Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Opa Hey!
With his goatee and hat, smoking a cig for all his photos, the intently hip Kottarashky, aka Nikola Gruev, is a Bulgarian architect by day. On this debut, he's mixed a compelling collage of his particular “World” ingredients: rhythms mashing train bells, field samples, accordions, horns, and gypsy groans and shouts. Among the CD’s near trance-outs is “Tempe,” with sounds just shifting/intelligent enough to pull cognition back in, which can be a bit jarring, but is one of the best ways to exercise mental muscles.
Whether it's through his introduction of samples collected from around Bulgaria or from more established Balkan artists, including Fanfare Ciocarlia and Jony Iliev, Kottarashky blends it all to convey warm urban and rural snapshots. More than a few tracks, like the Latin/gypsy-beat-based “Chetiri,” provide fodder for what I like to call “interpretive dance.” But the whole ends up feeling more contemplative than clubby, especially through interludes conveying more than a digital heart, as with the touching “September,” and, to some degree, “Mandra,” which is alluring and catchy. I’d get his next one just to see if he comes up with more tracks like those two.
- Album title: Opa Hey! (2010)
- Artist: Kottarashky
- Label: Asphalt Tango
- Songs: (1) Chetiri (2) Opa Hey (3) Tempe (4) Tebe (5) Mandra (6) Long Song (7) Lele (8) Blatoto (9) September (10) Myanmar (11) I Want You To Sleep (12) Bell
Here's something you might be interested in.
Opa Hey!
Opa Hey!
With his goatee and hat, smoking a cig for all his photos, the intently hip Kottarashky, aka Nikola Gruev, is a Bulgarian architect by day. On this debut, he's mixed a compelling collage of his particular “World” ingredients: rhythms mashing train bells, field samples, accordions, horns, and gypsy groans and shouts. Among the CD’s near trance-outs is “Tempe,” with sounds just shifting/intelligent enough to pull cognition back in, which can be a bit jarring, but is one of the best ways to exercise mental muscles.
Whether it's through his introduction of samples collected from around Bulgaria or from more established Balkan artists, including Fanfare Ciocarlia and Jony Iliev, Kottarashky blends it all to convey warm urban and rural snapshots. More than a few tracks, like the Latin/gypsy-beat-based “Chetiri,” provide fodder for what I like to call “interpretive dance.” But the whole ends up feeling more contemplative than clubby, especially through interludes conveying more than a digital heart, as with the touching “September,” and, to some degree, “Mandra,” which is alluring and catchy. I’d get his next one just to see if he comes up with more tracks like those two.
- Album title: Opa Hey! (2010)
- Artist: Kottarashky
- Label: Asphalt Tango
- Songs: (1) Chetiri (2) Opa Hey (3) Tempe (4) Tebe (5) Mandra (6) Long Song (7) Lele (8) Blatoto (9) September (10) Myanmar (11) I Want You To Sleep (12) Bell