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Editorial Review:
Wiliam Orbit 's "Pieces in a Modern Style is an ambient album that rejigs 11 works by classical composers in a particularly tacky fashion. Even though Orbit has proved his mettle as an innovative and exciting producer for others--Blur's 13 and Madonna's Ray of Light--this is an ungainly meeting of the sublime and the absurd that, frankly, doesn't work. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings", Ludwig Van Beethoven's "Triple Concerto", Henryk Gorecki's "Piece In the Old Style 1" and Antonio Vivaldi "L'Inverno" are four of the pieces that unfortunately meet their maker in a crude pile up of flat, belching synths and wallpaper flourishes. If he had combined live instrumentation with a playful reverence for the arcane glories of the past--perhaps he could have managed to make reality out of that most elusive of notions: experimental music that actually sells. However, Orbit fails to do anything more than resemble a second rate Vangelis. --Maxine Kabuubi
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
Shopping mall tunes With a talent like Orbit's, surely he could have done something to create a modern mood in these classic tunes. The arrangements add nothing to the music, reducing them to nothing more than banal elevator dross.
Very dissapointing, dispite trying to find a glimmer of positivity.
Don't buy this! I bought this on the strength of Barber's Adagio.
Barbers Adagio is OK. The rest of this album is really very poor indeed.
You can download Midi files of most of the pieces on this album and play them, even with a basic soundcard in your computer.
They will play just about as well. Maybe that is what gave Mr Orbit the idea. I'm sorry to say that I actually laughed when the Midi helicopter sound turned up towards the end of the album.
(Thats General MIDI patch 125, for those... more info
Childish reworking I still like this version of Barbers Adagio - but the rest of the album is terrible.
Many of the pieces are rendered unrecognisable and sound like they were reworked by a 14 year old in their bedroom with a very cheap synthesiser. I like the idea of reworked classics and will continue my search for some good efforts because this was definitely not worth my time nor money.
Disappointing, without soul and empty of any emotion! Disappointing in the extreme, had high hopes for this album and all I got was a poor intepretation of how school children may have represented the various works.
Barbers adagio, a classic piece of music, was translated into a flat and mournful dirge. Things never really improved from there on in.
