Timothy Victor's Folk Orchestra
There’s a place called Moscow in Polk County, Texas. I’m told there’s also a Moscow on the banks of the Moskva river in Russia. The Folk Orchestra have visited neither of these places and probably never will but their sound owes much to both the southern states of the USA and Eastern Europe.
This odd hybrid of sounds, best described as Country & Eastern, is evident on their debut release ‘Blood Stained Lovers’ (Snowstorm Records) which draws together the disparate talents of 21 musicians, held together by the leadership of singer/songwriter Timothy Victor
Regular collaborator with Cambridge favourites The Broken Family Band, Timothy has long been searching for a vehicle to combine his love of Eastern European folk music and US acoustic roots (and a good excuse to rope in several musicians he wanted to work with in one go). Thus, on ‘Blood Stained Lovers’, guitar goes hand in hand with fiddle, accordion, pedal steel, dobro, mandolin, glockenspiel and the delicate and oft-neglected sound of a coffee mug being hit with a screwdriver.
Finding it difficult to co-ordinate the diaries of 21 people at once, Timothy began to localize the band’s activities around a core of regular players which would be augmented by additional instruments as required. In this stripped down format the band are now rehearsing material for a second album. Choosing to emphasize the acoustic nature of the music, in particular the accordion playing of Gill Sandell (also a member of Norfolk’s Magoo), has allowed the folkier elements of the music to shine through whilst retaining the qualities which Rough Guides described as ‘sounding like a bunch of tipsy buskers’.
The band’s influences range from Hank Williams and bluegrass to klezmer and European folk, via the wonderful middle ground of Camper Van Beethoven, The Violent Femmes and The Tigerlillies.
"Mixing up just about the right amounts of tunelessness and sweetness with faux-naïve sounds and black-as-night humour, Blood Stained Lovers is a touching collection that fans of Syd Barrett will cherish"
– www.roughguides.com
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