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The 2nd album from Belgrade Ethno-Noise outfit Lenhart Tapes, boldly extends producer Vladimir Lenhart’s acclaimed re-tooling of submerged Balkan musics.

Hypnotic Walkman jams meet industrial rhythm loops and trad-folk songs interpreted by a lineup of thrilling female vocalists: Tijana Stanković, Svetlana Spajić (Gordan, Pjevačka družina) and Zoja Borovčanin (Lira Vega).

A magical, beauty-and-the-beast encounter of dirty noise and righteous folk.

Fans love labels, musicians tend not to, so it’s rare to find one so ready to oblige. Vladimir Lenhart will happily drop Ethno-Noise on you, then leave you to work out what that might mean. You’ll have a pretty good idea after about a minute of this record ¬― or indeed if you’ve spent any time in the Balkans generally, surrounded by folk music in all its incarnations, and in Belgrade specifically, which yields up the ghosts of the Yugoslav punk and industrial scenes of the 1980s and the city’s current experimental excursions to anyone with time to listen and explore.

The interrogation of folk and the national songbook has gained considerable currency in the last several years (think Damir Imamović in Bosnia, Richard Dawson in the UK or labelmates Altın Gün), but Lenhart Tapes are taking a slightly different path. Vladimir’s grandfather Ján was a popular interpreter of Slovak folk song in the 1950s, and the careful marshalling of national minority cultures in Yugoslavia produced a musical heritage that continues to resonate for those that have come after. Being younger, however, means that they have their own musical stories to tell and influences to work round. Vladimir’s tapes-by-the-kilo, car-boot-sale approach is something familiar to turntablists and hip-hop artists, but it’s his love of industrial sound that’s key, producing a magical, beauty-and-the-beast encounter of dirty noise, improvise.......
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