Saturday, May 19, 2012

Dead Rat Orchestra

I put a bunch of new stuff on my iTunes yesterday for the first time in a while, and one of the records I'm most taken with is The Guga Hunters of Ness from the Dead Rat Orchestra.

The Dead Rat Orchestra plays the kind of altered-folk-slanting-into-ethnic-classical music that you might associate with The Eyesores, Cerberus Shoal and the World Inferno/Friendship Society. They use a lot of things that you might recognize as instruments -- guitar, banjo, organ, violin, accordion, percussion -- and a few others that you might not (saws, toy birds, sine waves). The overall effect, at least on this album, is serene, rather than crowded, however...unlike some of these overpopulated groups, Dead Rat Orchestra seems to be about music primarily, and performance art second.

Their latest album was composed as a soundtrack to accompany the documentary The Guga Hunters of Ness, which, according to the Critical Light website, "follows the journey of ten men from the community of Ness on the Isle of Lewis as they embark on a traditional hunt for gannets."

There's a soundcloud stream, if you're curious.


The record's out on July 9th on Critical Light.

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