Matt Young - Rhodes, piano,
electronics, melodica, accordion
Grant Wheeler - Turntables, electronics, keyboards,
piano
Jacob Cohen - Electric and acoustic bass,
guitar
Eric Heveron Smith - Trombone
Mike Birnbaum - Drums, percussion, electronics
John Phillips Sandy - Tenor sax, flute
John Waters - Trumpet, flugelhorn
Jesse Derosa - Flugelhorn
Andrew Cohen - Tuba
Whit Noble - Clarinet, bass clarinet
Russ Podgorsek - Violin
Andrew Kneble - Viola
Carlynn Savot - Cello
Cody Morrison - Aux. percussion
1. 123 Isn’t Easy
2. Dark Days
3. With the Past and Future
4. Janus Plays Telephone
5. Whisper Down the Lane
6. Through the Canopy
7. Stevie Bam Jackson
Promotional photos of The
Landau Orchestra are deceptively minimalist,
showing only the two co-writers Matt Young
and Grant Wheeler. The sound is much thicker;
it's not just a clever name. TLO's latest
album, Janus Plays Telephone, is recorded
with a huge line-up of fourteen musicians
playing over twenty different instruments
between them. It must be noted that for the
following review, I have focused on the seven
tracks on the standard release. However, the
review copy sent included two bonus remixes
of UK band 4 Hero, two remixes of the
opening theme to Pan's Labyrinth and
a live version of Unemployment.
123 Isn't Easy begins
with a ticking percussion line and thick harmonic
drones in stereo, a clear instigation of the
niche between jazz and hip-hop where The Landau
Orchestra rests, very comfortably. The chordal
movement of the horns sounds like a page taken
out of Radiohead's book of thick, shifting
harmony. The horn rhythms shift slightly to
the side, leaving drummer Mike Birnbaum to
pace in classic swing style as they interject
away from the one. The sound is progressive
and transcendent, individually raw and collectively
smooth. Listening is like being in the middle
of an ordered jam session where the musicians
move in circles around you. It is the kind
of music which elicits an empty interaction
with the audience, as if we are intruding
and, as with Radiohead, we put forth our own
clumsy emotions in an attempt to feel involved.
In writing this review, I
have found it increasingly difficult to situate
the music of The Landau Orchestra without
doing a track-by-track breakdown. Structurally,
it is better to outline a few tracks in detail
just to capture the vibe. The rest should
be experienced personally. While there is
certainly a cohesive feel to the album, the
elements of genre employed shift from track
to track, so that it becomes almost impossible
to put them inside a musical 'box'. Dark
Days, for example, leans further towards
atmospheric rock, the interaction between
bassist Jacob Cohen and turntablist Grant
Wheeler strikes reminiscence of Dirk Lance
and DJ Kilmore's soundscapes in the lighter
side of Incubus. The trumpet lines, while
slightly reminiscent of Cake, are thick and
raw and sit just on top of Cohen and Wheeler's
slowly shifting landscape. The transition
from Dark Days to With the Past
and Future is one such shift, as we are
taken into what is at its core a more traditional
jazz style, despite the thick texture the
string and horn sections bring.
Though sidestepping a play-by-play,
the title track Janus Plays Telephone
deserves its own mention if only for the way
in which pianist Matt Young manages to take
his traditional and sombre piano opening and
inject accelerant. This track swings and swells
at its heart like a possessed pirate sheep,
the wooden decks swelling and groaning with
ghostly shivers, the percussive rattling of
scattering crustaceans. And yet, what seems
like the aural anarchy of a year spent at
sea still carries the simple breathing melody
of the strings, weightless in the ocean breeze.
The rest of the album plays
around with similar notions, layering contrasting
styles to create a pastiche of sonic delight.
It is no secret why these guys were chosen
to provide music for Guillermo del Toro's
2006 film Pan's Labyrinth. They are
doing aurally what good cinema is doing visually,
learning from the masters of the art, reverberating
the traditions of past genres but reworking
them. Listening to TLO will not draw
the jazz artist to hardcore hip-hop and the
Landau strings will not draw the classical
connoisseur to the art of turntabling. If
this is your first introduction to the modern
patchwork of contemporary jazz, you're in
good hands.
Sam Webster
CD Reviews
Milan Records 3991562
