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Ben's Symphonic Orchestra

Schoolgirl

Label: Courtyard Music Release Date: 09/04/2001

ransell by Rachelle Ansell April 26th, 2001

Ben’s Symphonic Orchestra like opening their songs with abstract recordings of people talking in the background. The also seem to be French and appear to fit into the same category of wilfully weird pop songs as Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi. Y’know, the sort of songs that seem to have been recorded by people who’ve got too much glucose runing through their veins and a “chuck it all in and see what we come out with” ethos that often seems precariously hit or miss.

First track, Schoolgirl, follows the “two songs squished into one” template: Fast song chorus with skippy chirpy happy staccato vocal then switch to slow song chorus with folksy vocal and keep on alternating.

The B-side, Funk With Me is the sort of thing you’re likely to hear on John Peel if he was feeling a bit cruel and was going though a schizophrenic “to play a song or an anti-song phase.” Somewhere in here once was a song. With a beginning, a middle and an end. However for 3:03 minutes it’s all End. I was wondering if they lost the recording and could only salvage the sonic breakdown that you find at the end of songs that they repeated, passed through a mangle, distorted, chopped, hung upside down and tickled with a pink feather duster. And then 3:03 minutes into the song we get a song in song. “Little” Funk With Me is lo-fi, simple, quiet, structured, sweetly sung. Er everything the first half wasn’t. What confused boys they are.

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