Put this guy next to Baghdad Bagpipers Play the Music of Rooney, the boxset of Real Native Americans Playing Real Native American Music Through Real Native American Effects Pedals Outside the Viacom Building, the last Blur record, the Ethiopian dub plate for "Jack Kerouac Shits" (white label), and all the other east-meets-west (but no actually, it's just face-caked western pop with no character outside its kooky instrumentation) so-called world music bullshit-- yes, Trans Balkan Express is more gold train than soul train.
Name and game locked up in his harbor hometown's multiculturalism, Our Man From Odessa liked Kraftwerk and Giorgio as a cosmonaut-aspirant jugend (his name is "German"). He did pirate radio (but not "pirate radio") via shortwave Western pap-loving Romanian broadcasts, and when stuff happened 89ish OMFO planned himself a trip around a Europe-- a Eurotrip-- during which he sampled the continent's musical flavors, collected its most bizarre instruments and synthesizers, and (I hear) played rhythm guitar for the Hungarian version of "Scotty Doesn't Know".
OMFO, in other words, has made one half his career collecting kitsch, our tired melodies and worn chords and stale rhythms, and the other half playing it back to us verbatim, veiling it hardly save with aimless electro-cosmopolitanism b/w authentic, localized instrumentation. Say the liners: "Electronically enhanced, [the songs] develop a life of their own, where futurism meets imaginary folklore." Hey dude, so did my "In Da Club" ringtone-- three years ago.
"Trans Balkan Express" is-- really now-- a hora borrowing big beat and Balkan bagpipes; "Tixi Rock" is tin pan blues, but with italo synth and rain dance flute (probably a preset); "Chupino" is an accordion jamming hard over a canned riddim. Do I even need to explain "Drimba 'n' Bass"? What about "Space Hora Dub"?
Two problems I've created for myself here. Actually three. First, everything in the graf about sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? The prospect of OMFO is flat-out exciting, really, just like what happened last year when this very same label put out Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats. Releases like this work well if only because they promise completely alien music-- some pocket of this earth that exists away from the panopticon of the internet and blogosphere and A&R; poaching. Lots fail me because, like TBE, they turn out to be boring Western pop with glass-bottom gimmicks. I'll take a Sonic Youth rip over that any day.
Second, I'm afraid I've made OMFO out to be Osama, Manson, other Manson, Chevy Chase, and Lance Armstrong all in one-- like, the worst dude ever. I can't imagine OMFO's character being necessarily applicable either way, but for hermeneutics' sake he does seem genuinely proud of this stuff, and this particular bit-- "Though it remains unclear whether the 'Trans Balkan Express' is a train or a space ship, these are territories that no human ear has ever dared to explore. Ladies and gentlemen: We are floating in Eastern European space"-- melts my decimal-point heart.
And number three, how can I slag OMFO for playing dress-up but praise M.I.A. for rootless multiculturalism? Well guess what: you got me. I've been lying all along. OMFO is awesome.
