My Personal Journey through Post-punk, Art, Music and Radio
11. 2004 Has Been The Year of The Loop Orchestra.
2004 has really been our year, coming into full bloom after 22 years. For me, this is appropriate since 4 is my favourite number. There are four (there is that number again) major things which have occurred for us over this year:
1. Our second CD, "Not Overtly Orchestral" (4 tracks) was released in February by the Quecksilber label in Berlin. This has attracted radio airplay and reviews all over the world (Boston, Chicago, Berlin, London, Madrid, Rome, Hungary, Estonia and Greece). You only have to type in "Not Overtly Orchestral by The Loop Orchestra" into Google to see what I mean and to read some of the reviews. The one from the BBC is the best review we have had in 22 years.
2. In March a new one-hour piece which we did specially went to air on Resonance FM in London.
3. In July we had another CD released with the special Outsiders issue of the Australian poetry magazine Southerly. There are three pieces on the CD, tracks 1 and 3 are based on voice sounds and sounds of speech and are very onomatopoeic. Track 2 is an edit from the one-hour piece which went to air in London in March. This well-established magazine had never released a CD before so we felt honoured. The other reason we are pleased with this is that the issue includes a 12 page interview with our friend and collaborator, the Art Brut maker Anthony Mannix and 17 of his drawings.
4. In July The Loop Orchestra organised an event called Word of Mouth at the Old Darlington School at Sydney University. The performers were Chris Abrahams (solo piano), Rik Rue (take manipulations of spoken word), Ian Andrews (4 tone arm turntable) and The Loop Orchestra (a voice based piece called Blabbermouth). The MC was Doug Anderson from The Sydney Morning Herald. It was a wet cold night in Sydney and it was completely packed out.
As well as these four things at track from our first CD has just been chosen as the soundtrack for a new Australian short film.
Our next project (2005) will be a collaboration (our first in 22 years) with a great Australian pianist,
Chris Abrahams.
