Underbelly – Dragoman (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

The more the ear of the modern music fan is bombarded with this idea that slick, style over substance pop and stadium, Mondeo driving dad rock are the only options, that it is a choice between Adele and Foo Fighters, the more I find myself retreating into obscure musical backwaters. It is in these places that you find strange musical hybrids, sonorous, haunting sounds; ethereal, dream state music and intangible tunes casting retrospective glances to other long forgotten heroes of the underworld. It is here that you find the music of the one who goes under the name of Dragoman.

His is not a mission of bold statements or modern marketing ploy, but one more interested in taking gossamer thin musical textures and weaving them into wonderfully opaque songs and setting them free on the night breeze to see where it will carry them. And when he does look to make more driven music it is by gathering a whole host of sounds garnered from a possessed musical instrument museum or a child’s forgotten toy box. But for the most part it is a realm of hushed tones and twilight musical landscapes, of the rediscovery of a long lost European blues and of music built from pure emotion.

To every three parts of music there is one part madness, if not more. It is the lunacy of Tom Waits blended with the dark majesty of Leonard Cohen and it is sublime.