Gulag Orkestar

Amazing album; perfectly suited for fresh coffee, lazy Sundays, and daydreams about the study abroad you took - or should’ve taken - to Central Europe

A couple songs pop out, they are influenced by neutral milk and it shows, but in a good way. Overall I've caught myself playing it on repeat, in the background.

Love the horn work on this album

If you've never bought any Beirut albums, you might like The Rip Tide better at first. For me this album is just as good but in a different way with a different feel. Great music. Great ethnic feel.

I don't understand what the mystique is about this CD. I've had it for quite a while and happened to give it a listen today and it is highly repetitive and uninspiring. People seem to have been completely taken in by what they deem to be an exotic sound and an inoffensive, Timothy Leary-like voice trilling variations of mostly unintelligible gibberish over and over again. Any decent klezmer band can give an equal, if not a superior, musical experience... the Arhoolie catalogue has several fine examples, for instance.If you happened to be walking through one of those extra-long hallways in the Paris metro as you transferred from one subway line to another and you encountered a live performance of this album you would probably enjoy it in passing, but you wouldn't think that turning it into a CD and having people slobber all over the thing like it was the second coming of Christ was likely to occur.I don't mean to be unkind -- Zach Condon was only 19 when this album was made -- but really, the ecstatic reviews that predominate here are completely unjustified. I'll be kicking myself several times today at the thought that I actually bought this CD, though I do admit to liking track 4 ("Postcards from Italy").

real instruments

Nice job but I can't say that it's one of the best from their albums although as a decent fun of them I have already bought it!

Love the album. The recording sounds bit thin.

I bought the CD after hearing the track 'Elephant Gun' on the radio - Lon Gisland is the CD it features on, and the whole thing is a delight. Gulag Orkestar is a more sustained exercise in worldbuilding by sound, and on the whole I prefer the earlier disk - but if you like quirky European art-music with vintage and retro styling, this artiste is definitely worth seeking out.

Prepare your ears for an oddity. From the 1st track this is a whirlwind trip around Eastern Europe via a slight distorting mirror. Then slowly but surely your heart starts to move and it is under your skin. Very little of the lyrics can be plainly discerned but the melody and emotion is so strong it doesn't matter. When you find some thing as different but so right as this it rekindles your whole reason for loving music. Get the credit card out now.

Beirut is essentially one man: Zach Condon, and this is Beirut's debut album. "Gulag Orkestar" draws a lot of inspiration from Balkan folk music and had a pleasingly homemade air about it. Hearing it almost takes you to a café looking onto a square in Sarajevo, slightly sozzled after a few too many Fernet Brancas, and perfectly happy about that.

From the cover picture which I love to the music which I can't describe.I saw them at Hyde Park with Arcade Fire & thought I really like this.I'd never even heard of them before but had to have their music.Went to the West End to find some but none of the music shops left had any of their albums so bought on-line at Amazon.

Great album, and very original with all the different instruments they use. The most interesting album I've come across for a while. Exuberant!