Seattle’s musical powerhouse Kultur Shock, renowned for their intoxicating fusion of Balkan music and punk metal, is poised to captivate their audience once again.

Founded by vocalist and trumpet player Gino Yevdjevich alongside a fervent ensemble of immigrant Balkan musicians in 1996, the band has steadfastly forged a unique space within the global music scene.

After a triumphant return to the post-pandemic touring circuit with a whirlwind festival and club tour in Europe in 2022, Kultur Shock has teamed up with Seattle's emergent label, Old Age Recording Co, their collaboration bearing fruit in the form of Kultur Shock Acoustic Live (Old Age Recording Co, Oct. 2), recorded live at Seattle's storied Town Hall on Feb 2, 2023.

This unique performance was an integral part of Town Hall's Global Rhythms series, meticulously curated by Seattle area ethnomusicologist/producer Jon Kertzer, and digs deep into the Sevdah Blues sounds of their roots.

Kultur Shock's influence spans a vast musical spectrum, merging experimental sounds with the fervor of punk rock. While their tunes carry echoes of renowned bands like Gogol Bordello, System of a Down, Dubioza Kolektiv, Goran Bregovic and Manu Chao, they retain a distinct and unmistakable signature sound, carving out their own niche in the music world.

Gino Yevdjevich left war-ravaged Sarajevo and settled in Seattle in the mid-90s, bringing his vocal and songwriting talent and his relentless ambition to create. Little did he know that after starting Kultur Shock in 1996, he would wind up being the de-facto grandfather of a movement that people casually refer to today as "gypsy punk."

"For years we were in no man's land, and perhaps deservably so because we are not your ancestors' ethnic Balkan folk band," says Gino. "We are also not your descendents' exclusively English-speaking Anglo-Saxon punk/metal band. We are ourselves. Always have been. On this record we did not just unplug our electric instruments and play acoustic guitars and drums with brushes, but rearranged our songs the way we believe these songs should be played acoustically. We did it the old-fashioned way, using ethnic instruments and playing our songs to the point of sometimes not even recognizing them. We had fun. We always do. That is what we do - have fun. We are doing this selfishly to make ourselves happy. That being said, we believe that art might be one of the rare, maybe the only activity of the human kind where selfishness is not just permitted but even preferred over trying to make others happy instead of yourself.

We followed ourselves into new adventures of acoustic sound and cannot wait to show to the world what we found out. This is an ongoing experiment such as our band. If we did care what the others think, we probably would have in the last 27 years played different kind of music altogether, something that the mainstream population can relate to. Instead we chose to follow our heart. We do what we want and play what we like, and we are so fortunate to have our people (we do not want to call audience or fans) that are with us every step of the way. A long time ago they gave us their love and we gave them everything we got. I'm so happy that we did this record live. That's who we are. We are not a punk/metal rock band amd we are not an ethnic/world music band. We just play music."

Guitarist and vocalist Val Kiossovski adds, "When we got the invitation from Town Hall to do a show that we have never done before, going unplugged or acoustic was a natural choice, considering we have some history in experimenting with such a format many years back on the road in Germany. I was proponent of unplugged, Gino wanted to go full acoustic, and eventually we decided to go in the uncharted category of the acoustic format. As we were rehearsing for it it became clear that we can’t just transfer arrangement as they were in our loud live set in the acoustic realm, but have to make all the necessary changes that make the songs breath, are as dynamically rich, and that the show culminates and resolves in the manner we are used to build it in our rock sets. That turned out to be quite a bit of work, mostly for our drummer and percussionist Chris [Stromquist], who had to translate the beats to a percussion set, and me, since the guitar/drum interaction is still the backbone of all that layers on top of it in our music, but the result was pretty amazing.

For me that’s not at all a departure from what we do, but a different angle of interpreting old songs, traditional numbers, and new material in a different soundscape. Luckily, the band is built of amazing players that totally got into the meat and bones of the music to re-conceptualize its core, rather then just dress it up in a different outfit, which the simple unplugged concept would have resulted in. I’m very happy to have been very wrong about the potential of the all acoustic performance and the musical value of the live record that resulted from it."