Forgotten Fish Memory Orchestra - Our Tin Tribe

Forgotten Fish Memory Orchestra - Our Tin Tribe

Verdict: 4/5
Label

Monkey Tool

CATALOG NO

TOOL 002

RELEASE DATE

February 2003

Written By

Dragos Rusu

Published

February 3, 2014

This mysterious artistic project was born in 2000, but bandleader Makmed the Miller played with a wide spectrum of artists, before founding the Orchestra. I assume they are from The Netherlands, though in this world suffocated with unnecessary things, I prefer an anonymous approach.

I discovered the band through this record that I found in an intimate record fair in Brussels. I was just browsing through small boxes with records and I was peaking at stuff by accident, after a superficial and fugitive look at the cover (if any). I didn’t know anything about the band before. I don’t know much now either. Though obscure and mysterious, this project its so complex, that can gather together music, theatre, installation, film, performance art, costume party, light show, cultural train wreck, dance, ritual (real and fake). Let’s meet on the playground and have some fun!

As quoted from Makmed’s own blog (Forgotten Fish Memory Orchestra doesn’t have a website anymore; there are some rumors that somebody bought the domain in order to sell fish), the music can be described as ‘’traditional, contemporary, post-modern, ancient, naive, classical, situationist, the right notes with the wrong instruments, pentatonic, microtonal, harmonious, out of tune, chromatic, free, rigidly structured, coherent, upside down.

Makmed plays an impressive range of instruments, from theremin, pipa, bouzouki, saz, cello, phono fiddle, yayli divan, guitar, percussion, circuit bent instruments, to his own built instruments, such as the water organ based on the Bor Berzerka prototype, and several circuit bent keyboards and toys.

Even if it says this is a remix of the CD called Iron Shoes, which the band released in 2001 in Netherlands, the album Our Tin Tribe sounds like a fully new composition, even though its always tricky with experiments. This album drifts great, with rhythmicity and joy; it spreads diverse energies to have a wonderful musical experience at the end of it, and always wanting to come back to some parts, to feed the hungry soul.

Tracklist:

A1. Helium Gas
A2. Bratislav Nigun (Ghetto Style)
A3. Underground
A4. The Serpent's Egg
A5. Our Tin Tribe
A6. Siesta
A7. Atlas
A8. On The Mountain
B1. Her Heart-Centre DNA Code
B2. Caged
B3. Family Secret
B4. Beachcomber
B5. Red Moon, Yellow Moon
B6. Noh Christmas In Tibet