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The One Ensemble Orchestra - 'Other Thunders' CD |
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Written by Staff
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Tuesday, 10 March 2009 |
Now available on the No-Fi label, this is an album featuring an expanded line-up of The One Ensemble, with bass clarinets and more voices added to the mix.
Below is the press release from No-Fi.
Daniel Padden’s The One Ensemble began as a solo project and quickly
morphed into a quartet with the recruitment of Chris Hladowski and Aby
Vulliamy of Nalle, and Peter Nicholson. With Padden’s leadership, they
developed a curious and strident brew of Eastern European folk, chamber
music, a pinch of Robert Wyatt and some kind of earthy psychedelic
primitivism.
Padden has been fortunate in recruiting a band of such polymath virtuosity,
giving room for his grand designs to be realised gloriously, both on stage and
on record.
As The One Ensemble Orchestra, their sound is given the blaze of full
technicolour glory as they expand to a septet, exacerbating their collision of
the formal and the tribal and oftentimes recalling the soundtrack and mood of
The Holy Mountain. They originally expanded to a seven-piece for a
commission from Bristol’s Venn festival in 2007, and consequently recorded
these tracks at Padden’s studio.
The extra members mean the Ensemble’s already rich sound is given further
depth and added gravity, while losing none of their dextrous transitions or
delicate passages. But when they hit those vocal incantations or rhythmic
cascades that fans of their sound love so much, there’s undoubtedly an extra
magic and drive that is a delight to behold.
At times, the Ensemble come on like a mediaeval A Hawk And A Hacksaw,
other times a chamber quartet ambushed by Balkan folk terrorists, but they
always sound unquestionably themselves, channelling a thousand delicately
unrefined, rough, raw and dreamlike voices. Like your favourite meal super-
sized, The One Ensemble Orchestra is the esoteric treat you’ve been
promising yourself.
www.myspace.com/oneensemble
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