• Tracks on THE THAI ORCHESTRA - The Thai Orchestra:
• THE THAI ORCHESTRA : 01
• THE THAI ORCHESTRA : 02
• THE THAI ORCHESTRA : 03

It always interests me when a record sidles along with little to no information on the sleeve and little to no provided information with it - I mean it gets you thinking doesn't it; where did it come from, who made it, why have we got it here? This is one such record - with hand-crafted sleeves containing nothing about the album at all save some Thai squiggles I was instantly intrigued as to what kind of treasure I was holding in my hands. It's that same feeling as when you're rifling through dusty LPs in an old record shop and you find something that looks so peculiar and out-of-time you know you have to listen to it - luckily though the music was even better than I could have hoped. Apparently recorded in the late 70s in Thailand this album is an absolutely essential purchase for any of you who have had your tastes whet by the Sublime Frequencies compilations or Nonesuch's series of 'Explorer' releases. The educated amongst us know only too well that world music doesn't necessarily have to involve pan-piped renditions of Celine Dion classics, and The Thai Orchestra is about as far away from the public opinion of 'world music' as you can possibly get. Related in some way to Balinese Gamelan music, we can hear the Thai Orchestra playing folk rhythms with unusual-sounding traditional instruments, but oddly enough they manage to introduce Western sounding structures which give the recording a strange psychedelic/funk feeling at times. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if the record had been made only weeks ago, let alone thirty years ago as the sound is incredibly contemporary and surprisingly relevant in relation to the whole psychedelic folk scene at the moment. Simply put the music on this disc has floored us, rarely do we get something in which comes so unexpectedly and leaves such a lasting impression - just listen to the samples here and be prepared to be transported into the world of the weird East. Totally unmissable!
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