The Exotica Album

Commissioned by the Bit20 Ensemble and premiered at Oslo's Only Connect festival in May 2017, 'The Exotica Album' features the Ensemble conducted by Trond Madsen plus star guests Kjetil Moster on sax and Jorgen Traeen on electronics. Composer Oyvind Torvund's audaciously playful suite reimagines in collage form the chunky edifice of those Fifties and Sixties popular styles categorised variously as 'exotica' or 'lounge', together with a wealth of historical reference points, from early electronic composition to cartoon music.

"The piece grew out of a wish to do something on the exotica genre and link it to early electronic modernism", Oyvind Torvund says. "I felt a connection to both the world of exotica, to Les Baxter, Martin Denny, etc, and also to early electronic music, to Stockhausen and G.M. Koenig, who made these sonic diamonds where there is so much love in each naive little 'pling' So, I started writing tunes that were clearly inspired by the sounds and colours of Fifties exotica, and then added abstract compositions and improvisations that ran parallel to the tunes and sometimes interacted with them. Jorgen Traeen and Kjetil Moster then began to represent the more modernist/abstract part of the material, with synths imitating waves, rain, birds and other natural phenomena. The tunes are inspired by composers like Esquivel, Martin Denny and Les Baxter, and also the collage work of John Zorn, Otomo Yoshihide and Christian Marclay."