Early-mid 20th century Europe was a hotbed of musical styles and modernity, with the old world of waltzes, polkas and mazurkas crashing headlong into the new world of swing, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll.
Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen take this musical landscape as their jumping off point.
Over their 15 years touring together, the group has developed their own distinctive Euro-Roots sound and a high calibre live show that has seen them play to huge audiences from the Sydney Opera House to Budapest to London’s West End, winning multiple awards and critical acclaim and developing a die-hard national and international fanbase.
Their fourth album, After The Flood, was written during an artistic residency in Cooma and the Monaro Plains.
The band was inspired by the harsh beauty of the landscape and the lurid tales of European migrants and refugees who came to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme in the 1950s and 60s, transforming Cooma from a sleepy country town to a world of 24 hour nightclubs with live music, drinking and dancing every night of the week.
They will launch the album locally at the Hotel Gearin, Katoomba on Saturday, May 14.
The band was inspired by ... the lurid tales of European migrants and refugees who came to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme in the 1950s and 60s.
After The Flood was recorded and mixed at Turning Studios in Sydney with Evan McHugh, who co-produced the album with the group.
All of the band contribute songs to the record and together they create a vivid portrait of a wild world of adventure, hard work and high emotion, leaving the listener gasping with the sheer depth and breadth of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen’s power as storytellers and melody makers.
“Light and dark, serious and ludicrous, daft and sincere, are in perfect balance throughout – this wonderfully theatrical show frequently veers from one extreme to the other in a second.
“These are performers at the top of their game, in complete control of their audience,” wrote Andrew Eaton in The Scotsman of the Black Sea Gentlemen.
Jeff Jeffery in The Australian wrote: “Mixes everything from Klezmer to Tex-Mex and wild-west gothic and simmers the lot in a cauldron of Balkan fatalism…this is some of the most alive music I've heard in a long while.”
Doors to the May 14 concert open at 8.30pm. For more details visit: www.fusionboutique.com.au.
