Imagine a flight on the route New York – Scandinavia – The Balkans – Middle East – China – India – Japan. Now imagine the following possibility: during this flight you can constantly listen to music from the region over which you are flying at the moment. Also, for the sake of this hypothesis, let’s say that the airline on this exclusive flight has hired a versatile musician whose job is to interpret and integrate all those different musical forms into one coherent musical expression.

If the job of this imaginary musician is to recontextualize the musical ingredients that are available to him in completely new musical constellations, then Yordan Kostov is the first name that comes to mind. He is the most restless Macedonian musical vagabond, always capable to sonically interpenetrate different musical forms that only seem incompatible. John Zorn and his postmodern approach to integrating diverse musics (anything goes) comes to mind if we want to point to a counterpart to Kostov in the contemporary jazz scene. With over 40 albums behind him and countless trips around the world (especially the Far East), Yordan Kostov has that rare musical sense to make the Macedonian bagpipe sound like a Japanese folk instrument, to process the oriental instruments through the sound of the New York downtown avant-garde, to push the guitars to migrate through jazz, ambient and folk idioms. Weaving through and above all this is his accordion, the magical amalgam or “glue” with the power to unite all these “purposefully broken” instruments into a unique whole. Oriental-Balkan jazz fusion, with a healthy dose of psychedelia, is the hybrid genre that perhaps most accurately defines this music. Kostov freely fuses the musical heritage of the black jazz tradition, the Balkan cultural “mish-mash” and the endless auditory treasure of the Far East. The end result often betrays our expectations of what an accordion “should” sound like. But this, of course, is not a bad thing. Kostov has found a way for his accordion to sound like a cultural appropriator, a universal translator and a magical integrative factor in a unique musical dialogue, whose further possible incarnations are potentially infinite. He himself most accurately describes his music when he says that it was conceptualized during his numerous travels on trains, buses, motorcycles, etc. – A psychedelic journey through the innumerable meridians of the world’s musical subconscious.

On this album Yordan Kostov plays in a Macedonian septet formation: all proven and relatively young musicians from the Macedonian free improv jazz scene. Among them, Filip Bukršliev and Dragan Teodosiev are certainly the most established. They received the “Best Young Jazz Musician” award from the world-renowned Skopje Jazz Festival, for 2021 and 2023 respectively. Both of them are members (in addition to their other numerous bands) of the noir-jazz quartet Taxi Consilium, whose debut album (Essential Sunday Gloom) was chosen among the best jazz albums for the month of May 2021, by Bandcamp. Damjan Grujo is a regular drummer or percussionist on Kostov’s albums and concerts, and Stefan Karastojanov, in addition to being the bassist on some of his albums and concerts, also performs with the Serbian bands 4S Class and Sun Strings Band, with the Italian Sinergy Band, with Miss Machiko’s Jazz Ensemble, Therma Quartet, Classical Meets Jazz and others.

Essential listening:
Yordan Kostov (2023) Maglota: awkwardgeisha.bandcamp.com/album/maglota
Yordan Kostov Ensemble (2021) Intertwining a Fugue: sjfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/intertwining-a-fugue
Yordan Kostov Quintet (2021) Come Back: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/come-back
Yordan Kostov Quintet (2020) Plush Pig: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/plush-pig
Avadarxi Quartet (2020) (Waiting at the) Turnstiles: kinggong.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-at-the-turnstiles
Taxi Consilium (2022) Spiritual Car Wash: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/spiritual-car-wash
Cobalt Code Unit (2022) Soilwork: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/soilwork
Filip Bukrshliev Trio (2023) All the Sad Words in the Beggar’s Dictionary: sjfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/all-the-sad-words-in-the-beggar-s-dictionary