Where Here Meets There
Mr Ho's Orchestrotica

We say: Cool retro vibes and flute but who is Mr Ho?

"Who is Mr Ho?" you might well ask, "and what on earth is an Orchestrotica?" Both fair questions really but willful obscurity such as this is merely a means to create a make-believe back story for a musical era and genre — a sort of imagined proto world music — that never really existed in the first place.

The whole musical shebang of the "Orchestrotica" is led not by a fictitious Mr Ho but by real-life vibraphonist Brian O'Neill. The other main melodic role is taken by Geni Skendo on flute, while Jason Davis and Shane Shanahan provide able support on double bass and percussion respectively. The result is a sort of kitsch exotica, a dreamy retro-sounding chamber music that might have been made in the late 1950s or early '60's. It is hard to pin it down precisely but what I hear is a little of the Pet Sounds instrumental interludes mixed in with work influenced by modern American composers. There are obvious cool jazz influences too, albeit of the sort that does not swing too fiercely.

Imagine Thelonius Monk, Moondog and Brian Wilson thrown together to write the soundtrack for an industrial training film. Imagine them roping in Cal Tjader to try out a few Gershwin preludes… there, you have it. Well, sort of.