Gulag OrkestarBa Da Bing Records This disc is an example of what is so lovely about independent music: singular, eccentric musicians/composers working in some utterly disconnected deep musical world, emerging later with a completed work as they squint in the light of day. Zach Condron, the heart of Beirut, is a nineteen-year-old kid from NYC via Albuquerque, New Mexico. But you can know that only by being told. Just hearing this music alone would have convinced you that it sprang from a rag-tag group of musicians from the Balkans, circa the 1950s. A lost artifact, found and dusted off, as if it had hung in an antique shop for decades. Yet his intuitive, almost innocent approach works well for a modern audience. Heaps of acoustic instruments clutter each tune: "a trumpet from Paris, farfisa organ, accordion, piano, ukelele, mandolin, glockenspiel, violin, cello, tambourine, The air powered organ I bought on twelfth street, Congo drum donated from the neighbors . . ."
