This journal is produced amid extreme noise and chaos. Outside our editorial offices is a constant cacophonous symphony of sirens, horns, streetwalkers, combustible clowns, cat fights, anonymous tubas, and the ravings of postal workers gone berserk. Inside: the clatter of keyboards, the screeching of hard drives about to blow, the drone of stressed out backup drives, the roar of hydraulic scanners, editors screaming "Where's my copy??!!," call girls demanding back-pay, reporters barking into cell phones, office boys chasing French poodles up and down the halls, and Balkan-soul-gypsy-funk blaring from loudspeakers installed on all three floors.
If you were here at the moment your ears would be overflowing with the lovely rhythms, brass tootle-poots, and thumpa-humps of Slavic Soul Party!'s new CD, Teknochek Collision. It's nonstop swirling insanity—booming brass, speed-infused gypsy jazz punctuated with mystical dervish riffs running like a pack of dwarfs on fire. The ghost of Maria Ouspenskaya is definitely lap-dancing to this in some dark Slavic bar back in the old country.
Needless to say, it's a fitting soundtrack for this journal and, yes, we love it.
