Can you remember what you were doing when you were 19? In college, perhaps? Living the student's high life? Getting pissed, stoned, robbing traffic cones? Or maybe you were already in a job that you hated, dealing with the execrable general public on a daily basis for a piss-poor wage? In any case, meet Zach Condon, the young man behind the moniker Beirut. By 16, he'd already committed a significant chunk of original recordings to tape (inspired mainly by his love for The Magnetic Fields and doo-wop); by 17, he'd dropped out of high school and was travelling around Europe, immersing himself the continent's multitude of cultures and sounds - in particular, the gypsy music of the Balkan states. These sounds would prove serendipitous in moulding Condon's - now 20 - latest musical masterpiece, conceived in his New Mexico bedroom and brought to fruition in his current New York domicile. Gulag Orkestar is a genuinely fascinating exploration of folk and gypsy music like you've never heard it before; in short, Condon's ability to interweave modern technology with such a traditional sound is quite phenomenal. Tracks like standout Postcards From Italy are freely swathed in dinky mandolin riffs and shuffling drum beats; you'll find plenty of accordion, ukulele and trumpets here, but refreshingly, not a single guitar. There's exploration a-plenty, too - the layering of vocals on Rhineland (Heartland) and The Bunker bring a rich, full texture to his fiery, tempestuous arrangements, and his attempt at electro-folk on Scenic World is Sufjan-challengingly fab. Each track is composed intricately yet extravagantly - Condon's use of sparse instrumentation here, and opulent crescendos there, incites both euphoria and desolation in the right measures; and though his lazy drawl is indecipherable at the best of times - especially over the almost constant sheath of instruments - it's consistently distinct. Roping in former Neutral Milk Hotel member Jeremy Barnes, himself no stranger to cult success, was a canny move by Condon, and Barnes's current Hack and A Hacksaw collaborator Heather Trost also features. Yet there's no mistaking that Gulag Orkestar is the opus of Condon alone; a brave, genre-defying experiment that could have gone horribly wrong, but which ultimately marks him out as a tenacious and precocious artist.
