Metropole Orkest Vs Basement Jaxx
Atlantic Jaxx****
You know Basement Jaxx as purveyors of epic, colourful hands-in-the-air dance music. By contrast, you probably don’t know Metropole Orkest at all,but they’re a popular Dutch orchestra and big band at home. For a concert earlier this year in Eindhoven, the Metropole and
a 20-strong choir took some of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe’s best-known tunes and turned them into often stately, occasionally bizarre and always entertaining classical pieces. What makes the album take off
is the euphoric joy of hearing a dancefloor banger such as Where's Your Head Atworked into a martial wonder, and the incongruity of hearing Bingo Bangoor Do Your Thingcast adrift from their familiar settings. An imaginative retooling, this audacious, inventive and brave album is a reinvention of the most welcome kind. See basementjaxx.net
Download tracks: Where's Your Head At, Bingo Bango, Do Your Thing