Browse by Artist: THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA

Artist:	THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA
Title:	Horses in the Sky
Label:	CONSTELLATION (CANADA)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	CST 033CD

"'This is our torched estates' = 6 busted 'waltzes' for world wars 4 thru 6, or the sound of our nervous unit collapsing across sing-song eruptions of anxious light and clumsy heat, 'mystery & wonder, messy hearts made of thunder,' tape reordered at thee mighty hotel2tango for all the gentle dreamers to cradle or discard...the politics of it is just love thy neighbour mostly, or heartbroken temper tantrums for grumpy refusers, or saucy anthems for all the stubborn dumbass resistance cadres maybe...(first song's about war and drug addiction, fourth song's about kanada, and the rest of it is all love songs trulytrulytruly...) the indignant critics amongst us should note that as usual there's more questions than answers here, more complaints than solutions, and at times the group singing is a little out of tune; the name of the record is Horses in the Sky, and we thank you all for still listening...". 5th release by multifaceted Montreal ensemble. 3rd release in their large band (Tra La La Band) guise.

Artist:	THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA
Title:	Kollaps Tradixionales
Label:	CONSTELLATION (CANADA)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	CST 063CD

"Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) returns with its sixth full-length recording and first since the band's line-up change of summer 2008. As Kollaps Tradixionales ably demonstrates, the band has lost none of its raw and frazzled anthemic power and continues to forge bold new ground in its search for a unique hybrid of punk, blues, psych, folk and modern orchestral idioms. Anchored by the fried electric guitar and plangent voice of band leader Efrim Menuck (who previously co-founded Godspeed You! Black Emperor) SMZ continues to slide comfortably and unforcedly towards an expansive, loose and blues-inflected balladry -- not so much the inexorably riffing blues shuffle of the title track from its previous effort, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, but a more languid waltz-time marking an almost smoldering dynamic arc. Needless to say, the slow burn with SMZ, whatever the blues influence these days, bears little reference to typical notions of musical seduction, relaxation, or hip-swinging satisfaction. What smolders here is much more precarious and anxious, driven by some of this decade's more devastating lyrical conjurings -- of the universal outsider and the thematics of 21st century western psychic oppression. The sonic references are abundant, ranging from afrobeat to bouzouki music to hard bop to punk rock -- culminating in the memorable refrain 'dance you motherfuckers.' The three phases of the album's 'title track' on Side Three (with their variant spellings and parenthetical modifiers) are indeed 'traditionals' of a sort, playing on tropes of American and Anglo-Saxon folk, marching song, sea shanty and hymnal."-

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