Landau Orchestra

Landau Orchestra's forthcoming album was made possible by an ongoing creative partnership between two young multi-instrumentalists, their music school environment and Chinese food. Yes, without copious amounts of Asian take-out grub, primary Landau Orchestra partners Matt Young (24) and Grant Wheeler's (23) dream might not have come to fruition.

We recorded a lot of the different sessions for the album with different musicians, Young explains, and we paid them all in Chinese food, he says of their frugal music-student budget. All of the guest musicians on the record are students they're all really good. The Tulsa, OK native Young and Worcester, Mass-born Wheeler are graduates of University of Hartford, Connecticut's Hartt School of Music.

Despite their relative youth, Young and Wheeler have mastered a number of instruments and play everything from Rhodes keyboard, accordion and melodica as well as programming beats, and composing scores for their string and brass accompaniments. On tour the duo incorporate a horn section, plus drummer Mike Birnbaum and bass player Jacob Cohen.

The original Landau project was formed in 1998 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Comprised of a set of school-friend producers, the Landau collective released a debut album in 2004, The Epic Compromise, on Florida's respected tastemaker electronic label Merck Records. Although Young's original Great Plains digs didn't offer much in the way of art culture, a year abroad in Norway opened his palette to electronic music.

I actually lived in Norway in 1996 when I was 15, that's when I began writing electronic music. That influenced my determination to jump into [electronic music], and the beautiful landscape in Norway was influential on my compositions. I remember listening to Autechre and hiking around the fjords that really inspired me to write music. After returning, Young pursued producing electronic music with his friends, and delved into jazz music and other genres before heading off to music school.

Landau Orchestra's sound encapsulates a variety of influences including lush, contemporary electronic music, the symphonic funk sound of composer David Axelrod, and the spacious, calm atmospheres of Norwegian Jazz. On the album's seven jazz-noir-like compositions, brushed drum strokes mingle with tension-building brass and sinuous woodwind arrangements, which are anchored by chord-rich piano and Rhodes keyboard arrangements.

Janus Plays Telephone is a 35-minute instrumental journey that creeps like a private detective through rain-soaked musical back alleys in the wee hours. The title refers to Janus, the two-headed god of war, and a children's whispering game. Janus looks into the past and the future and we thought of him playing the children's telephone game; we're making reference to the fact that we're trying to link the past and the future though our form of communication, explains Wheeler.

Speaking of the past, (Track 4) has elements of Burt Bacharach or Charles Stepney's 1970s symphonic soul, while (Track 5) conjures the artistry of contemporary British acts Two Banks of Four or Cinematic Orchestra. (Track 7)'s dark, brooding grooves, punctuated by digital percussion and moody melodies sounds like Scotland's Boards of Canada interpreting Mingus. On Janus Plays Telephone, Landau Orchestra's marriage of acoustic and electronic instruments is seamless and illusory, creating a utopian blend of forward-thinking jazz and digital-age electronics.

Wheeler adds, A lot of our music is based around found samples. We use samples to create a restriction for the track. For instance, if a certain sample will be used in the piece we have to play a distinct instrument or melody to it. This gives Janus a dual-headed approach the loose atmosphere of improv jazz plays off sampled syncopation to create a new medium. Landau Orchestra will tour their new album throughout 2007. Tomas Palermo