14 September 2023 - 0 Comments

Old World is the long-anticipated debut album from Fortress Europe. Combining avant-garde rock sensibilities with Balkan music traditions, Old World is an album densely packed with intriguing and baffling musical monoliths, each one a genre-defying slab of sound orbiting outside of time, blissfully ignorant of prevailing musical trends.

Jagged guitars, haunted retro synths, yearning violin, squalling sax, Balkan and Middle Eastern folk instruments and apocalyptic bass and drums all collide in an evocative musical odyssey, where sinuous melodies give way to maelstroms of violent atonality, which themselves suddenly dissipate into moments of aching instrumental lyricism.

The brainchild of award-winning Auckland multi-instrumentalist and composer Leon Radojkovic, Fortress Europe features members of acts as varied as Demons of Noon, Tami Neilson, The Black Quartet and Luger Boa. The mastermind behind the now defunct Dr Colossus, which no less than national treasure Neil Finn called “madly inventive, nutty and exciting”, Leon has spent over a decade as a composer and musical director for stage and screen. Currently a Silo Artistic Associate, his credits include Live Live Cinema and its three hugely successful international touring productions, as well as the upcoming Night of The Living Dead premiering this November, along with Brel, Peter and The Wolf, Mr Burns, Amadeus, My Heart Goes Thaddak Thaddak, and Piki Productions' feature Baby Done.

Old World then, is an ecstatic return to pure music in and for itself. Composed in Auckland, Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia, recorded and mixed over a number of years in various exotic Auckland locales, and Mastered by Scott Hull in *America*, Old World is the culmination of years of musical exploration and rumination.

The loping first single 1946 is the closest thing you'll find to a normal tune.

Old World will be available on vinyl at Flying Out and Real Groovy, and for digital download and on vinyl at Bandcamp, plus all the usual streaming bloodsuckers from September 30.

There is also an album release show planned for The Wine Cellar on September 30 with special guests, and support from Oksun Ox.

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