What mysterious sounds emanate from behind the Romanian border? As I
sit in my office chair – actually, more like shivering in the corner with
terror, trying to avoid lapsing into a black-magic-induced coma – I’m overcome
with the weird sensation that the definitions in my brain of “Romania” and
“music” should be fully disassembled and reevaluated. For one, there’s that
whole gypsy thing that I probably should get past (damn you Beirut and Guy
Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes!). For two, there’s that whole Bram Stoker’s Dracula thing I should get past (Transylvania, of
course, being a part of Romania), but I’m never not going to be glad I read
that book, because that book is way too awesome to avoid (I strongly recommend
it, you guys). Shanyio, Alexandru Hegyesi and a couple friends here and there,
does his (pretty much) electroacoustic thing, fixing field recordings over,
essentially, bowed anything (cymbalom, dulcimer, psaltery) along with other
types of instrumental ephemera such as recorder, gusla, glockenspiel, piano,
distorted bass guitar, etc. What the hell is a “gusla”? Beats me. Turns out
Hegyesi has quite a discography under his belt, but if C is your introduction to his work, you’re in good hands. The album
is called C because the central
gimmick is that each track’s title begins with the letter “C,” from “Curgător” to “Coda,” although most of the titles
are in Romanian. Doesn’t really matter, though, as the surprise and shock that
this isn’t a gypsy recording is enough to pulverize your central focus,
although that wears off quickly enough. And thank god it does, because C is packed with compositions designed
to hold your attention as they almost all uniformly creep up your spine and
into your brain stem, all after passing through your ear canals of course. I’ve
never been so terrified by the quacking of a duck, for instance, as I was upon
hearing it in the middle of “Ciarda”! And follow that with the
wailing-across-the-moor of “Cotzofana”?! Shanyio, what are you trying to do,
freak us out until we succumb? Well it’s working. Are you trying to redefine
the definition of music as it comes from your country? Well, that’s working
too. I’m pretty much in your debt, in fact, that I don’t have to turn to
DeVotchKa anymore when I want to point to “that sound,” however Americanized it
may be. You’ve got the historical revision covered. (And I guess I like
DeVotchKa OK.)
--Ryan Masteller
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