Hala Strana
Heave the Gambrel Roof
Music Fellowship 2007

A1. Returning
A2. Motra dhe Vellai
A3. Havazi i dy Motrave
A4. Grain
A5. Marl
A6. Home
B1. Wedding of the Blind
B2. Rat Lines
B3. Heave the Gambrel Roof
B4. Molars of Smoke
B5. The Loss of What We Keep

Speaking of Jewelled Antler, Steven R. Smith's journey as Hala Strana has been a clear favourite ever since I've picked his disc on Soft Abuse, These Villages. He's famous for giving J.A. a certain Eastern-European flair, as he personally collected beautiful Balkanic folklore over many journeys. This is not aiming necessarily at ethnological preservation - rather it's a starting point, an inspiration. And for the most part, as close to perfection as it can get. Using a dozen or more instruments, some of them self-built and a few so obscure that most people will have to consult the usual online sources to get an idea of what they look (let alone sound) like, Smith particularly explores traditional Albanian music on Gambrel Roof. Five of the eleven tracks are cover versions or radical reworkings of Albanian traditionals. As usual with Smith, however, it's hardly possible to tell originals from covers or interpretations.

>> fsend / mfire (75mb)
>> love it, buy it (Mimaroglu)

Joseph Roth, Johannes Bobrowski and Franz Kafka are only a few of numerous German authors who portrayed that pre-modern Eastern European culture which would be wiped out by World War I and eventually by Nazi Germany. It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that the sense of an ending is prevalent in Hala Strana's beautiful dirges, in his obsession with original instruments and with musical heritage. Hence the cover illustration, an early modern woodcut which shows a city that seems to be chained to the sea. Hence 'The Loss of What We Keep', the album's final track title, which echoes two prominent lines from Goethe's notorious Faust: "Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast / Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen." ("What you have inherited from your fathers / That you must acquire if you want to own it"). Pursuing a Faustian enterprise indeed, Smith has consciously set out to fight the "loss of what we keep". By heavily reworking his findings, however, he doesn't act as a taxidermist but reinvents and in fact reinvigorates a tradition on the verge of extinction. -J.A. Sohns