An Alien Sound in the City 4/3/13

Image compliments of Strule Theatre, Omagh

Balkan Alien Sound are doing what they do best as part of WOMAD. The group who produce Balkan/Irish music with a bit of a jazz and rock twist  are half way through creating their second album or original tracks and are hoping to be launching in May. Marty explains how the group formed. 

“We actually started about 2008 as a proper band but initially before that me and Steven and Gary who was playing guitar for Balkan, they had a performance in Magee and myself and Gary were listening to a lot of Planxty music, there was some Bulgarian stuff and that. Gary had chosen a song called Smeceno Horo, which is a Bulgarian tune for his performance piece and myself and Steven went in to perform on it. After we finished playing it we had the bug. We were just really hooked on it and then for the next four or five years I just immersed myself in Eastern European music and went out around Europe travelling and just kind of stayed out there seeping up all the music and the culture, and finding out as much as I could about my own instrument the bouzouki. I came back here and just said to the boys, ‘Wait til you see what I’ve got and let’s go’. They were well up for it by that stage.”

Of course this style of music isn’t normally heard around the city but even though there were some questions raised the band’s style they gained a lot of support. “A lot of people wondering ‘What is going on there?’ because we were Irish but as far as we were concerned we were just a band that was thinking, there’s people playing jazz, there’s people playing blues, there’s people playing trad music, this is just another form of music that we have chosen to play. The similarities between Balkan music and Irish music are really strong. One of the main differences would be time signature but instrumentation wise, nowadays it’s almost identical, the same family of instruments is all used. I never saw it as a difference. Then the more our personalities were coming into the music, there was like jazz, ska and a wee bit of rock going in and I think people were identifying it more as not just a Balkan trad band but our own kind of band then. Over the years it’s been more accepted that were not just a straight Balkan band we’re Balkan Alien, alien to the Balkan stuff.”

As the style of the music was so different to what they’d worked on before the group didn’t start composing right away but soon this changed and they also began to merge gernres. “At the start when we first started I think for about the first 18 months we were drawing straight from klezmer music. Half our set was like old Yiddish music and the other half was one or two Bulgarian songs. The first album is totally traditional music but over the last two and a half years we’ve just been composing and our own songs started creeping into the set. We never say on stage ‘This is our song’ or ‘This is a trad song’ we just play them. The style of our compositions has changed so much in the last two years. The way I would write now I would think always in a Bulgarian sense but I always try to keep a wee Irish side in it. That’s way I like having Steven O’Carolan there beside me as well because I would take a tune to him, we’ve just written a tune called ‘The Immigrants Waltz’ Aideen McGinn is going to be singing in Gaelic in it so it’s like Bulgarian music with Gaelic vocals over the top of it. We’re really excited about getting that recorded and released because I’m not sure if it’s been done before. I know Andy Irvine done some Irish music with Bulgarian vocal over the top but I’m looking forward to doing it the other was around.”

While working at a festival in the city the Balkan Alien Sound group picked up some unexpected but welcome new fans.“We actually got a really nice compliment from a Bulgarian couple who had moved to Northern Ireland about three years ago. The last festival we played in Derry, they were up and around it and they heard a version of a song called Gankino Horo, it’s like a barn dance in 9 over 16. They just heard it in the air and they were so homesick and they ran up to the side of the stage thinking one of us was going to be Serbian or Bulgarian and then we came off stage and they were speaking to us in Bulgarian but we were like, ‘Aw what’s the craic? We’re all from Derry!’ they were liked completely shocked. We’ve actually ended up being in a film with them at the minute called ‘Tapestry of Colours’. It’s a film that’s about the diversity of cultures in Northern Ireland today and there’s a feature of those guys in the film.” 

The sound the group produces has changed with the changing line up but Marty thinks this has been for the better.“Robert Peoples, Steven o Carolan, Mark Forbes, Gary’s living in Brighton at the moment but any gigs we do in the UK, he done WOMAD there, he’s still available if we need him. I thought we’d miss the guitar and miss the improvisational side of it but it has kind of lead us to go down a more compositional route. Me and Mark on the bass have maybe composed a whole albums worth of Bulgarian influenced tunes. If one member leaves it’s making the other members go ‘Right, we need to step up a wee bit’ but Mark O’Doherty from Little Bear, he’s filling in at the moment on drums. We’re looking for a drummer to go out on tour with us this summer, we’re going out to Germany and we’ve a lot of WOMAD gigs. It’s good to be working closely with such a big prestigious festival because you’re going to be working with world class artists all the time. It kind of makes you up your game a bit because you don’t want to be messing up in front of these big acts. Balkan Alien sounds will be launching their album at the Gypsy Folk Club with bands appearing from all over including France, Greece and some in the UK too. To check out the band online visit: www.balkanaliensound.wix.com/balkans, or if you just go to Facebook.