A real treat for the burgeoning ranks of A Hawk And A Hacksaw fans, this strictly limited EP includes the first fruits of the duo's blossoming relationship with a group of extraordinarily talented Hungarian folk musicians, who have come together under the name The Hun Hangár Ensemble to tour Europe with AHAAH this summer. Consisting of eight newly recorded songs, both original and traditional, the EP serves as an introduction for both the listener and the artists themselves as they get to know each other, providing a platform from which music and ideas can evolve.
Reviewed By: Sarah Maybank
There’s probably some po-faced right-on type out there getting themselves into a major Balkans conflict about a Hawk and a Hacksaw. Well-meaning westerners appropriating a currently-hot blood and tear-soaked genre? Isn’t it just a replay of Elvis hitching himself to the blues and Eminem getting rich on hip hop?
Someone tell them to calm down. A Hawk and a Hacksaw imbue their melting pot of central European and near Eastern folk with the reverence of a Papal inauguration and enough emotional intensity to power a NASA rocket launch. And with this eight-track mini album they come with the seal of approval of The Hun Hangar Ensemble, a god-like cabal of Hungarian folk legends. Think that means they pass the test, then.
Like a Muller Fruit Corner (Yogurt! And separate fruit!) this offers twice the benefits of its competitors. The slower tracks virtually bleed melancholy, and the breathless pace of the speedier stuff will get you dancing with the un-selfconscious abandon you normally reserve for wedding discos when the DJ cranks up Girls Aloud (‘No Good Advice? To hell with cool, I’m on that dancefloor now’).
There’s a message on a Hawk and a Hacksaw’s MySpace page saying something like "your music makes me want to dance and feel beautiful and free." Hope you’ve got big palms, a Hawk and a Hacksaw, because you’ll be getting plenty more devotees of that type feeding out of them.
Review by Stewart Mason
A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangar Ensemble is the album on which Jeremy Barnes finally and emphatically distances himself from the remnants of the Elephant 6 scene he had been part of as drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel: this brief, entirely instrumental album has nothing to do with indie rock in any way, shape or form. Barnes and his fellow multi-instrumentalist Heather Trost moved to Budapest, Hungary in 2006 to more fully immerse themselves in their beloved Eastern European folk music; recorded in Hungary with local musicians the Hun Hangar Ensemble (reedsman Bela Agoston, bassist and accordionist Zsolt Kurtosi, trumpeter and violinist Ferenc Kovacs, and cimbalom player Balazs Unger), this eight-track album combines traditional Balkan tunes (given generic descriptive titles like "Serbian Cocek," "Romanian Hora and Bulgar" and "Oriental Hora") with a handful of Barnes/Trost originals like the sweeping, majestic "Zozobra." Unlike Beirut's Gulag Orkestar (to which Barnes and Trost contributed enormously), this is not indie pop music taking the trappings of Eastern European folk music, but the thing itself, presented in a fashion that makes it potentially accessible to an audience that might otherwise not find room in its listening day for a track like "Vajdaszentivány," a dazzling medley of Hungarian folk tunes played on the hammered dulcimer-like cimbalom. Those expecting the training wheels that Gulag Orkestar (or even A Hawk and a Hacksaw's three earlier, somewhat more pop-oriented, albums) provided may find A Hawk and a Hacksaw and the Hun Hangar Ensemble a challenging listen at first, but the sheer joy of these performances should make them accessible to all but the most musically isolationist and/or accordion-phobic. The first pressing of the CD includes a bonus DVD, An Introduction to A Hawk and a Hacksaw, that combines material from the recording sessions for this album with older live material shot in Barnes' hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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