"...[Black Sea Hotel's] anguished harmonic friction between the drone and the melody has a stronger erotic charge than punk rock."
- Heidi Waleson,The Wall Street Journal
“[Black Sea Hotel’s] painstakingly researched and innovative arrangements of traditional Balkan folks songs are performed with a refined emotion that hits with the magnetic pull of rock-bound sirens. Just tie me to the mast now…”
- Paul Schomer, Producer, National Public Radio
“…Black Sea Hotel takes some of the most compelling elements of Balkan folk music and strips them down to their barest form.
The vocal trio executes the kind of close, difficult harmonies that inspired Kate Bush to collaborate with Trio Bulgarka… The Brooklynites celebrate their fondness for Balkan song with precision." - The Washington Post
“[These ladies] are exceptional musicians and magnificent singers. Listening to them singing Bulgarian folk songs brings me back to my childhood… Their performance is just fascinating.” - Kremena Stancheva (Soloist, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares)
“Beautiful.” - David Byrne
"Black Sea Hotel's music is ethereal, and oftentimes, dissonant, creating a swirling sonic palette that skips around nimbly. It's a sound that expertly plays with melody and harmony, fashioning a musical world equally familiar and fantastical."
- John Schaefer (Host, Souncheck, WNYC)
“…purveyors of eerie Balkan harmonies.” - The New York Times
“Black Sea Hotel captures an other-worldly sonic experience, wonderfully concordant and discordant (to my post-punk ear), a totally unique sound on this planet.” - Martin Bisi (Engineer / Producer - The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Swans, Herbie Hancock,
Dresden Dolls)
"One of 2014's most spellbinding shows… The three women held the crowd rapt with their original arrangements of both obscure and iconic themes, with intricate, intoxicating counterpoint, tightly dancing tempos, unexpected stops and starts and split-second choreography. There’s some irony in the fact that Black Sea Hotel’s often centuries-old repertoire is built on harmony as sophisticated and avant garde as anything being played or sung today."
- Delarue, New York Music Daily (Concert Review - 2014)
“The three women swoop and dive from stratospheric highs to resonant lows, with eerie close harmonies, ornamented trills, the occasional whoop of delight or dread suddenly cut off cold... The group’s favorite harmony is A/B-flat/B – can anything possibly be any cooler than that?” - Delarue, New York Music Daily (Album Review - 2013)
"(Black Sea Hotel is) so inspiring and wondrous that I felt the earth veritably turning... I was truly transported."
- Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group)
“When their voices combine, these incredible women create a miraculous and transportive alchemy that, for me, transcends the very physicality of music itself.” - Bill Kates (Personality / Producer, Sirius XM Radio)
“Black Sea Hotel brings forth an album with exciting arrangements that preserves and honors the strength of Balkan folk traditions while bringing fresh and vibrant interpretations to these haunting songs. The blend of these stunning voices makes my spine tingle!” - Shara Worden (Singer / Composer - My Brightest Diamond, The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens)
"Black Sea Hotel creates an ethereal blend of tight, sublime women's harmonies in the ancient Eastern-European tradition. They are wonderful singers, who are equally at home on club stages as they are in large concert halls worldwide."
- Irene Trudell, (Host, WFMU)
"Black Sea Hotel are The Ramones of Balkan a cappella song. They infuse this already-wild traditional music with their own gutsy sound that is, by turns, dissonant and driving, lyrical and ethereal.” - Dan Bodah (Host, WFMU)
“Black Sea Hotel know what they're doing...Watching the women of Black Sea Hotel sing around the kitchen table, you realize just how physically intense it is to perform this music.” - Alex Gallafent (Producer, Public Radio International:
Global Hit Segment)
"Awesome." - Chris Bopst (Founding Member, GWAR)
“This 4-piece Bulgarian women’s choir from Brooklyn has not let geography or distance separate them from the heart of Balkan folk music. Their original a cappella arrangements of traditional melodies breathe new life into age-old tunes. The stark vocal blend is emotionally raw... the overall aesthetic intuitively focused… captivating and raucous.”
- CD Baby, Editor's Pick (Album Review - 2009)
“Brooklyn-based Balkan a cappella quartet Black Sea Hotel hits some really stirring moments with its bare, careful arrangements..."
- Time Out NY
“… Hypnotic, utterly chilling, or both…” - Delarue, New York Music Daily (Concert Review - 2012)
“… [Black Sea Hotel has] four of the most amazing voices of any New York group, in any style… The group has a reputation for being a sort of punk rock version of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares - they’ll sing anywhere – but where they really ought to be is at
Carnegie Hall.” - Lucid Culture (Concert Review - 2009)
"The most haunting and beautiful CD of the year… gorgeous and strikingly innovative."
- Lucid Culture (Album Review - 2013)
“[From] chilling or hypnotic to downright psychedelic, gorgeous washes of sound panning across the spectrum, moving in and out of the mix, from one harmony to another…” - Lucid Culture (Album Review - 2009)
“A showcase for leaping pyrotechnics and strange guttural trills… as intense as it is hypnotic. Black Sea Hotel [has] an extraordinarily high ceiling.” - Lucid Culture (Concert Review - 2008)
"That was dope!"
- Jessica Jones (Cashier, Enterprise Car Rentals)