Gordon, Peter - Love of Life Orchestra
SKU
28-DFA 2229
Nice to see a compilation of some of the material by this group. Peter had a large-scale (13 or so) band in the late 70s which featured some major names of the not-quite emerged downtown scene (David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, Blue Gene Tyranny, David Van Tiegham, Ned Sublette, etc. etc.) and I saw them several times. Their music always was sort of a weird and sometimes uneasy blend between the avant-garde/modern composition field that Peter emerged from blended with ideas taken from the underground dance world (remember, we are talking 1979, so think "James White and the Blacks" and Ze Records). Not always successful, but the good parts were very good.
"Peter Gordon and his Love of Life Orchestra are testament to the incredible musical innovations happening in New York City in the late 1970s. Those two compositions, underpinned with disco and gilded with noisy guitar bursts, hanging piano chords and saxophone wails, exhibit not only Gordon's kaleidoscopic vision as a musician, but his precision as a producer and composer. Featuring avant-experimentalists and downtown legends David Byrne and Arto Lindsay as well as Love of Life Orchestra cofounders Gordon and David Van Tieghem, the tracks shine a light on the work of an artist whose influence on dance music is recognizable more than three decades later."