Beirut - 'Gulag Orkestar' (4 AD) Released 06/11/06

It’s not that far-fetched to view ‘Gulag Orkestar’ as a determined effort to cater for miserabilists and devotees of untapped global genres alike, imply as it does both record densities of gloom and a bombardment of Balkan beats well before the needle drops.

After all, the album’s title refers to the indescribable squalor of Stalin’s slave labour camps, whilst the city that provides 20-year old multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon with his nom de rock has become a byword for wanton destruction since the platter first saw the light of day to a chorus of hosannas from tuned-in indie observers on the tiny US imprint Ba Da Bing! Then there’s the Lada-enriched cover art, which suggests you’ve landed with an obscure platter of pathos-drenched Russian folk songs someone picked up at a car boot sale on the outer reaches of Eastern Europe and successfully smuggled through the Iron Curtain during the death throes of communism.

The sorrowful title track does little to shatter the illusion. Swaying and stumbling like a fatigued work company of tattered convicts making its way back to the barracks in knee-deep snow, hurried along by an unsteady horn section from the album's titular orchestra, it’s desolate stuff, marinated in the most tormented depths of misery traditional Eastern European music can muster. Add to that Condon’s mournfully acrobatic vocals, which hover permanently on the verge of choking from the unbearable sadness of it all, and you've a supremely striking sound submerged in enough Slavic melancholy to address a century's worth of woe and injustice, even if Condon's remarkably palatable histrionics hinder most chances of deciphering what he's wailing on about, and the proceedings do cheer up a tad as the platter progresses.