Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen
If you like gypsy music with generous lashing of silliness, you might like Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen…
Theathrical, dark, and very very naughty!
Once upon-a-time long ago when I was at Uni in Wollongong there was a band called Prik Harness. They were ridiculous, lo-fi duo, famous for wearing lyrca suits with the crotch cut out. I’m still tormented by lyrics from one of Mikel’s songs featuring lyrics about licking his aunty’s hairy back. It’s almost like they start by thinking of something twisted, and then turn the weirdness up to 11.
Needless to say, when I got back to Sydney and heard Mikel had a new thing going, I was very excited! But I was afraid to get my hopes up. Prik Harness was a rare thing that had it’s time and place, and couldn’t imagine this new thing could be as wonderful.
I was very wrong.
It seems maestro Mikel Simic has been entertaining people since the day his mom squeezed him out. He’s an unstoppable force, and he’s gathered a posse of talented and playful musicians to do it up right.
They all adopt ridiculous eastern Euopean personas, and sing overwrought songs about ocean voyages and carnivals. It’s the sort of act that could become irritating, but they’re just plain funny. They’re having so much fun, you’d be a fool to try and fight it.
To top it off - you can pretty much gaurantee that Mikelangelo will venture into the crowd at some point in the show to terrorise a few audience members. Walking on tables, sitting on people’s knees and nibbling their ears.
We live in a world obsessed by surface - perhaps that is why Mikelangelo and his Black Sea Gentlemen are such a welcome feature on our musical landscape. They are brave enough to confront us with puzzles - layer after layer of them. Where are they from? What is their history? How did they carry the bleak existentialism of Paris to Australia, via the Balkans? And that music - so hauntingly evocative - but from where? It speaks to us of middle Europe, the southern Russias, and yet has evolved far beyond that - are we, nervously, entering a post-modern world here, where these rootless buccaneers reflect on their new lives in the Antipodes?
On their new album Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen take us on a journey that is geographical, cultural, philosophical, and even, dare I say, ironic. It’s an album of songs all beautiful in their own right, but made more so by the shadows of meaning which they cast upon each other. It’s invidious to pick out individual numbers when the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts, but we’ve all suffered One of those A minor Days, and have all longed for the untrammelled optimism of Set Sail. The Great Muldavio tells us his story in his own song, Rufino sings the bittersweet Things will Never be the Same and Mikelangelo paints a vividly exotic picture of sexual adventure in A Formidable Marinade. As if that’s not enough, we can also enjoy the Devil coming to town, in a lyric where film noir becomes sound. Get listening. The Gipsy Kings are dead, long live these new gipsy kings.
- Lyndon Jones, BBC Radio 3
Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen release their long-awaited second album Journey through the Land of Shadows, featuring a swathe of bloodcurdling and beautiful songs written by the deep-voiced Mikelangelo and arranged with The Black Sea Gentlemen. An awe-inspiring live experience, the group have packed houses and received critical accolades and awards from The Edinburgh Festival to the Sydney Opera House. They launch their new album nationally in March before embarking on an Australia Council funded international tour that takes them to New Zealand, Europe and the UK.
“this is extraordinary music, you have to see one of their live shows to feel the impact this group has”
Phillip Adams ABC Radio National“the band play ancient acoustic instruments as if a life depended upon it… exuberant, faintly disturbing and extremely funny”
The Independent (UK)
Video:
Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen Dog Style
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