Seductive as this album is – beautifully recorded with all players offering a fat weave of sound … World After History is still worthy of purchasing if only the sounds of an older, more laid-back and baroque Europe are rarely captured as they are here.
…The music merges hope with melancholy, folk traditions with orchestration, nostalgia with optimism. Tuneful and rhythmic and led by his own fluid playing, Kovac’s music is both grounded and path finding – a testament to the resiliency or culture and spirit in a region trying to repair itself after a decade of horror.
From Cuba to Pannonia. Pannonia is located in Serbia, ex Yugoslavia and it is the homeland of Boris Kovach, the music genius who has given us this new record that surpasses all his previous works. Boris has named it “World after History” and it seems it is a religious confession of music Hinduism…
European Broadcast Union: World Music Charts Europe List for July 2005 . World After History CD piranha was at the 2. position!
… all this Yugoslavian bandleader’s excursions are voyages beyond the expected…
His ability to veer from heartbreakingly gorgeous melodies, fluttering wings of brass symphonies, into breakneck accordion-driven fury is incomprehensible. One can only imagine shifting drunkenly in a tanchez (dance house) in a state somewhere between paranoia and ecstasy. World After History, like its predecessors, is a soundtrack to the movie of Kovac’s mind. It envisions a sacred space stretching past dualistic thinking…Kovac is as much philosopher as brassist he seeks personal spaces which make sense through incoherence. ..it’s an inner realization that moves us past the realm of linear thought. After you’ve meditated for a bit, turn on World After History for the closest interpretation imaginable.
“Kovac’s music is both grounded and path finding a testament to the resileincy of culture and spirit in a region trying to repair itself after a decade of horror.
Orchestra for Barbaric Apocalyptic Balkan Dance
Many years ago, when author of this article was seriously interested in Goran Bregovic’s music, he wrote a completely apologetic article about the author of the early 90’s Moscow taxi drivers’ favorite song (‘In A Death Car’, of course). In that article he without knowing and without listening but offhand told a few pejorative words about the saxophonist and composer Boris Kovac.
Now, my friends, it is time to apologize and even, perhaps, sprinkle ashes on my head. I declare with all my responsibility: the ex-jazz saxophonist Kovac is not “one of those, which a few in any seaside town on the Adriatic“. No, he is the one. In any of his musical incarnations, whether it is a popular La Campanella or more refined LaDaABa orchest («Orchestra for barbaric apocalyptic Balkan dance» – this is what the strange acronym stands for), he actually was and remains one of the most interesting European composers of our time. Attention, I’m not kidding!
Success of Kovac’s ensemble
…No, this album is not cheerful. It is sombre, tragical and dramatic, although there are careless and winged moments. Balkan dances, not the unrestrained round-dance, but falls into the wild exaltation of one bloody apocalypse. …His music, with its quality, shades the international music scene.
Since Laibach’s album Nato Occupies Europe, The Last Balkan Tango is the most piercing warning from the East.
The album The Last Balkan Tango was chosen among the best “50 essential albums ever” by the popular Songlines magazine.
The Last Balkan Tango
…Today, it seems to me like I never heard records which really inspired me that much. One of them is the album of Boris Kovac. … “The Last Balkan Tango” pulls the soul out of the body; so much emotions, so much honesty, so much devilish good musicality is placed in this small framework…
08.07.2001. Redaktion & Moderation: Roland Altenburger
The album The Last Balkan Tango was chosen among the best “50 essential albums ever” by the popular Songlines magazine.