The Fantasy Orchestra. The Bristol / Paris community choir/orchestra have developed from being essentially a Morrison’s covers band into something much more, and release their debut album ‘The Bear and other Stories’ this Friday, which amongst others features Kate Stables from This is the Kit.
We’re delighted to be premiering the groups new video, A cover of the Sun Ra track ‘Love in Outer Space’ taken from their new AA side single, where it featured alongside ‘Flow’.
Of the track the band explain “Here is one of two Sun Ra tunes we recorded on our album The Bear And Other Stories (released 28 feb 2020).
The video features the Paris Fantasy Orchestra (who also mostly recorded the track) and was mostly filmed at La Shakirail where they tend to rehearse.
The lead vocal is by Rasha Shaheen who lives in Brighton so we filmed her there.
We discovered this tune on the excellent Sun Ra primer compiled by Gilles Peterson a few years ago and It’s an orchestra favourite to perform with its “love Love Love” refrain embodying perfectly the spirit of the fantasy orchestra.Sun Ra included an instrumental version of the tune on 1970’s “Night Of The Purple Moon” album which was performed by a quartet, a small ensemble for sun Ra. We had great fun transcribing this and adding a choir part. Listen out for the violas emulating the original bongo part. There’s something cosmic about performing music as it was originally improvised trying to include an approximation of every squeak and toot heard on the original performance. – Just like Sun Ra did himself transcribing the performances by Fletcher Henerson among others.It really is a special feeling for our amateur orchestra to recreate the flow of such cosmic musicians . We hope the Arkestra get to hear it.“
Cleaner than the original, but still essentially this scruffy soulful jazz track, the orchestra add a few more colours (the strings in particular give it more of an earthy feel) to the palate but don’t get away from its space age jazz waltz feel.
The video is quite some spectacular, featuring colours and costume the great man would certainly approve of. The band continue “The video was filmed in paris and brighton. In paris we’re in in La Shakirail which is an art space rented form the SNCF near gare du nord. We rehearse there. This features extensive use of a bendy-mirror. you can also probably tell we had a 3 hour costume making workshop involving cardboard boxes, lots of tin-foil and a glue gun;
The Brighton beach footage with singer Rasha Shaheen were taken early one january morning on her way to work, we didnt have any costume but a day-glo Decathlon cycling mac was luckily at hand and seemed to fit the vibe. We were extremely lucky with the weather as it only stopped raining for the time we were filming. I think Sun Ra must have given us a hand!“
Check it out, here
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