Babylon Circus

"A Bricolage Of Beats” might be a suitable sub-title for Dances of Resistance. Ten-piece French band Babylon Circus manage to create an aural three-ringed circus with this release. Genre-bending, often mid-song, comes natural for these chaps, as they turn music into spectacle on track after track of high-octane heavy gypsy punk ska jazz reggae. The aptly titled "Musical Terrorism Act” is a case in point. Or take "Circus,” for instance, which for 43 seconds switches between aggressive cabaret-prog ska and amps-off, Charles Mingus-style horn experiments. Babylon Circus have been criticised for an inability to develop their musical ideas but I think that largely misses the point. These guys don’t suffer from ADD, they’d rather plug as much passion, sound, colour and rhythm into one album as possible, and with Dances of Resistance, they more than succeed. With kindred spirits such as Gogol Bordello, Manu Chao and Mike Patton, Babylon Circus should not be measured by any music industry norm. Their genre is "enigma.”