BLACK OX ORKESTAR EVERYTHING RETURNS – CD

UPC: 666561016920
Label: CONSTELLATION
Format: CD
Release Date: December 2, 2022
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1. Tish Nign2. Perpetual Peace3. Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora4. Mizrakh Mi Ma’arav5. Skotshne6. Viderkol (Echo)7. Epigenetik8. Moldovan Zhok9. Lamed-Vovnik

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Everything Returns reunites the original Black Ox Orkestar lineup followinga 15-year hiatus. Arising from the fertile Montral post-punk agit-prop sceneof the early 2000s, the band comprises Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss andThierry Amar of Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Amar also continues to compose andplay bass for Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Gabriel Levine of Sackville.Black Ox made two acclaimed albums of roiling acoustic avant-folk in themid-2000s, exploring Eastern European and North African folkways throughthe lens of a gritty, resonant indie rock sensibility, juxtaposing interpretationsof instrumentals from various Jewish, Romani and Arabic traditions withoriginals led by Gilmores politically-charged Yiddish vocals. These earlyalbums have since become lodestars for many among a new generation ofYiddish, Klezmer and radical Jewish diasporic music practitioners and fans.

First revealing its resurrection in February 2022 with a surprise flexi 7 singleissued by left journalJewish Currentsas a gift to its thousands of subscribers,Black Ox has indeed fully and fruitfully reunited. Exquisitely recorded by GregNorman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio),Everything Returnspicks up right where the band left off: an incisively atmospheric, melancholicyet resolute album of uniquely modern Jewish folk music, with piano, violin,upright bass, clarinet and cymbalom making up the core instrumentation, andthe vocal tunes sung primarily in Yiddish, alongside album centerpieceViderkol and closer Lamed-Vovnik where English also features.

This is not fusion music, but diaspora music: a cross-cultural call and responseof musical lexicons, emerging from the history of Jewish persecution anddisplacement, the musicology of 19th century repertoire from Jewishshtetls,the improvisational traditions ofnusakhin Jewish music andtaqsimin Arabicmusic, and a wider polyglot dialogue of Jewish, Slavic, Arabic, and CentralAsian musical traditions. Lyrically and stylistically,Everything Returns connectskey current issuesfrom refugees forced to leave their homes, to the returnof fascism and exclusionary nationalismwith the legacy of modernist Yiddishpoetry and song.

The new Black Ox Orkestar album is a sublime, poetic, politically-informedstatement of re-energized diasporic musical intent, where Gilmores voice andthe bands simmering arrangements conjure an ardent, doleful balladry thatechoes the sound and sensibility of artists like Tindersticks, The National, NickCave and Leonard Cohen.Everything Returns is a haunting, richly textured,darkly sparkling song cycle at once from a vanished world and very much ofour time and place. Thanks for listening.