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Album Reviews
Album Review: The Magic Theatre – London Town (Rotodisc)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 27 May 2010
Dan Popplewell and Sophia Churney are best known for their work in late nineties pop sensations (in my house anyway) Ooberman. Championed by John Peel and others, their ‘Shorley Wall’ EP and subsequent album ‘The Magic Treehouse’ were wonderfully inventive with catchy nuggets which still provide the background for my summer days.
With Ooberman on a bit of an indefinite hiatus, Dan has been working on soundtrack projects, which is perhaps why this album has an ambitious story running through it, plus dramatic orchestration from the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Slovak Radio Orchestra and others.
It tells a tale of love gained and lost, but with a twist in that one of the characters falls through a time hole in 1968 and ends up in a Victorian Steam Fair to meet his true love in 1888. The website makes the actual story a bit clearer, to be honest, though stylistically the songs and sounds are representative of the times in which said story is set, with jaunty 60’s pop alongside more orchestral 1880s fairground sounds, and so on.
There’s also something of a musical progression through the seasons as the album and story proceeds. Screams “concept album” doesn’t it? And that’s exactly what this is. If you found Ooberman twee or overblown in any way, this really isn’t for you, but for anyone who was enchanted by ‘Shorley Wall’ this is surely worth a listen. IM
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