Listening to the sound of los hermanos patchekos, the first question coming to your mind might be: what the hell are they doing there? The music of this eleven-piece-orchestra is rattling and rumbling, sometime it's dragging along, sometimes it races ahead frantically, always defying your expectation of what might be ahead. You will hear mediterranean melodies, carribean sounds, gstanzls from lower bavaria (home to both hornists, who are also part of a very traditional Bavarian Humpah-outfit called 'Eichberg Musi'), desert pop, minimal music played by far too many instruments, country, swing, tango, and then welcome to the jungle, baby. To name but a few stations on this musical voyage.

You're not entirely wrong if you call it ethnic-, world- or folk-music, but they just won't stick to one kind. Others might think that the label punk had to be in their somewhere. Some hermanos would heartily agree, others would call you a fool, no matter what label you put on them. And then they'd probably put a drink in your hand. They just pick up the good pieces wherever they find them, forming a sort of globalistic-trash-folk-extravaganza in the process.

But what's so terribly exciting about a band playing tango in 2003, you might ask. Nothing much, except the fact that you probably have never heard anyone do it the way they do it. While Senor G.Rag, the bandleader, is picking a precious vintage jazzguitar, Mr. Zelig, the drummer, is banging away on a pile of assorted trash, buckets, ashtrays and the like, thus producing rhythmic patterns any breakbeat programmer would be jealous of. Los hermanos believe that musical instruments, just like musical ideas, can be found anywhere: junkyards, toystores, music-houses, too, of corse. Musique concréte, if you will, in itself another piece of lost-and-found.
To get to the point: A very strange band is practicing musical originality with a rarely seen matter-of-factness. G.Rag y los Hermanos Patchekos is not about musical perfection or brilliant musicianship, although they know pretty well what they are doing - at least most of the time. Hornist Alois Schmelz would deserve to be called 'The Bavarian Miles Davies', that's how brilliant he is. Instead his fellow musicians call him 'Die Sau' (The Pig) because the beauty of his play can make you cry. They know their blues, certainly. But a lot more often los hermanos will make you laugh. And that's what it's really all about (besides proving that you can sing in a foreign language even if you can't speak it). Their prime directive is a very old and simple one: to let their audience feel alive and have a good time.

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