"And if Madagascar recalls anything, it's the furrowed-brow, convivial music that burns through the movies of Emir Kusturica, that gypsy-meets-jazzy-meets-funeral-meets-carousel blurt that surges through his movies like blood. Madagascar splashes through similar puddles of emotions and feelings. They're simultaneously the scariest band at the laughing festival, or the ecstatic gypsy troupe playing Nino Rota's wake."

"So take it for granted that Madagascar sound like street music from a mythical, lugubrious Eastern European city stranded somewhere between the time of the Magyars and the time of the Soviet Union and dig a little deeper. As you slowly get acquainted with this music and its careful rhythms, its focus on repetition of phrases as a means to beauty, its sometimes aridly intellectual (as opposed to visceral) bent, you may notice that this is post rock as pre-rock, that if you took these songs and performed them on more conventional instruments you'd have something not miles away from Tortoise or a vocal-less, gentler Spiderland."