During the last years, [dunkelbunt] has recorded the album MORGENLANDFAHRT, to be released in May 2007 on Viennese urban-world label chat chapeau. MORGENLANDFAHRT is a mix of Dub, Reggae, Bossa, Jazz, Electronics, Trip Hop and Break Beats woven with a Balkan twist. Numerous co-operations with both Viennese and international musicians from the Balkan and Klezmer scenes have enriched many of the tracks on the album. The unifying factor across the album is Balkan folk and after a contemplative sitar introduction (a knowing nod to the original source) the Amsterdam Klezmer Band breaks into the most joyous racket on ‘La Reverdere’ over Dunkelbunt’s heavy rhythms. The tempo and mood doesn’t give up until ‘Lautlos’, 10 tracks in. In the intervening songs, nearly every upbeat world-music style is thrown into the mix in some way - Mariarchi brass in ‘Ashphalt Tango’, ska in ‘Der Kicherer’, Balkan polka in ‘Black Eyed Sea’, Django Reinhardt jazz in ‘The Stojka Empire’, along with lashes of upbeat dub and nu-school breaks - yet at all times remaining cohesive and never straying into the kitsch. The album then winds down with a handful of more mellow tracks, folk-dub-torch songs and the like, rounding out in a restful mood.Every track on Morgenlandfahrt fuses numerous disparate traditional and contemporary stylings in a playful, inventive manner. The scope of sound sources is mind boggling - a didgeridoo even pops up on ‘Wellenreiter’, later dissolving into processed Tibetan chanting. It’s a kind of joining the global dots which continually surprises and impresses. This is joyful, creative, celebratory music of the highest calibre.
