The Dolomites Release 'The Japan Years' Today

Hear the monsters emerging from the depths of the underworlds? They're splitting the ground with archaic rhythms, splashing across seas with new sounds.

The Dolomites' full-blown turbulence hits on The Japan Years, Volumes I-III with accordions for teeth, tubas and balkan beats for backbones, gravely cuts and lyrical quirks. The EP trilogy captures the best of the band's driving force, Stevhen Koji Baianu, whose family roots extends from Japan to Romania.

On Friday, October 9, The Dolomites took the stage in Portland, OR at the Atlantis Lounge at Mississippi Pizza Pub in celebration of this new release.

The Dolomites' music has the same wide embrace, drawing on everything from old-school Japanese mafia enka to Tzigani (Romani) melodies, Indonesian gamelan and space cumbia to otherworldly odds and ends. Bittersweet Balkan ballads alternate with tuba-powered drum and bass, aggressive and eloquent accordion, tribal scatting and an array of theremin, gongs, violin, Latin and Japanese percussion, to tease and soothe the little beasties in all of us.

"The monsters in some of the songs are there for a reason. Some Japanese legends say that folkloric monsters tend to rise in the form of natural disasters when humans over extend their boundaries with the destruction of the planet and environment," muses Stevhen. "All of us have a monster within us. Both good and bad monsters."

The Japan Years Trilogy takes you on a mashed up transnational journey through several music styles. The songs flip flop between Japanese & English vocals, as well as dabs of Tribal scatting to make for this eclectic global mutation, which may seem like an ethnomusicology voyage of shipwrecked multi-cultural tales.