The RPO delight concertgoers with their original mixing of East and West, Funk and Folk and skin-shedding torch tunes. Gypsy Rock? Traditional toe-twisters? Balkan Lounge Funk? There's a lizard trying to fit into a pigeonhole. Elvis + Armenia + Funkadelic + Bulgaria = RPO.
The band includes Biff Uranus Blumfumgagnge, Madison's only Therolin genius; Seth Blair, Seattle Folk/Cello star; Bill Feeny, zoology illustrator now Macedonian guitar jock; Greg Smith, courtesy of Yid Vicious and the Madison Chamber Orchestra, Robert Schoville, multirhythmic monster, Ed Feeny, anchoring the low end on the bass guitar, and of course Anna Purnell, who torches and scorches up the evening with vocal prowess and sartorial splendor.
On these Omnium discs you'll also hear former Sugarcube turned Reptilian backbeat buddah Siggytrygur Baldersson.
- "These guys are a breed all unto themselves. Every time I thought I'd found a way to nail down just what this group was about, they'd switch tracks completely, hopping from one train of thought to the next like musical hobos. Part Bulgarian, part Colombian, part swing, part Balkan, part guy-with-an-iguana-head-riding-in-a-boat-with-three-kids, the Reptile Palace Orchestra certainly can't have any rivals for whatever the heck it is they do. For one thing, I don't know if the world's big enough to support more than one of them!" - Tom Schulte
"They sound like a musical General Assembly on acid. " - Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Labels slide off the Reptile Palace Orchestra. Nothing is adhesive enough to stick. "People have started to realize that ass-kicking comes from many lands," says the group's whirling-dervish lead singer, Anna Purnell. "There are many ways to burn the barn down. Call it Appalachian-Balkan-lounge-funk if you have to call it anything." -- Shepherd Express
Links
|
|
|
|
Reptile Palace Orchestra
