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Everything Returns

by Black Ox Orkestar

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thegreatgrackle
thegreatgrackle thumbnail
thegreatgrackle Does anyone have a source/link to a translation of the Yiddish (and other) lyrics? Love the atmosphere and musicianship on this album, yet I'm confident I would enjoy it more if I could understand the words. Thanks in advance!
sentient meat
sentient meat  thumbnail
sentient meat There is a quiet beauty and sadness to this record. Favorite track: Viderkol (Echo).
Philip Graham
Philip Graham thumbnail
Philip Graham The instrumental and vocal arrangements create a kind of gorgeous melancholy, and I am a sucker for sadness wrapped in musical bittersweetness. Favorite track: Mizrakh Mi Ma'arav.
Conor
Conor thumbnail
Conor If Black Ox Orkestar had only released their first two records, dayenu. If they had made a comeback but only to release Mizrakh Mi Ma'arav, dayenu. If they released a full comeback record but it was merely okay, dayenu. But instead Black Ox Orkestar comes back with some of their most powerful work with an absolute masterpiece. 10/10. Favorite track: Mizrakh Mi Ma'arav.
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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    180gram LP pressed at Optimal (Germany) comes in 350gsm jacket and 300gsm inner sleeve printed on uncoated Arktika artboard with LE-UV inks. Jacket has colour flood inside. 36”x12” fold-out insert contains additional artwork and lyrics in three languages. Includes download card.

    This Special Edition includes exclusive 7" flexi disc with track “Mizrakh Mi Ma'arav”, originally produced by Jewish Currents and given away with the magazine's Winter 21/22 issue.

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    Includes unlimited streaming of Everything Returns via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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    edition of 100 
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      $28 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    180gram LP pressed at Optimal (Germany) comes in 350gsm jacket and 300gsm inner sleeve printed on uncoated Arktika artboard with LE-UV inks. Jacket has colour flood inside. 36”x12” fold-out insert contains additional artwork and lyrics in three languages. Includes download card.

    Save big on shipping when you order multiple albums from the Constellation label discography
    constellation.bandcamp.com/music

    Constellation LP shipping rates:
    USA: FREE SHIPPING
    Canada: $12 first item, $0.50 each additional
    International: $16 first item, $4 each additional

    Please be aware that VAT or other taxes/duties *may* be levied by your country on orders outside North America. This is random and out of our control.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Everything Returns via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $24 USD or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD comes in custom uncoated paperboard mini-gatefold jacket and printed inner sleeve. 9”x18” fold-out insert contains additional artwork and lyrics in three languages.

    Save big on shipping when you order multiple albums from the Constellation label discography
    constellation.bandcamp.com/music

    Constellation CD shipping rates:
    USA: FREE SHIPPING
    Canada: $2 first item, $0.50 each additional
    International: $8 first item, $1 each additional

    Please be aware that VAT or other taxes/duties *may* be levied by your country on orders outside North America. This is random and out of our control.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Everything Returns via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $12 USD or more 

     

1.
Tish Nign 03:44
2.
3.
4.
5.
Skotschne 04:05
6.
7.
Epigenetik 05:03
8.
9.
Lamed-Vovnik 04:16

about

Everything Returns reconvenes the original Black Ox Orkestar lineup after a 15-year hiatus. Arising from the fertile Montréal post-punk scene of the early 2000s, the band comprises Scott Gilmore, Jessica Moss and Thierry Amar of Thee Silver Mt. Zion (Amar also continues to compose and play bass for Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Gabriel Levine of Sackville. Black Ox made two acclaimed albums of roiling acoustic avant-folk in the mid-2000s, exploring Eastern European and North African folkways through the lens of a gritty, resonant indie rock sensibility, juxtaposing interpretations of instrumentals from various Jewish, Romani and Arabic traditions with originals led by Gilmore’s politically-charged Yiddish vocals. These early albums have since become lodestars for many among a new generation of Yiddish, Klezmer and radical Jewish diasporic music practitioners and fans.

First revealing its resurrection in February 2022 with a surprise flexi 7” single issued by leftist magazine Jewish Currents as a gift to its thousands of subscribers, Black Ox has indeed fully and fruitfully reunited. Exquisitely recorded by Greg Norman (Jason Molina, Nina Nastasia, Electrical Audio), Everything Returns picks up right where the band left off: an incisively atmospheric, melancholic yet resolute album of uniquely modern Jewish folk music, with piano, violin, upright bass, clarinet and cymbalom making up the core instrumentation, and the vocal tunes sung primarily in Yiddish, alongside album centerpiece “Viderkol” and closer “Lamed-Vovnik” where English also features.

This is not fusion music, but diaspora music: a cross-cultural call and response of musical lexicons, emerging from the history of Jewish persecution and displacement, the musicology of 19th century repertoire from Jewish shtetls, the improvisational traditions of nusakh in Jewish music and taqsim in Arabic music, and a wider polyglot dialogue of Jewish, Slavic, Arabic, and Central Asian musical traditions. Lyrically and stylistically, Everything Returns connects key current issues—from refugees forced to leave their homes, to the return of fascism and exclusionary nationalism—with the legacy of modernist Yiddish poetry and song.

The new Black Ox Orkestar album is a sublime, poetic, politically-informed statement of re-energized diasporic musical intent, where Gilmore’s voice and the band’s simmering arrangements conjure an ardent, doleful balladry that echoes the sound and sensibility of artists like Tindersticks, The National, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Everything Returns is a haunting, richly textured, darkly sparkling song cycle at once from a vanished world and very much of our time and place.

credits

released December 2, 2022

Thierry Amar: bass
Scott Gilmore: cimbalom, piano, vocals
Gabriel Levine: clarinet, bass clarinet, guitar, vocals
Jessica Moss: violin, vocals

Featuring:

Pierre-Guy Blanchard: drums on "Perpetual Peace", percussion on "Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora" and "Skotschne"
Nadia Moss: vocals on "Perpetual Peace"
Julie Houle: tuba on "Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora"
Craig Pedersen: trumpet on "Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora"
Julie Richard: tuba on "Oysgeforn / Bessarabian Hora"

Recorded by Greg Norman at Mixart Studios in Montreal, December 2021, except Track 4 (recorded remotely in Washington, D.C., Toronto, ON, and Hotel2Tango in Montreal) and Track 9 (recorded remotely in Washington, D.C. and Hotel2Tango in Montreal).

Mixed by Greg Norman at Electric Sound, Chicago. Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market, Montreal.

Artwork by Black Ox Orkestar, layout and design by Ian Ilavsky, Yiddish typesetting by Avia Moore.

Thanks to:
Greg Norman, Nadia Moss, Abe Riesman, Beth Silver, Pete Rushefsky, Lisa Iwanycki Moore, Peter Burton, Canada Council for the Arts, Elizabeth Shulman, Raphaëlle T Benarbia, Jacques Amar, Jacques Beaudoin, Nicolas Pétrowski (Mixart), Maura Judkis and Margalit, Bee Pallomina and Leo Levine, Ezra Moss Menuck, Julius Lewy, Arielle Angel, Jacob Plitman and Jewish Currents.

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Black Ox Orkestar Montreal, Québec

Black Ox Orkestar plays modern Jewish diasporic music that draws from Klezmer, Romani, Arabic, Balkan and other Eastern European folkways, through the lens of indie rock, experimental folk and avant-jazz sensibilities. The band combines interpretations of instrumental traditionals with original compositions sung primarily in Yiddish. Formed in 2000 in Montréal, disbanded in 2006, reunited in 2021. ... more

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