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want to malign them , necessarily , but you know – Huey Lewis and the News and The J . Geils Band , just a lot of very forgettable pop music . And occasionally , there ’ d be something great , like a New Order record . But opening those boxes , in amongst them there would-be Deutsche Grammophon records , and they just felt like these totemic sacred objects . I ’ d take them out , and in one hand , you ’ re holding a Huey Lewis and the News record , and in the other hand , you ’ re holding a recording of Brahms with that big , beautiful yellow logo and an old master painting on the cover , and it almost felt like you had to put on white gloves
22 illinoisentertainer . com june 2023 to hold the Deutsche Grammophon record . Especially when I was living in an abandoned factory , I was making $ 2,000 a year , I was peeing into bottles , and I bathed once every ten days or two weeks . I was as scummy a human being as was possible – I was DJ-ing in a dive bar making $ 20 a night and playing in punk rock and New Wave bands , as far from Deutsche Grammophon as you could get . And then , lo and behold , five or six years ago , I played an orchestral show with the L . A . Phil ( harmonic ) and Gustavo Dudamel , and then afterward , someone from Deutsche Grammophon asked me if I wanted to make an orchestral record . And I said , “ Of Course !”
So the first one , Reprise , was made very traditionally , with a quintet here in Los Angeles and an orchestra in Budapest and a Gospel choir and this amazing array of vocalists , everyone from Kris Kristofferson and Mark Lanegan to Jim James , Amythyst Kiah , and
Gregory Porter . And then for the second record , for this new “ Resound NYC ,” my A & R person at Deutsche Grammophon sort of encouraged me – and I thought that this was really both self-evident and interesting – he said , “ You know what ? An orchestra can be anything .” And I was like , “ Oh , you ’ re right ! An orchestra doesn ’ t have to be 130 people wearing tuxedos ! You can have cannons onstage , it could be an analog synth , you could have turntables .” So his challenge to me was , “ Interpret an orchestra in a more bespoke way for this record .” And it also helped that we were making it during the pandemic , where you really couldn ’ t have 130 people in a room . So the challenger here – whether it ’ s good , bad , interesting , or not – was to make a bespoke “ orchestra ” for each song . So sometimes , that meant putting together a giant brass section ; sometimes , it was English horn and French horn ; sometimes , it was a quintet ; sometimes , it was a quintet with a mellotron and an analog synth . And it was a really fun , liberating challenge to imagine what an orchestra means , both for an individual song but also in the 21st century . So I can imagine some people being a little bit confused , like , “ Oh , this doesn ’ t sound traditionally orchestral .” And I ’ m like , “ Yeah – that ’ s because my A & R person at Deutsche Grammophon liberated me from that idea of what orchestral music is .”
IE : “ Helpless ,” for instance , with Margo Timmins , is just a delicate piano ballad that really comes together on the vocal harmonies . Moby : And what ’ s also really interesting – and okay , I say that self-involved – but what ’ s creatively really nice is , I remember reading a quote from Rodin , the sculptor , and he was saying that a lot of what he does was just removing the things that are not essential . When he was creating a sculpture , you start with a
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