{"id":1653,"date":"2016-03-03T13:14:47","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T17:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1653"},"modified":"2016-03-09T14:15:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:15:46","slug":"burning-city-orchestra-debut-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/?p=1653","title":{"rendered":"Burning City Orchestra \u2014 Debut Album"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/166532362&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In November of 2015, Burning City Orchestra (BCO) released its debut album after five\u00a0years of hard work. The primary driving force behind this indie-rock release is Noam Faingold, who is a great friend of mine. With that being said, as a reader, you can rightfully expect this review to be a good one, so let me explain to you why BCO\u2019s debut is worth the listen:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I first met Noam at NYU when he was a graduate student in the composition program there. At the time, I knew Noam primarily as a classical composer and was only marginally aware of his past in indie-rock and his work on the Noam Faingold Orchestra\u2014the name of BCO many\u00a0years ago.\u00a0Listeners should not think that this makes the BCO some\u00a0unwieldy foray by a composer out of his element (not directly comparable, but\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=b8KNAzSwROg&amp;list=PLTy1OPwAEv8nVbS4aNjF7i7k_NxBamMl1&amp;index=2\">see John Adams&#8217; I Was Looking at the Ceiling<\/a>\u00a0for example). The parts written for the BCO are genuine and idiomatic to the form, except with a prominent twist where, instead of vocals being primarily supported by the classic rock quartet formation of an electric guitar and bass, the body of the orchestration\u00b9 is primarily fulfilled by a contingent of strings. Hence, Burning City\u00a0<em>Orchestra<\/em>. The string parts are performed by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.violinistamanda.com\/\">Amanda Lo<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joshhendersonviolin.com\/\">Joshua Henderson<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pattikilroy.com\/\">Patti Kilroy<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rickquantz.com\/\">Rick Quantz<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.susannamendlow.com\/about.html\">Susanna Mendlow<\/a>,\u00a0Mike Midlarsky, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/patswoboda.com\/\">Pat Swoboda<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To provide readers with an idea of some of the\u00a0string parts&#8217; compositional creativity, I would like to use a few songs as examples of what string writing in pop and rock should aim to be. In the introduction of\u00a0<em>The Place You Go Before You Die<\/em>, during one of the final choruses and the outro, Noam uses glissandos, harmonics, and pizzicato played at various distances from the instrument\u2019s bridge to create a kaleidoscope of effects outlining melodic content from the song, flung across the ranges of the instruments. There is a fair bit of processing on the parts, and these played string effects were sampled and then locked into their intended\u00a0temporal position to create a clear rhythmic picture.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In <em>Allinmymind <\/em>over this lyrical content:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There\u2019s a sin that\u2019s been waiting for a special occasion<br \/>\nThere\u2019s a masterpiece waiting to be given shape<br \/>\nThere\u2019s a train built for one destination to take<\/p>\n<p>And a rat looks me square in the eye as I\u2019m falling awake.<br \/>\nAnd the train comes to take me away, as my pen starts to ache.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here, Noam breaks the repeating compound meter eighth-note\u00a0figures\u00a0that have persisted since the beginning of the song with a beautiful ascending progression which ultimately lands on an A minor chord with the cello suspended on the 4th\u00a0which subsequently resolves to a D minor 7 chord with a major 9th, through which the viola shines through on the tonic of the key. The moment of harmonic richness lands as Noam sings &#8216;awake&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Musically, the best moments of this album are when the entire texture drops into a quiet intensity before bursting into adulation. This musical gesture happens a few\u00a0times through the course of the\u00a0release, in\u00a0<em>Madame<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Inspiration Hits Like an Atomic Bomb,\u00a0What Sweaters are for in the Summer\u00a0<\/em>specifically.\u00a0In\u00a0<em>Inspiration Hits Like an Atomic Bomb<\/em>, this\u00a0<strong>kind<\/strong>\u00a0of moment, which is presented in the 1st chorus,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Inspiration hits like an atomic bomb<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;m waiting for the calm<br \/>\nSo I can tell you that you&#8217;re perfect<br \/>\nInspiration hits like an atomic bomb<br \/>\nAnd I&#8217;m waiting for the calm<br \/>\nSo I can tell you that you&#8217;re perfect<br \/>\nTell you that you&#8217;re perfect<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>is extended through a somber bridge that leads to a full stop in the music. Here Noam sings alone before all other instruments explode back in with a restatement of the chorus.\u00a0Another interesting aspect of this album to note is that the usual\u00a0song structure of intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-etc. is eschewed. For example, the first chorus in\u00a0<em>The Place You Go Before You Die<\/em> occurs at 2:03 in the track, and only has a single second (albeit extended) chorus segment. In\u00a0<em>What Sweaters are for in the Summer, <\/em>the reflective track is divided into two parts, with the first part essentially a soundscape of simulated and\u00a0actual electronic noise with some light viola harmonic arpeggiations sampled from <em>Allinmymind<\/em> thrown in for effects. I won&#8217;t spoil the entire album for you, <a href=\"https:\/\/burningcityorchestra.bandcamp.com\/releases\">you can buy the album and see more here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/166551400&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">1. Orchestration in the sense of how the instrumentation and composition intertwine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In November of 2015, Burning City Orchestra (BCO) released its debut album after five years of hard work. The primary driving force behind this indie-rock release is Noam Faingold, who is a great friend of mine. With that being said, as a reader, you can rightfully expect this review to be a [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[179,88],"class_list":["post-1653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-burning-city-orchestra","tag-noam-faingold","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1653"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensourcemusic.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}