“It is undoubtedly one of the mysteries of the music world, why an ensemble like Orkestar Kriminal is not literally world famous. – RootsTime “The mixture sounds rough and very contagious, but light and full of bittersweet melancholy.” – IN Magazin “A wild, roaring, gloomy-diabolical sound [… ] where the boundaries between yesterday and today blur seamlessly”. – Bongartz For a dozen years now, Orkestar Kriminal has created daring arrangements of old underworld ballads in 12 different languages, telling the tales of impoverished peoples the world over, driven to a life of crime. With their unique instrumentation and a refreshing gender-mashup in their musicianship, Orkestar Kriminal has arranged some of the world’s long-forgotten criminal ballads with all the fervour and gusto that they could muster. After continuous touring and a multitude of festival performances, the biggest criminal punks in world music released their first ever all-originals album “Originali in April, 2024 on the German label CPL-Music, with Grammy award-winning Producer-Engineer: Mark Lawson, hitting the #1 spot on the Earshot “National International” charts. Drenched in expression, celebrated and improvised, this is “cabaret noir” at its finest!
