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| 2007/01/22 | EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA REVIEW QUOTES |
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The cornetist Rob Mazurek originally convened his Exploding Star Orchestra for a commissioned concert a year and a half ago at Millennium Park in Chicago. “We Are All From Somewhere Else” (Thrill Jockey), the group’s phantasmagorical first album, was recorded in a studio some time later with many of the same musicians. Mr. Mazurek, a Chicago native who now lives in Brazil, divides the album neatly into two suites, each with its own whimsically oblique story line. (Sting rays, phoenixes and the violent energies of the universe are involved.) Writing for 14 pieces, he employs strategies somehow evocative of both Lalo Schifrin and Andrew Hill. Swirling action is his strong suit, even when the working conceit is a group improvisation against the recorded hum of electric eels. The flutist Nicole Mitchell and the guitarist Jeff Parker make the strongest individual impressions, along with Mr. Mazurek, who augments his cornet with electronics. But the orchestra itself demands a wide-angle focus. At times its multilayered sonic atmosphere suggests an expanded edition of the instrumental rock group Tortoise, with which it shares several members, including Mr. Parker. As engineered by John McEntire, another Tortoise transplant, this album comes across as a work of ambition, imagination and panache. New York Times 1/21/07 "This record bristles with the hubris of an artist who ignores conventional notions of prevailing styles, blithely imposes his own aesthetic vision, and achieves a rousing artistic success in the end...". -AAJ "We Are All From Somewhere Else, the 14-piece group's first album, comes fully equipped with a complex conceptual narrative involving sting rays, electric eels, exploding stars and various cosmic transformations... the expanded Orchestra serves to frame one of Mazurek's most exuberant and ambitious works to date." -Pitchforkmedia "The results have exceeded anyone's expectations, with 4000 listeners applauding Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra, ...Certainly the thousands of listeners that jammed the place to hear the Exploding Star Orchestra would not be likely to queue up at, say, the Empty Bottle club in Wicker Park for the same mind-bending sonorities. Yet the crowd not only turned out for the Exploding Star Orchestra but, more remarkably, stayed, cheering on some of the most adventurous musicians in Chicago, among them flutist Nicole Mitchell, and guitarist Jeff Parker." -Chicago Tribune |
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