Customer Reviews

Live

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This is the next best thing to actually seeing this exciting group live. It is a recording of the artists playing a live concert, so you feel the enthusiasm, the electricity, and the sheer virtuosity of their playing. I've seen them live, and truly, this is the best souvenir possible unless you've got a ticket to France to see 'em!
Don't think twice about this one!

If you look at the small print on the back of this CD's jewel box you will see the words "File under: Gypsy/Klezmer". Hmm, you think, those are two different musical genres. Is this Gypsy music in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grappelli? Or is it Jewish Klezmer music like the Klezmatics and the Klezmer Conservatory Band? Actually it's a gumbo of both! There's a guitar and violin but also an accordion and cimbalom! Some songs you'd find at a Bar Mitzvah or Jewish Wedding and others you might hear in a jazz club in Eastern Europe. Add the fact that the band is based in France and you get the feeling that the whole world is one big village. (Ironically, that's the name of the label: World/Village (though distributed in the US by Harmonia Mundi).

I saw these guys at the 2007 Philadelphia Folk Festival where they were one of the surprise hits of the Festival. Nearly no one, including me, know who they were but there was a "buzz" about them! By the end of the Festival, their (difficult to pronounce) name was on everyone's lips!

This CD is probably the best way to hear them in action because they really play to, and gain emotion, from playing in front of an audience. When track 17 - "Tchaye" - came on my CD player, the vision of the band playing on the Festival stage came back to me immediately. I have no idea what the title means - and there are no liner notes to explain the songs (the only weakness I could even think of on the album) - but I was up and dancing around my room., and that's not a usual occurrence.

So test out the music samples and see if you aren't hooked. Then try to figure out where YOU would file this CD.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

Les Yeux Noirs are a incredible group of musicians and this album catch their abilities and spirit exceptionally well