The Cinematic Orchestra

The music that The Cinematic Orchestra creates makes me want to close my eyes and drift off to a wonderfully make believe place where you can see forever and take enormous breaths of magic air to fill my lungs. They’re one of those bands that have been named so perfectly, you really couldn’t imagine them being called anything else. It describes their music incredibly precisely. They’re legit muso’s who are all about the music. No big show, now fireworks, just play the music, sit back and listen.

Created in 1999 by the brilliant Jason Swinscoe, everyone in this group seems to be brilliant at their craft. They’re essentially a jazz based group that due to Joe’s keyboard skill set, has developed a style that crosses a few genres to nearly be considered an entirely new genre [although I’m pretty sure there are bagful of groups out there that I’m not aware who fit this genre perfectly….sorry dudes, no offense]. What that genre would be called, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe its that jazz fusion concept? But the fact is, they’re fundamentally a non vocal group that has had eleven different personnel over the two decades they have uses different artists to bring their vocal talents to certain tracks.

I’m gonna be totes straight up here. As I write this, I realise that I don’t know much about these guys aside from their music. But I think that speaks volumes about who they are. Just dudes who create beautiful music for music sake. But the more I read about them, the more I realise that their band seems to be very much like their music. Super fluid. Super specific.

I will admit that this music isn’t for everyone…but I’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t appreciate it once they’ve heard it. The majority of their tracks sound very…well, cinematic. *super insightful there Mykel* I was serious when I was said how appropriate their name was. Anyone one of their tracks could be used for a soundtrack. Maybe thats because in general, we’re so accustomed to soundtracks being more complex in their approach. And it’s hard not to appreciate arrangements that have the ability to push the fringes of popular culture as well as be just at home in an orchestral setting…aaaaaand we’re back at the name.

But I will say that my introduction to these guys was through a dear friend who is has always been more electronic than anything else. And even though I think the arrangements to these songs feel very much like they 80% organic [from the instruments they play], the more I listen to them, the more I hear echo’s of the electronic overtones that bleed through their music. If you were to listen to their first album ‘Motion’, you could be mistaken for thinking they are simply a jazz outfit, but as you get into the album, essences of trip hop samples show them up for who they really are. Well trained musicians who are brave enough to incorporate more than just your standard, run of the mill tunes that leave you feeling as though you’re simply listening to another jazz album.

This is because of Jason Swinscoe.

A former British DJ, he is the driving force behind what can often expand to a 12 person outfit during their live performances. But as you may have been able to guess, he’s never been one to try and create a pop song that lasts for 3 minutes and has left the musical landscape in 3 weeks. He emulates a sense of authenticity in which he creates the music for this band to play with a long term involvement in mind. If I was to say that I didn’t admire that approach, I’d be bullshitting you. There is so much to love about things [music especially] that sit outside the mainstream, but intentionally and Swinscoe seems to revel in this space.

If you listen to their four studio albums in order, you’ll begin to understand how they have begun to move more away from the jazz elements and have begun to refine them into a more modern, landscape feeling sound that feels more like a compilation of ballads. For lack of a better way to describe it, their first album feels as though you should be playing it before your dinner guests arrive. Their second is what you play during dinner and their third should be put on while you’re all sitting around a dimly lit kitchen table, on your third bottle of red and bringing out the after dinner mints.

If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m an ‘After Dinner Mints’ kinda guy. Which is why their third album ‘Ma Fleur’ is the one I get the most from.

You know when you get into a band or artist and then you meet another fan and they’re all like “Oh man, when did you get into them?” and you’re determined to think of some cool obscure track to signify that you really are a fan? Yeah, I can’t do that with Cinematic.

I think that the first song I really was drawn to is possibly the one that nearly everyone know or has heard at some stage whether they know its TCO or not. The track called ‘To Build a Home’, the first track from this considerably more downtempo effort from their first two albums sets the tone for an eleven track journey that offers the listener breathing space.

‘To Build a Home’ features Patrick Watson, a Canadian Singer-Songwriter who’s voice seems to be the landmark that the rest of this album centres around. It’s breathy and etherial and really enables the arrangements to tell a more deeper and heartfelt story than ever before.

I have a very personal connection to this track as well. I very much associate this beautiful song with the passing of someone who was incredibly dear to me, and as much as there is possibly a fear that I’m attaching some music I love to the sadness of their leaving, I can confirm that this is exactly what has happened and I couldn’t have wished for it to be any other way. The ability to play a song and be thrown straight back into the memory of someone is truly remarkable. It feels as though its a key to directly accessing emotions. But thats music as a whole isn’t it. A vehicle to be more than ourselves. To think and feel outside ourselves. To experience the shift that can happen in all of us through a unique resonating vibration. And maybe thats why I love The Cinematic Orchestra so much, because the music they create has never felt as though it was made for you. It feels as though it was made by people who are simply expressing themselves….whether you choose to listen to it or not. True integrity. True authenticity.

I was lucky enough to see these guys in concert at the Palais in Melbourne in 2009. And to be entirely honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from a group of musicians who simply play their instruments. Not for show, but to execute the music they create as best they can. And thats exactly what I got.

Theoretically, I probably could have shut my eyes and listened to the entire gig without seeing a thing. It was literally six musicians on a stage playing music for a few hours….and it was awesome. So if you can picture a concert like this, playing piano, double bass, guitar or even a saxophone doesn’t require much movement to execute the music well. So pretty much everyone on stage was fairly still throughout the gig, except for Luke Flowers

“Who the fuck is Luke Flowers when he’s at home” I hear you ask. [I actually was asking myself the same thing as soon as I came home form the concert, because amidst the stillness on stage from all the other musicians, sat this incredible drummer who seemed to epitomise the fluidity of this music with his drumming style. I literally watched this man drum for 2 hours solid and it was unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. His drumming style is more akin to someone treading water with their arms, but in actual fact, creating a jazz centric foundation for the rest of the band to play off. Holding his sticks so lightly you often can’t tell how he makes the sounds he does, it can often look like an illusion as to how easy he makes it all look.

So if you’re having a dinner party at some stage, or just looking to find some music that fills the space but doesn’t dominate, The Cinematic Orchestra, might just be for you. God knows you probably have to have some affiliation for jazz, but if you do and don’t know much about these guys. Its totally worth a listen or five.

M/

~ Article updated August 2020