Firlapalooza

As someone who rarely gains an appreciation for newer music (past articles here indicate how I tend to have steeped myself in Schubert, hymns, and the Red Army Choir, with occasional forays into Johnny Cash and other classic bands), I would not have expected that a fresh new electronica-ish group (who doesn’t do Commodore 64 remixes) would catch my attention.  I recently returned from a brief holiday to visit relatives in eastern Europe; that part of the world tends to have surprisingly interesting and eclectic tastes in music.  While there, my new brother-in-law introduced me to a regional musical act known as ‘Parov Stelar’.

I was quite impressed!  I invite you to check out this jaunty fusion of electronica and big band music with a visual backdrop of antiquarian movie dancing scenes – “Chambermaid Swing”:

That is the official music video, and is shortened from the actual album track, which goes to an on-going dynamic build-up for nearly five minutes (also available on YouTube here, but is not a music video).  Parov Stelar, a musician who comes out of northern Austria, has been around since 2001.  Eight years in, I do hope this isn’t another one of those occasions where I’ve heard of something a long time after everyone else I know has, as I did notice that a search term in Google with this band gets 433,000 hits.

Anyway, it’s nice to discover that I am not actually that stodgy, and that there are still occasional gems in newer music!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009, and is filed under Mediums at Large. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. I reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.