoon, balancing Hutz's irony-soaked lyrical approachwith drummer Eliot Ferguson's big beat mania. Hutz shouts/sings like apunk possessed, sometime following the melody, sometime shouting the words againstthe beat like a street corner madman. "Let's Get Radical" hasHutz singing "Death would be great fun of an ironic kind," betweenrants in Ukrainian that ride a reggae beat complemented by Ryavtzev's wildgypsy fiddle fills. On "When the Trickster Starts a-Pokin'" anuninhibited rant that sings the praises of drunkenness and perversion, Solovar'selectric guitar serves up some heavy metal Russian folk, and while "PunkRock Paranoia" may be played on acoustic instruments, the approach is stillfierce, with Ryavtzev's fiddle playing off of an exuberant horn section.The first impression may be that of a big sloppy free-for-all, but a closerlisten reveals arrangements that can stop on a dime and reverse direction, anda singer whose heavily accented broken English rants reveal a sharp poetic intelligencethat's obviously at home with his adopted language.