Matinee Orchestra is the solo project of sound artist
Andrew Hodson. A former member of Jumbo, with whom he
released a couple of albums, Hodson has spent the last
few years focussing on his project by working on a series
of art projects. The debut album from Andrew Hodson,
Matinee Orchestra, released on Isan’s
Robin Saville’s Arable Records imprint, is something
of a magic box; looking rather insignificant from the
outside, it appears incredibly vast, intricate, colourful
and enchanting on the inside.
Recorded between Spain, Taiwan, Scotland and England,
and featuring a string of collaborations, including
Peter and David Brewis of luminous indie pop outfit
Field Music, vocalist Caroline Thorp, various members
of the Kathryn Williams band and Maximo Park’s
Paul Smith, here shedding his art-pop skin in favour
of a more experimental touch, this album brings together
innocent pop and perverse avant-garde under a cloud
of acoustic instrumentation and electronic fiddlings
that reminds in part of the challenging approach of
Asa-Chang &
Junray or the poetic wanderings of Múm.
Wonderfully exotic and delicate, Hodson’s music
is truly evocative and comes alive through ingenious
harmonic structures and naïve melodies. Although
the laptop is Hodson’s tool of predilection, Matinee
Orchestra sounds incredibly acoustic and organic.
All the way through, chimes, strings and brass sections
and various found sounds find their way to the heart
of deceptively simple melodies to create an Eden-like
sonic garden.
Kicking off with what sounds like a perfect conclusion,
Thank You For Listening gently sets the tone
by progressively introducing a variety of sounds and
instruments. This collage may at first appears disparate,
but things take more consistency as the track progresses
and the melody is applied more clearly. Hide &
Seek and The Matinee March continue very
much on the same wavelength. Caught up in whirlwinds
of acoustic and electric guitars, brass sections, vocal
elements and field recordings, Hodson and co assemble
complex and highly sophisticated psychedelic little
vignettes which, once collated together, created a rather
intriguing soundtrack which high evocative power.
This apparently anarchic orchestra happily proceed through
folk (Run For Cover), lullaby pop songs (Pray,
Rock, Stone, Paper, Scissors), epic cinematic constructions
(It’s A Fantasy / Everyone Has The Right To
Protest…) and sweeping pastoral moments (Imagination
Of A Watermelon) to reveal a truly inspired and
somewhat unique atmospheric nature. Nothing here is
totally original as such, but the way the various elements
are combined to create a phantasmagoric collection is
totally unique and denote a great musical maturity and
an incredibly playful mind.
4.7/5 |
