Album Review – Yordan Orchestra
Yordan Orchestra
Psych Introduxeon: Bringing Ingredients Together (Megatier Productions)
So. Beatmag has been away for a half a year and now we return looking very different but let’s not fuss, eh, let’s just review an album of bizarre psychedelica, instead, to get our hand back in. ‘Psych Introduxeon’ arrived at Beatmag Mansions with no info but a snapshot of a sallow pallid dude with sunken stoned eyes. This, we must presume, is Jack Aleister, leader of Yordan Orchestra, a latterday prog-psychedelic outfit from Holland whose concerts are sprawling happenings, heavy with the whiff of a druggier bygone age. Taking their cue from the Polyphonic Spree, who they’ve supported in concert, Yordan Orchestra hurl a mass of instruments into their melodramatic head music. The album has traditional rock leanings, but then the brass and cellos join in for a streak of howling ballads redolent of both Arthur Lee’s Love (for their musical ambition) and early Robyn Hitchcock (for their wilful but tuneful oddness). Like a baroque, burlesque and grungier version of early ’70s Pink Floyd, Yordan Orchestra wear their lysergic attitude loudly – announcing they have “mushrooms to try” on ‘Faced You In A Neon Light’ – but retain a core of approachable, melodic musical experimentalism that certain media-celebrated British bands would do well to emulate.
Thomas H Green
