This week, RS contributing editor Christian Hoard's "Christian Rock" new music pick is Gogol Bordello's Trans-Continental Hustle . The group's raucous live shows usually involve a shirtless, mustachioed Russian man shouting at you while accordion- and violin-laden punk-rock blares and costumed females dance around.
Gogol Bordello are a pan-ethnic group who play what they describe as "gypsy-punk" music — an Eastern Europe-derived mix of accordions, klezmer beats, Balkan folk melodies and hardcore punk. On Trans-Continental Hustle they once again sound like the world's most forward-thinking party band. This time they were produced by Rick Rubin, who helped give the songs a laser-beam focus.
Before recording this album, Eugene Hütz — that shirtless, mustachioed Russian frontman — moved to Brazil and fell in love with the country's music, and the band have augmented that gypsy punk sound with samba and baile funk-style grooves as well as Hütz's Portuguese lyrics. Get a listen to the group's sound in our New Music Report video, and get a look at Hütz getting slapped by oak branches and composing an impromptu song live from a Russian and Turkish bathhouse in footage from his recent RS photo shoot.
