live
A week long rehearsal session in the village of Bukovac, near Novi Sad, (Vojvodina, Serbia,) marked the beginning of the collaboration between the Rundek Cargo Trio and the Boris Kovac & La Campanella. In the excellent accoustics of Boris's studio in the old village house with its leafy courtyard, two bands and two authors met to explore their points of common resonance. The set which they put together was supposed to form the third part of their joint concert to be presented in Russia, Croatia and Italy last summer. But Destiny had other plans, Boris and the band had a car-accident which blocked them for several months. Cargo played Russian and Croatian concerts alone and gigs in Italy where moved to Jully 2010.
Concert in l'Ermitage - Paris is moved from 26th of March to 22nd of April to mach with French release of LIVE in Youth Club - Belgrade. Sory for eventual confusion!
The new album is being prepared.
Stay tuned.
| Thu 19 Aug 10 | RUNDEK CARGO TRIO |
island Brac/Croatia |
Milna | 21h |
concert |
| Sat 21 Aug 10 | RUNDEK CARGO TRIO |
island Lastovo/Croatia |
Lastovo | 21h |
concert |
| Fri 27 Aug 10 | RUNDEK CARGO ORKESTAR |
Cerklje/Slovenia |
Panonika harmonika | 21h |
concert |
| Sat 28 Aug 10 | RUNDEK CARGO TRIO |
Rijeka/Croatia |
Gradina | 21h |
concert |
| Tue 31 Aug 10 | Darko Rundek&Isabel |
Zagreb/Croatia |
SCENA AMADEO | 21h |
poetry and improvisation |
| Sun 12 Sep 10 | RUNDEK CARGO ORKESTAR |
Vranjina/Montenegro |
Festival Vranjina | 21h |
concert |
reviews
John L. Walters/GUARDIAN
Live review: World Music / Rock
Darko Rundek & Cargo Orkestar
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London
Friday 12 May 2006
'I will move to Cuba,' croons Darko Rundek over a gentle Latin rhythm, with pizzicato violin and acoustic guitar. 'There are no big billboards all around, no-one is starving and there is no democracy.' Rundek is a craggy Croatian troubadour, now based in Paris. His band, the seven-piece Cargo Orkestar, can play anything from fractured funk to white reggae; from Balkan bluster to ambiguous ballads. The sound is spiced by Isabel’s soaring, proggy violin and fine brass. Drummer Dani Pervan is particularly good, holding a very disparate set of rhythmic approaches together with superb musicianship.
Rundek declaims songs, in Croatian and English, that can be emotional, detached or both. While he sings, images appear on the screen behind: magazine cuttings, war-torn former Yugoslavia, Communist holiday seaside resorts, 'found' snapshots and typewritten translations of Rundek’s lyrics (which is how I know what the song Kuba is about). The visuals are wrangled by film-maker Biljana Tuturov, whose 'trash' methods are light years from slick MTV trickery; she pans a lightweight camera across prepared sheaves of pictures and texts, producing a visual counterpoint that adds meaning without distraction, hinting at the poetry of Croatian-language songs such as Highlander, Ghosts and Mill Reggae: 'I like to face my bad days all by myself.'
The Cargo Orkestar’s sleazy, broken rhythms occasionally recall Rapture-era Blondie or Talking Heads. Wanadoo, his internet rant-chant, has the mad angularity of XTC and David Byrne. Rundek is a 1980s survivor himself, having led new wave band Haustor in old Yugoslavia, and many in the audience demand his old songs. Rundek’s subsequent work in the theatre, plus Parisian exile, have added depth and detail to the energy of his old modes, but he can still play the silver-haired, ravaged rock star, whipping off his shirt to reveal a skinny, pallid torso. He can sing, too, as slower numbers such as Senor reveal. The whole event is unpredictable, thought-provoking, highly musical, and a bit mad, just the thing to provoke a new Cargo cult.