Thursday, February 8, 2018

Orquesta del Tiempo Perdido - Stille (SHHPUMA RECORDS 2018)



The name of this project references Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”, but that doesn’t prepare us for the music played on “Stille”. Orquesta del Tiempo Perdido is a wildly eclectic, ‘post- everything’ explosion, taking on aspects of contemporary classical music, jazz, experimental electro- acoustic, math-rock, pop, non-Western folklore, exotica and vaudeville. The points of reference are deftly approached on their own terms, and recontextualised in impossible composites. 

The album was conceived in the unquiet mind of the idiosyncratic Dutch musician and composer Jeroen Kimman, for whom this represents a first release as producer and engineer. In addition to playing most of the instruments of the Orquesta (although it also features contributions by some of Amsterdam’s most creative musicians), Kimman has produced the sound world of the album in microscopic detail, taking the instruments further into deranged sonic territories. Despite the scope of the record, there is a unity to the music that owes more to the film soundtracks of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, and the virtuosic experimentalism of early studio pioneers such as The Three Suns, Les Baxter and Martin Denny, than to other contemporary attempts at eclecticism. It comes out of Kimman’s genuine love of, for example, country and western or striptease bands, combined with his experiences writing for theatre, dance and animated cinema. The result may seem bizarre but it’s a work of genius.

1. scenario
2. blue train
3. strol
4. shawty
5. zen in tummy
6. cross
7. hillyrock II: fricchettone
8. jive mandolin
9. a merlefriend solid
10. poseidon
11. hills for seamus

TRISTAN RENFROW . drums on 1, 5 & 7, drum rolls on 4
LEO SVIRSKY . accordeon on 3 & 7
MICHAEL MOORE . clarinet on 1 & 4, alto sax on 11
ANNA VOOR DE WIND . clarinet on 10 & 11, bass clarinet on 10
KOEN KAPTIJN . trombone on 1 & 4
MARK MORSE . lapsteel guitar on 5 & 10, screw on 4
SEAMUS CATER . concertina & bass harmonica on 11
SJENG SCHUPP . double bass on 2 & 11
MICHIEL VAN DIJK . tenor sax and flute on 1
JEROEN KIMMAN . all other instruments


Orquesta del Tiempo Perdido - Strol from Jeroen Kimman on Vimeo.