Talking of Balkan

Christmas was on in the last weeks and London decided to die for a few days. Apparently people were too busy eating and drinking, and then shopping like zombies, digging into the sale hangers, looking for life-changing bargains.

So not many gigs going on, therefore my silence.

But today I felt like posting something anyway. Something short and following the line of my previous post. Last time I wrote about the Balkan Beats party I had been to, so I wanted to share a video of an artist that used Balkan music as a springboard to create something quite cool.

Shantel is the stage name of Stefan Hantel, a German dude that was captivated by the gypsy sounds of his ancestors (his grandparents were from Romania), and started DJing and producing music in Frankfurt. One day he decided to go a little further and went on stage with a full band. The result: all the colour of Balkan folk, boosted by electronic bases. Not to mention he’s probably one of the most charismatic artists I've ever seen on stage... but I’ll leave that for a different post; hopefully he’ll play in London again in 2013.

I’ll leave with Disko Partizani, his best known tune, in a video ‘alla Kusturica’. Bloody awesome. If you don’t absolutely love the scene with the flying carpet, there’s definitely something wrong with you.