Huffington Post lists Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica on a favorite-10-albums list...twice! - Tiki Music

MH Mr. Ho Tiki Socialite Boston, MA Joined: Oct 09, 2005 Posts: 490	MH Mr. Ho Posted posted on Sat, Dec 31, 2011 9:53 AM Happy new year all! Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica and myself are very excited to have BOTH of our current Exotica For Modern Living albums cited in Tony Sach's 10 favorite albums for 2011 (Tony writes on music and spirits for the Huffington Post)! Check out this excerpt and link below: MR. HO'S ORCHESTROTICA - The Unforgettable Sounds Of Esquivel (Tiki). Why bother with an album that recreates, note for note, the work of Juan Garcia Esquivel -- the spiritual father of the space-age bachelor pad music revival of the mid '90s? After all, Esquivel's own CDs and records are still easy enough to find, and his brand of swinging, kitschy big-band insanity is as commercially dead as the Macarena. I was more than a tad cynical myself, until I gave this album a listen. Esquivel's albums, recorded in the early days of stereo, had super-wide, extreme mixes that bounce from speaker to speaker like so many ping pong balls. It's pretty cool, but occasionally the mix takes away from what the musicians are actually doing. This album, featuring the original, long-lost arrangements painstakingly recreated by Brian "Mr. Ho" O'Neill and featuring a crack 23-piece big band, employs a much more natural stereo mix, and the result is like watching a favorite black-and-white film in color for the first time. Of course the Orchestrotica's recreation can't replace Esquivel originals like Infinity In Sound, Vol. 2 and Other Worlds, Other Sounds, but this is no mere rehash. MR. HO'S ORCHESTROTICA - Third River Rangoon (Tiki). If you don't know your lounge music, I'm here to tell you that anyone who can do both Esquivel and Martin Denny justice is the musical equivalent of an athlete who can play both baseball and football professionally. Where Esquivel is all over-the-top big-band pyrotechnics, Denny's music (also known as exotica) is mellow, quiet, dreamy, drawing from jazz, pop, classical and "third stream" music. The vast majority of modern-day exotica I've heard gets the tropical vibe right but doesn't have much going on beneath the surface. But Brian O'Neill isn't just a great musician, he's also a first-rate composer -- he wrote seven of the eleven tracks here. Third River Rangoon sounds nifty as the soundtrack to an evening of mai tais, but if you decide to dig deeper and really give it your time and attention, you'll be rewarded in spades. Just about all the original stars of exotica, which peaked in popularity half a century ago, are gone -- here, at last, is their successor. Read the full story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-sachs/it-aint-yo-gabba-gabba-bu_b_1176105.html Best, Mr. Ho

Happy new year all!

Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica and myself are very excited to have BOTH of our current Exotica For Modern Living albums cited in Tony Sach's 10 favorite albums for 2011 (Tony writes on music and spirits for the Huffington Post)! Check out this excerpt and link below:

MR. HO'S ORCHESTROTICA - The Unforgettable Sounds Of Esquivel (Tiki). Why bother with an album that recreates, note for note, the work of Juan Garcia Esquivel -- the spiritual father of the space-age bachelor pad music revival of the mid '90s? After all, Esquivel's own CDs and records are still easy enough to find, and his brand of swinging, kitschy big-band insanity is as commercially dead as the Macarena. I was more than a tad cynical myself, until I gave this album a listen. Esquivel's albums, recorded in the early days of stereo, had super-wide, extreme mixes that bounce from speaker to speaker like so many ping pong balls. It's pretty cool, but occasionally the mix takes away from what the musicians are actually doing. This album, featuring the original, long-lost arrangements painstakingly recreated by Brian "Mr. Ho" O'Neill and featuring a crack 23-piece big band, employs a much more natural stereo mix, and the result is like watching a favorite black-and-white film in color for the first time. Of course the Orchestrotica's recreation can't replace Esquivel originals like Infinity In Sound, Vol. 2 and Other Worlds, Other Sounds, but this is no mere rehash.
MR. HO'S ORCHESTROTICA - Third River Rangoon (Tiki). If you don't know your lounge music, I'm here to tell you that anyone who can do both Esquivel and Martin Denny justice is the musical equivalent of an athlete who can play both baseball and football professionally. Where Esquivel is all over-the-top big-band pyrotechnics, Denny's music (also known as exotica) is mellow, quiet, dreamy, drawing from jazz, pop, classical and "third stream" music. The vast majority of modern-day exotica I've heard gets the tropical vibe right but doesn't have much going on beneath the surface. But Brian O'Neill isn't just a great musician, he's also a first-rate composer -- he wrote seven of the eleven tracks here. Third River Rangoon sounds nifty as the soundtrack to an evening of mai tais, but if you decide to dig deeper and really give it your time and attention, you'll be rewarded in spades. Just about all the original stars of exotica, which peaked in popularity half a century ago, are gone -- here, at last, is their successor.

Read the full story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-sachs/it-aint-yo-gabba-gabba-bu_b_1176105.html

Best,

Mr. Ho

Post #619358 by Mr. Ho on Sat, Dec 31, 2011 9:53 AM