Search - Alloy Orchestra :: Masters of Slapstick

The Alloy Orchestra has become something of a staple at cinema festivals worldwide, accompanying silent films with scores performed on synthesizers, accordions, musical saws, and a junk pile of pans and sheet metal. Masters of Slapstick is the band's first CD foray into old-fashioned comedic violence, scoring the movies One Week by Buster Keaton, Big Business by Laurel and Hardy, and Easy Street by Charlie Chaplin. And like the outlandish visual cues and farcical action of these films, the Alloy's music is all setup and punch line, a ride of Keystone Cops proportion. The pleasant formality of a waltz or a wedding march suddenly careens and ditches into a percussive pileup ("Drive Away") or a vaudeville piano gets a heavy dose of adrenaline and lurches into a stampede of ivory keys and foot stomping ("Zany Dish Pants"). Poignant and direct, drunken and burlesque, the Alloy Orchestra's take on pratfalls and painful stunts is completely loaded with seductive charm. --Michael Woodring