Red Sonja

Three years on from their second album, Boukane, Lolomis have intensified their ongoing splicing process with a third collection, this time with Romane Claudel-Ferragui singing in Finnish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Georgian and Ladino. Rarely is a group’s folkloric feeling so hardcore, but Lolomis are equally concentrated on their envelopment in electronic techniques, blending these contrasting surroundings in a staggeringly natural manner. In this fusion, no compromises are made with either the acoustic or the electronic. Lolomis create their own universe of bass-booming, street-romping dynamism, as at home at an afternoon village wedding as in a dank after-midnightclub (remember them?). Could their genre be termed Balkan darkwave? Exuberance meets morbidity via mood, texture and tempo changes, with the capering flutes of Stelios Lazarou and the silverfish harp of Élodie Messmer being the dominant acoustic instruments.

There’s a heavy exchange of processed acoustics and electronic self-samplings, smudging the differences, although it’s only of passing interest how these unified constructions might be picked apart. It’s preferable to marvel at the imagination of these sound sculptures, which excel in both the headspace and the dance floor. Could John Carpenter and Emir Kusturica please collaborate, so that Red Sonja could be their soundtrack?