By the time Balkan Beat Box wrapped up their touring rounds for their 2016 album Shout It Out in 2018 Tomer Yosef, Ori Kaplan, and Tamir Muskat, were still in regular contact with one another, sharing new music and beats they wanted to explore. Recording in the Tze’elim kibbutz in southern Israel where Yosef has resided for six years, the trio completed their new album, Wild Wonder, between 2021 and the fall of 2023 but held off releasing it following the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7.

“It's a beautiful, quiet community,” says Kaplan of the kibbutz where they recorded, approximately 12 miles east of Gaza, and within close proximity to the Nova Music Festival. The band’s publicity photos for Wild Wonder were also shot at Nova Fields.

Sleeping and working out of the studio, the trio pieced together Wild Wonder, a diaspora of uncharted, sonic territories, a calm before the storm. “It was really calm when we were working on the album,” says Kaplan. “We had time for pondering. There was a spaciousness, and we were patient with the songs.”

The album is also a convergence of sounds BBB hasn’t touched before. In between albums, Kaplan was revisiting jazz greats Charles Mingus and Sun Ra, while Muskat dove back into piano and gospel as a producer. Kaplan also released a new “cinematic-jazz” album, Dose A Nova with his early ‘00s, pre-BBB band Shotnez, and worked with Muskat on their project, Digital Monx.

Back in the pre-BBB days, (we’re talking about the late nineties, really), Tamir had a recording studio in Manhattan that proved to be a social and creative hub for a number of like minded artists with an aesthetic bent to blend punk, hip hop and dancehall with traditional Balkan and Mediterranean timbres. There, he recorded upwards of 100 bands, including Gogol Bordello and Firewater, the latter of which he was a member. In fact, Kaplan, who was playing with Gogol Bordello at the time, met Tamir on Firewater’s tour bus. Circa 2003, the duo would conjure the bones of Balkan Beat Box, releasing their first self-titled album in 2005, but the following year, BBB became a trio with the addition of Yosef, who was already a noted Tel Aviv vocalist and frontman, and followed up with Nu Med, released in 2007 to global acclaim. The album track, “Hermetico” would find a spike a few years later in 2013 with Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty,” having sampled Kaplan’s growling saxophone lick from the song.

Blue Eyed Black Boy (2010) and Give (2012) followed, ushering in a surge of new fans and more accolades from the press, Spin Magazine calling the album, inspired by the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, "a global peace-keeping mission you can dance to." In 2016, Balkan Beat Box, now relocated back to Tel Aviv, released Shout It Out on the Digital Monkey label.

The new album expands on BBB’s 20-year alchemy since forming in NYC, and the wonderment of life, and living. “Why is it a wonder to be alive, to be living,” says Kaplan of the album title. “It is a wonder that we are alive and exist—quite a wild wonder. We have been listening to different music, and hitting each other up all the time,” says Kaplan.

“I feel like there's a lot of soul,” adds Kaplan of Wild Wonder and the “Mingus-style horns” on the opening hip-hop march of “Fictional” and feeling lucky to be alive. Playing up a wall that’s ascending and thickening, Kaplan likens “Fictional” to Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 song “King Kunta” with the tone moving up and building in intensity.

“Things don't have to have a clear structure in many of the songs, which I love,” says Kaplan. “It has this modern jazz suite kind of vibe and things we haven't touched before.”

Cascading around positivity and friction, Wild Wonder is a manifesto of real life, from the jazzed-up utopia of “Wild Like a River,” and the eye-opening reality check of “Break the Law”: I woke up and it was all over … All I got is this life to live. “Things aren't as they seem,” says Kaplan of the latter track. “Things you're told aren't necessarily what they are, so you shouldn't believe it. The whole era of what is the truth and who's above the law, who’s the criminal. What is the law? It’s a song of our times.”

Concrete over trees / Man-made expertise / Get in line / Claim your fees / Make sure you are pleased, sings Yosef on the steady beating “Every One of Us is God,” BBB’s appeal for the environment. “It’s a conscientious song and the concept that we are all one,” shares Kaplan. “As a society, we have no chance if we don’t respect ourselves, and respect the environment.”

“Avalanche” delivers more Bossa Nova vibes, while “Same 4 Me 2” features a feminine touch with vocals by keyboardist Yael Salinger and more meditations of Too much to explain / I’m trying to pick inside my brain, of what’s real and what’s not on “X Marks the Spot,” a favorite of Kaplan’s.

“I love the contrast between the dreamy, angelic flutes,” says Kaplan of the song. “There's so much questioning in the lyrics—‘Gotta get rid of my habits / Got to feel something new.’ It's so true for so many things. I was amazed how, with a simple few words, Tomer was able to channel an evolution of us—mental, spiritual, philosophical. It has this tinge of mindfulness. We all have bad habits, trying to sort them out, distance ourselves from it and see it and look at it and be able to articulate it, verbalize it. That’s the first step.”

On the melodic “No Rush” Kaplan’s then 12-year-old daughter Sophia can be heard singing no rush, it’s alright / One step at a time … we’re getting there before the more anthemic “Long Time Coming,” a song Kaplan says came out of the uncertainty of the pandemic.

“A Long Time Coming” was kind of a song we came back from Covid, and did our first show, and it was a single. We expected the album to be ready one year later, and a series of events made us postpone, and then it was supposed to come to a couple of days after October 7 and was delayed again.”

The soulful dripping horn-filled “Step It Up” leads into the penultimate drum and piano tinkered instrumental cooldown of “On the Moon,” a track Kaplan compares to Anderson .Paak, Mac Miller, and a “Kendrick [Lamar] vibe” with brushes of Latin, soul, and jazz. “It’s a big spectrum,” says Kaplan. “So often we work on something so much, that we just can’t listen to it anymore, but we can still listen to this album.”

Closing on the synthesized “Carry On” and I don't know myself, but I am, the last line Kaplan says encapsulates much of the album. “It’s wisdom, accumulated,” he says. “It's also a farewell song, a goodbye, a separation. Farewell. Carry on. Keep going, or you might be on your own.”

Written by Yosef, Wild Wonder is lyrically a more “personal” and “mature” album for Balkan Beat Box, says Kaplan. “Tomer writes most of the lyrics,” he adds. “He feels the vibe of all of us. We kind of grew up together. We have a bit of an osmosis connection. We might be taking in places left or right, but he channels our mood—his mood. It’s amazing that three people can be connected for so many years.”

Finding peace in new beats and stories, Wild Wonder is Balkan Beat Box’s most meditative and contemplative album. “The intimacy of the lyrics are looking inward, self-observing, just understanding of the human psyche and issues that we deal with rather than the slogans, war, and Balkan things that we had before,” shares Kaplan. “It’s time to make peace with ourselves, and that’s where you invite good things to come to you."

In constant contact, Kaplan, Muskat, Yosef are continuously exchanging ideas. “We’re exposed to so many things and want to try them out,” says Kaplan. “When we get together, there’s a wealth of material. We always write. We always do something creative, alone or within different constellations, in different bands or projects, so we have a lot of gasoline when we meet.”

Nearly 20 years since their eponymous debut, the trio are far from done exploring together. “If you are inspired, and you stay curious, that’s the secret,” reveals Kaplan. "We’re still curious and young at heart.”