Balkan Beat Box: Shout It Out

Justin Jacobs on November 11, 2016

Tel Aviv’s Balkan Beat Box create party music that’s devilishly tough to pin down. Beginning with their self-titled 2005 debut, the band has stuffed slinky saxophone lines, propulsive Middle Eastern percussion, electronic pings and swirls, heavy thumping bass and the irreplaceably electric vocals of Tomer Yosef into a style that is unmistakably theirs. While 2012’s Give took on a slightly subdued tone, Shout It Out is Balkan Beat Box as wild as ever. Along with Yosef’s rhythmic chanting, it’s Ori Kaplan’s saxophone that determines which Balkan Beat Box songs truly connect (his sandpapery sax was sampled on Jason Derulo’s massive 2013 hit “Talk Dirty”), and the horn is all over Shout It Out. First single “I Trusted U” is intensely catchy but restrained. The song’s got handclaps and a lumbering drumbeat—by no means a flop—but it’s when the band goes fast and furious that they take off. “Kum Kum” features Israeli vocal trio A-WA singing in Arabic and trading lightning-fast lines with Yosef, setting the song to boil. On “Chin Chin” and “I’ll Watch Myself” the band fold hip-hop into the mix of fluttering sax and crunchy percussion. Shout It Out is spicy and exotic—but even a radio-pop audience could get behind it. And hopefully they will.

Artist: Balkan Beat Box
Album: Shout It Out
Label: Digital Monkey Inc.