- The Cinematic Orchestra have played at the Royal Albert Hall before, three years ago, and subsequently released a live album. It's appropriate, then, that they revisited that eminent performance as part of Ninja Tune's ongoing and unashamedly extravagant 20th birthday celebrations, this time bringing along with them an orchestral performance of Amon Tobin interpretations, Dorian Concept and Mary Anne Hobbs as compère.
The choice of musicians and the grand venue made for a serene and reflective evening. Circular and massive, with steep tiers of seats arranged almost vertically above each other up the walls and huge acoustic baffles suspended from the roof, Royal Albert Hall provided both excellent views and vertigo. The opulent red and gold interior and immaculately polished fixtures and instruments gave an ethereal quality, as if it was a place where earthly flaws simply didn't exist. The stage lighting was, similarly, subtle and smoothly formulated, while keeping a cool modernism. Purples, reds and blues ebbed and flowed and white lace circled as the music swelled and drifted through passages of delicate meditation.
Underscoring the melodic warmth, meanwhile, were cutting-edge ideas in various forms. The Amon Tobin interpretations, for example, had floating harmonies that played with the emotions, with ecstasy being just out of reach and mixed variously with uncertainty, all leading to a brief, transient bliss in its grandiose climax. Dorian Concept's pearly electric piano provided sparkling ornaments to a background wash of a few string players and watery, garbled space transmission effects, with Victorian theatric flavours that were not too far from The Cinematic Orchestra's own. The pattering brushes on fellow Austrian Cid Rim's cymbals broke out into frantic, offbeat drum rhythms and pointillistic improvisational jazz near the end, with Cinematic's Tom Chant joining in on sax.
Luke Flowers similarly displayed an absolutely masterful grasp of skittering abstraction on drums during Cinematic Orchestra's set. Starting with "Burnout" and running through classics like "Flite," "Familiar Ground," "Breathe" and, finally, "Man with a Movie Camera" (the only disappointment all night was that a tape, not the orchestra, played the intro), with the vocal sample break avalanching into applause not once but twice, squirming jazz was alternated naturally with soaring orchestral warmth which enriched their studio recordings to a more present, tangible fullness.
Patrick Watson came on first for the encore with "To Build a Home," but the tune that everyone was whistling on their way out—in wordless communication of the sharing of their experience—was "All That You Give," with Heidi Vogel on vocals. Ninja Tune might largely be associated with urban drum breaks from the likes of Coldcut or The Herbaliser, but just as strong is a thread of organic spontaneity. It's something which tends to connect naturally with people, and the peaceful smiles afterwards were those of children (literal and figurative) who had been wrapped in a warm blanket, and satisfied.