Up to 84% in savings when you subscribe to The Absolute Sound
Logo Close Icon

Begin typing your search above and press return to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Jazz

Tin Hat: Foreign Legion

Foreign Legion
Tin Hat: Foreign Legion
  • Music
  • Sonics
  • A
  • A
  • A

A work-in-progress since releasing the first of its five studio albums in 1999, Tin Hat blends tango, Eastern European, country-and-western, and other musical idioms into a readily identifiable ensemble sound. When Rob Burger (accordion, keyboards) departed after 1994’s Book of Silk, co-founders Mark Orton (guitar, dobro, banjo) and Carla Kihlstedt (violin, viola, trumpet violin) brought in clarinetist Ben Goldberg, harpist Zeena Parkins, and multi-instrumentalist Ara Anderson (trumpet, pump organ, piano, glockenspiel, percussion). On Foreign Legion, the group’s first live album, Goldberg and Anderson settle in as full- fledged members. Recorded at a festival in Mallorca, Spain, in 2005, and a Berkeley, California, folk club in 2008, Foreign Legion flows like a suite of miniature now- melancholy, now-jaunty soundtracks for imaginary westerns, funerals, and dances.

Without the usual studio overdubs, without vocals, and with only one guest musician, percussionist Matthias Bossi, Tin Hat sounds less like a densely textured orchestra and more like a fluidly melodic gypsy-cowboy-klezmer-chamber-jazz quartet. The intimate mix captures the panoply of distinct timbres, from Orton’s slacked acoustic guitar strings and Kihlstedt’s mournful, scratchy fiddle to Goldberg’s smooth rumbling reeds and Anderson’s bop-mariachi trumpet.

By Derk Richardson

More articles from this editor

Read Next From Music

Adblocker Detected

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."