Love of Life Orchestra

Peter Gordon (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 12, 2010)
• Original Release Date: 2010
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Dfa Records
• ASIN: B003ZW0MN0
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #344,541 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SOME EXTENDED NICETIES!!! FOR PLEASURE DANCERS!!!, October 18, 2010

By 

Rafael Cova "Kid X" (Caracas, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love of Life Orchestra (Audio CD)

In a review that I did in May 2010 (Minimal Wave Tapes 1 -Veronica Vasicka) I said that "In the late 70's and early 80's the word meaning "Underground" had a deep, real and wide, if the word art was worth more than money, were the times when to the artistic value to superimposed were anything, where there was an ethical person stance of fidelity to oneself, where, everything was more complicated and accessible at the Same time, where, creative freedom is found everywhere..."

Now what I say and more strongly, thanks to DFA Records & James Murphy, now we have this great piece of art, James Murphy and Pat Mahoney's 2007 Fabric mix was bookended with Gordon's 1979 two-part disco opus Beginning of the Heartbreak/Don't Don't; Murphy's DFA label has just released a re-recorded version on a 12", and is following it with a full-length retrospective now.

Is wonderful that we have contact and appreciate this kind of work, which is delicious, I'm pleasantly surprised and delighted with this compilation

Gordon has composed music for many plays and music-theater works, has also been featured in the work of leading dance companies in New York. Peter Gordon's Love Of Life Orchestra conducted the boldest experiments on dance music, starting with Extended Niceties (1979), possibly the absolute masterpiece of disco-music. Gordon layered keyboards and horns on synthetic beats and produced great instrumental works. By applying the techniques of avantgarde music to popular and dance music, by vivisecting the nature of "easy listening", Gordon indirectly provided an hallucinated social fresco. The semiotic quality of his meta-musical program is evident on Geneve (1980), whose pieces are mini-symphonies for stereotypes of commercial music. Related to Andy Warhol's pop art and post-modernism at large, Gordon's mission adopts as the medium the decadent elegance of ludic customs, and sets the goal of eroding the collective imaginary of entertainment.

In 1975, New York, it began to perform as a saxophonist in the clubs of Manhattan, and in 1977 the found `Love Of Life Orchestra (LOLO), gathering around him eccentric musicians as percussionist like David VanTieghem, trumpeter Rik Albani, singer Rebecca Armstrong, with whom he proposed a form of intellectual disco music.

Even with the open group of LOLO, attended occasionally rock musicians like David Byrne and Arto Lindsay, Gordon likes to put on track a sound basis harmless and disturb sadistically with his arsenal of terror: dissonances, sudden changes of time, atonality ` , cacophony. Neurotic and anxious, the music describes the register grotesque loneliness and alienation of the modern individual.


DFA Records says: "Peter Gordon and his Love of Life Orchestra -- as a new audience discovered upon hearing the FabricLive.36 compilation, a handpicked mix from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and Pat Mahoney that opened and closed with Gordon's "Beginning of the Heartbreak/Don't Don't" -- 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.

Gordon's hefty contribution to music is given an up-close look with Love of Life Orchestra, a retrospective of the composer's work. Compiled here are the aforementioned singles and songs that show the breadth and quality of Gordon's output. "Extended Niceties" unfurls a dizzying call-and-response between blaring sax and synths, while the expansive "Roses on the Disco Floor" builds in intensity, size and tempo as it nears its epic end. "Still You" and "Beautiful Dreamer" by Justine & The Victorian Punks (a collaborative project with New York-based visual artist Colette) feature disco grooves and sweetly voiced melodies. "Iago's Escape," which begins with dramatic strings and quasi-operatic vocals, unexpectedly incorporates klezmer-influenced clarinet. "That Hat" is a quirky experiment incorporating early hip-hop beats and featuring vocals from pioneer Arthur Russell, New York Doll David Johansen and Rebecca Armstrong. The album is rounded out with "Another Heartbreak/Don't Don't Redux," Gordon's own reworking of the seminal opening medley, which freshly reinterprets the original's sax lead and adds new synthesizer parts.

Throughout this impressive catalog, harmoniously interwoven strains of jazz, rock and neoclassical, add texture and color to these wonderful songs. Love of Life Orchestra, taken as a whole, serves as ample testimony to the far-reaching scope of Gordon's musical sensibilities and a reminder of his enduring musical legacy..."

Incredible work that will fill your mind and body of a great pleasure.

It's awesome, but the DISCO MUSIC does not stop to impress us, despite time, breaking down barriers of prejudice still appreciating (in my personal opinion) so incredible work of this being a great artist.

ENJOY!!!