Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

RPM Orchestra

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Years active
  
2008–present

Albums
  
Hit On All Sixes

Record label
  
56th Street Records

Website
  
http://rpmorchestra.com/

Members
  
Pete Petrisko (conductor, shortwave radios, typewriter, noisemakers) Jim Dustan (guitar, banjo, bass, live sound engineering) Jocelyn Ruiz (clarinet, flute, percussion, found objects) Erik Hunter (drums & percussion) Vic VOID (salvaged-material instruments)

Past members
  
Kathleen D. Cone Dan Montes Jenna Moody Omar AKA WildBill Rocky Yazzie

Origin
  
Phoenix, Arizona, United States

Genres
  
Experimental music, Industrial music, Americana, Avant-garde, Psychedelic music

Similar
  
Cath & Phil Tyler, Sharon Knight, The Men That Will Not Be Bl, Blackbird Raum, Professor Elemental

RPM Orchestra is a proto-Industrial Americana music ensemble based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Contents

The orchestra composes and performs original scores to accompany films of the Silent Era, provides musical scores in collaborative multidisciplinary performances, records soundtrack music for contemporary films, and regularly performs at various music venues.

Origins and history

Started in 2008 as a studio project by Pete Petrisko, the orchestra transformed into a live multiple-member ensemble by mid-2009. Its line-up has varied between three and seven members, with its core group (Petrisko, Jim Dustan, Jocelyn Ruiz, Vic Void) playing together since 2011.

Cited as a "band staffed by futurists and dadaists who take the sounds of the past and filter them into the heads of today's audiences", the orchestra is most identified with dieselpunk music - combining elements of Jazz, Swing, and Bluegrass commonly found during the diesel era with its own unique instrumentation and avant-garde composition. Additionally, it draws from the "noise" aesthetic of Proto-Industrial music harkening back to the Russian avant-garde period.

The orchestra eschews digital sampling (music), instead favoring analog Electroacoustic music and Acousmatic sound techniques and the use of contact microphones, when creating elements of its music. Its eclectic sound has not gone unnoticed, RPM Orchestra currently holds distinction as the "Oddest Band in Phoenix".

Albums

  • Afterglow (2009, Onewordlong)
  • Roundabout (2010, suRRism-Phonoethics)
  • Blossoms (2012, Absence of Wax)
  • Three Uses of the Knife (2013, Sirona Records)
  • Hit on all Sixes (2015, 56th Street Records)
  • Canary (2015, suRRism-Phonoethics)

    • Compilations

  • The Sepiachord Almanac (2012)

    • Silent Era film scores

  • Tod Browning's The Unknown (1927), premiered 2011.
  • D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919), premiered 2012.
  • W.W. Young's Alice in Wonderland (1915), premiered 2012.
  • Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien Andalou (1929), premiered 2012.
  • F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926), premiered 2013, multidisciplinary performance with Dulce Dance, and poets Jack Evans and Ernesto Moncada.
  • Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), premiered 2014.
  • Buster Keaton's Go West (1925), premiered 2015.
  • Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927), premiered 2015.
  • J. Searle Dawley's Snow White (1916), premiered 2016.
  • F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), premiered 2016.

    • Contemporary film scores

  • Deserted (2014) - Bandersnatch Media

    • Multidisciplinary performances

  • BUTOH + MUSIC (Premiered 2012). A Butoh dance and music collaboration with choreographer/dancer Debra Minghi, performed live as part of Phoenix's Art Detour 24. The performance was recorded by several cameras, including audience cellphones, and edited into a stand-alone film by particledots.
  • Faust (Premiered 2013) A multidisciplinary silent film performance with Dulce Dance, and poets Jack Evans and Ernesto Moncada.
  • Animalogue (Premiered 2013) A performance choreographed by Debra Minghi, three dancers combining elements of classical ballet, animal posturing, and folklorico dance, with a live musical score by RPM Orchestra. Multicultural in scope and primal by nature; it examined animal hierarchy (i.e. the food chain), social status control issues, gender politics (from role reversal to androgyny) with elements of our analog past transformed into our digital future. This performance was funded via the National Endowment for the Arts' Our Town grant program, as part of Roosevelt Row CDC's A.R.T.S. project series.
  • Marching In Circles Marching Band (2015) A multi-location marching performance, in which the band (with four additional musicians) visited & played in each of Phoenix's three distinct art districts (Roosevelt Row, Lower Grand Ave, and Midtown) on the same night.

    • Songs

    Song of ShebaHit On All Sixes · 2015
    Bury MineHit On All Sixes · 2015
    Decomposing Claude DebussyHit On All Sixes · 2015

    References

    RPM Orchestra Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA