Messed!Up
Leader and singer Eugene Hütz’s taste in music was spun out of black market tapes of the Birthday Party and Einstürzende Neubauten in his native Ukraine. After being evacuated to western Ukraine in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster, Hütz became enamored of the mystical, outsider qualities of Romani music. Living as a refugee in Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Italy before moving to the United States in 1993, he experienced life as an outsider himself. After arriving in New York, he teamed up with guitarist Vlad Solofar and squeezebox player Sasha Kazatchkoff. American Eliot Fergusen added a strong rock sound on the drums, and the band was also augmented by Sergey Ryabtsev on fiddle, a former theater director from Moscow whose past experience would prove helpful in the future in crafting Gogol Bordello’s bizarre stage shows (like the one that tells the story of superpowered immigrant Ukrainian vampires).
The group’s early gigs involved playing straight Romani music at Russian weddings, but their music soon evolved into the hyper-kinetic explosions that earned them a solid following among New York’s downtown hipsters. The band issued a single in 1999 entitled “When the Trickster Comes A-Pokin'”, quickly followed by their debut full-length, Voi-La Intruder, which was produced by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds drummer Jim Sclavunos. Solofar and Kazatchkoff were replaced by accordionist Yuri Lemeshev, who hails from the Russian island of Sakhalin, and two Israelis, guitarist Oren Kaplan and saxophonist Ori Kaplan, who, despite their similar names, aren’t related. Hütz helped bolster the band’s popularity by becoming somewhat of a celebrity in the downtown scene, in part fueled by his Thursday night DJ gigs at Bulgarian club/restaurant/bar Mehanata, where he played Ukrainian, Gypsy, rai, and flamenco music for a crowd of artists, models, Ukrainians, Russians, Gypsies, and Bulgarians with tendencies toward exuberant dancing and smashing plates.
In the spring of 2002, Gogol Bordello embarked on a European tour and performed as part of the Whitney Biennial, bringing their music to a whole new audience. Voi-La Intruder came out around that same time, followed that fall by another album, Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony. The East Infection EP came out in March 2005 before Gogol Bordello made their Side One Dummy debut that August with the aptly titled Gypsy Punks. By this point, though, the band’s cast no longer included Ori Kaplan; it did boast bassist Rea Mochiach and dancers/percussionists Pam Racine and Elizabeth Sun. Aside from leading the band, Hütz also lent his hand to acting when he was cast as Alex in 2005’s Everything Is Illuminated (based on the critically acclaimed book) after Gogol Bordello attracted the attention of the film’s producer.
The bandmembers soon got to work on their next album, however, switching to bass player Tommy Gobena and utilizing the talents of producer Victor Van Vugt to help them craft their fourth full-length, Super Taranta! Wildly praised by critics, who pasted the album all over their year-end lists, Super Taranta! (as well as the band’s increasingly physical live shows) made them indie rock heroes. Live from Axis Mundi was released in 2009, followed by the group’s Rick Rubin-produced fifth studio offering, Trans-Continental Hustle, for Sony in 2010. Gogol Bordello signed with Dave Matthews’ ATO in 2012, and issued Pura Vida Conspiracy, their debut offering for the label, a year later. In 2017, they returned with their seventh album, Seekers and Finders, on Cooking Vinyl. It was advanced by the pre-release single “Saboteur Blues,” featuring a guest appearance from Regina Spektor.
Following three U.S. tours and dozens of gigs in New York and Philadelphia, the band took a breather and ultimately sat out the pandemic. They returned to playing live in 2021 with new drummer Korey Kingston and Gill Alexandre on bass. They enlisted New York underground icon Walter Schreifels as producer and cut 13 raging punk-driven tracks released as Solidaritine. They released the set in September 2022, expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian people, after Russia invaded their country that year.
The band toured the record internationally for over a year before taking a short break. In 2025, they re-entered the studio with producers Schreifels and Nick Launay. In September, they issued the title track single “We Mean It Man” on their Casa Gogol label, and followed with the pre-release tracks “Hater Liquidator” and “Ignition” in December and January 2026, respectively. And today, just before Valentine’s Day, they self-release the 12-song full-length We Mean It, Man!.
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Gogol Bordello pages
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Gogol Bordello: We Mean It, Man!
