Some music makes you want to jump up & shake, and then there are contemplative discs where you sit back with your soporific of choice and let the music wash over you. There are times when you are working and want music that is capable of fading into the background but helps keep you focussed on your work. This is not to dismiss this class of music as unlistenable: there are times when you don't want the music to take over, when you are concentrating on something else and music makes the routine less drab. There's a part of your brain that is comforted by a wash of sound, a bit more engaged than say the ocean. I have been playing this CD while I work and it's perfect for being present yet keeping a distance. This I attribute to the fact that it is loop-based. Kottarashky is a young mixologist with a nice grasp of vintage Balkan music. He takes archetypal Gypsy riffs: a violin whine, a skirl on the clarinet, a phrase on an accordion, and throws them into a cauldron with some trance-like drumming. It has the loping quality of Gypsy music but also the North African drone we associate with the Joujouka initiation ceremonies or Gnawa trance music. And, yes, every now and then an old geezer exclaims "Opa, hey!" He's very present for a second but then the music goes back into its rambling anecdotal tale of drab villages animated only by sheep and great floods & the guy who was half-man half-goat, conjured by fragments of half-remembered sound. It's like the end of the tram line in Sofia, where you step off into the mud and in front of you is a dark ancient land that stretches to Turkey, Arabia and India & behind you ... more darkness? You don't remember; you just know you have to keep moving away from it. This CD is an aural journey like no other. The source material is superb but it's the way Kottarashky has woven it together that makes it so unforgettable. (You can sample the music on his myspace page.)