When we were admitted to the venue, the mere five tables arranged in the sizeable room made it clear some dancing was expected. The audience was only small, about thirty, but ten of these were up dancing for most of the show and that’s a decent ratio. This duo from St Petersburg performed almost non-stop…

Mariana Sadovska and Abraham Brody are both ethnomusicologists and between songs they talked about their travels in country areas. They also spoke of their many meetings with elderly women, for whom traditional songs have been an intrinsic part of their daily lives. Mariana was born in Lviv, Ukraine while Abraham was raised in the U.S.…

This concept album was inspired by the Chernobyl disaster and consists of nine largely instrumental tracks. It’s a soundtrack for an imaginary documentary or as Frank Zappa would say ‘a movie for your ears’.  The theme behind the album is that, just as nature has managed to thrive even amidst the terrible fall-out from Chernobyl,…

The evening’s events took place in the Main Space at Rich Mix and before the music started at around 9 o’clock old Russian sci-fi movies were shown on the large screen behind the stage and the audience were offered free cups of home-made borscht. Violinist Flora Curzon and cellist Francesca Ter-Burg were the first act…

This Hungarian duo – Veronika Harcsa on vocals and Bálint on semi-acoustic guitar – made a dynamic start to their performance and never let up. They were onstage for an hour and a quarter and played ten original songs, mostly from their new album Tell Her, plus a cover song as an encore. The two,…

Overland Inn are a French trip-hop duo who came together in 2006, with Etienne on guitar, occasional background vocals and what they call ‘machines’ – the latter of which are also operated by Chloe, who also does vocals and keyboards. They’ve spent the last four years or so in Prague and Between a Dog and…

It says in Sasha Ilyukevich’s publicity that he’s a ‘punk rocker’, but put away thoughts of 1976 and safety pins  – he’s a punk rocker in the true sense and as John Lydon would define it: a genuine individualist. London-based Ilyukevich is a songwriter and vocalist from Belarus and his songs at the Courtyard Theatre…

As its title implies, this album deals in part with the problems of being a refugee both in the 21st Century as well as in the past  – but its overall theme is more to do with the lack of compassion in many modern societies and the distance between us all. The Odd Gifts is the…

This was the third London gig in a mini UK tour for Ghost of You, a young quartet from Brno, and at the Forge they were supporting compatriots Mydy Rabycad. This provided an interesting contrast: Ghost of You’s music and lyrics are dark and surreal while Mydy Rabycad are more into dancing and good times.…

András Kállay-Saunders is thirty-one years old, and born in NYC to a Hungarian mother and an American father, who was Lou Reed’s bass-player for many years. Kállay-Saunders now lives in Hungary after representing them in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest – but there’s nothing particularly Hungarian about this album. It comprises eleven well-performed and well-produced…