GOGOL BORDELLO, who have "defied the boundaries of continents and genres in their quest for spiritual illumination through Gypsy punk," according to Consequence of Sound, play Galway this month.
The acclaimed gypsy punk band, led by Eugene Hütz, will play The Black Box Theatre on Wednesday December 20 at 7.30pm, where they will pay music from their new album, Seekers and Finders, which was released in August via Cooking Vinyl, as well as from across their previous seven albums.
“Seekers and Finders is just a very magical and playful record for us,” says Hütz. “It just feels quite complete in capturing the Gogol familia transcontinental lifestyle, every side of it… the Good, The Bad, and the Snugly.”
Written over an extended time on three different continents, Seekers and Finders finds the nine-piece multi-cultural band express themselves through violins, accordions, trumpet, and marimba, amongst the standard rock basics of guitars, drum, and bass. “I was still bouncing between Latin America and Eastern Europe when songs were emerging, but finally, as soon as I moved back to New York, it all came into focus, as it always did for me here,” explains Hütz.
So far, the album has yielded the single 'Saboteur Blues', a frenzied punk rocker, celebrating "the full commitment to the moment". As Hütz says: “Our lives are royally sabotaged by our thinking being stuck in our past or future. Girls in French mock-flirt the famous crap f**k shot philosophy ‘I think therefore I am’ of Descartes, while the band is clearly offering the alternative ‘I feel, perceive and experience, therefore I motherf***ing rock'.”
Last month saw the release of the second single from the album, 'Walking On The Burning Coal', which Hütz says is "about a rite of passage...which our modern complacent society does not provide".
Formed in 1999, Gogol Bordello took their style of Eastern European-influenced gypsy punk and doused it deep into the underground rock of New York City. Having worked with numerous grandmasters of production including Rick Rubin, Steve Albini, Andrew Scheps, and Victor Van Vugt, Seekers and Finders brings the band full circle with Hütz taking over the producer’s chair. “As the new songs were emerging, I had a feeling that Seekers and Finders was going to be such an intimate record that, for this time, I felt the need to get behind the wheel myself and try marry the two: everything we learned from grandmasters with the Original Gogol Intention.”
The concert is a 'Róisín Dubh presents...' event and over 18s only. Support is from Lucky Chops. Tickets are available from www.roisindubh.net; the Ticket Desk at OMG Zhivago, Shop Street; The Róisín Dubh; and the Town Hall (091 - 569777, www.tht.ie ).
