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Introducing... Fugitive Orchestra

Introducing... Fugitive Orchestra.

Photo: Press

Who is Fugitive Orchestra?

Fugitive Orchestra is the musical-alias of James Tattington, a 5'10 bespectacled-musician originally from Blackpool, currently living and music-ing in Portsmouth.

How would you describe your sound?

I've recently started describing my sound as 'Alternative, Jazz-infused, Bluesy Hip-Pop,' because I feel that my style of music spans quite a few genres: the beatboxing element is straight from the roots of Hip-Hop, the way I approach the guitar owes a lot to the Alternative Rock I grew up listening to (bands like Radiohead, R.E.M. and Pixies), but I owe just as much to Jazz and Blues as well. And being a child of the 90s, it'd be almost impossible to not be influenced by Pop in some way; at least that's my excuse.

Who are your biggest inspirations and influences?

I think the way I approach songwriting comes a lot from artists like Paul Simon and Elvis Costello, their ability to write about deeply personal topics in an indirect way, I'm really interested in inventing characters to explore ideas and feelings within a song. The idea of live-looping came from seeing Andrew Bird a few years ago, the way he constructed these soundscapes just by using a violin and vocals totally changed the way I thought about how much sound one person and an instrument could make. That's when I realised that my love of Hip-Hop, artists like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, NaS, and also my love of Jazz musicians like Bill Frisell, as well as these Blues-heroes like Muddy Waters and B.B. King could all happen in this same space. So in a way, I like to think that my music is all of these different genres melted down and squished back together through a set of speakers.

You recently released an album, (Re)Percussions, tell us a little about it?

The album was recorded live at Lytham Festival, which I played in August of this year. I didn't realise until after the show had finished that Elliott, the sound-guy had recorded the whole thing, so he set about mixing and mastering it and I've released it as a true-to-live album of original songs. I suppose the title is a bit of a pun based on the fact that as I'm looping percussive beats and they get looped and repeated, after they've been looped a few times what you're hearing is basically a re-percussion... Geddit? I admit it's not a very good pun.

What's the aim?

I think just to carry on making music, to reach a wider audience, and at some point, be capable of growing a beard. But seriously, I just love making music, whether live or in the studio, so to turn that into an actual career would be... [cue the X-Factor sob-story theme music] awesome.

What's next for Fugitive Orchestra?

Bigger and better gigs, lots more festivals, music videos, plenty of writing, as well as a recent but very exciting collaboration with a Portsmouth-poet and wordsmith, Sam Cox, which is a cool fusion of spoken word and ambient guitar landscapes. So 2016 should be a busy year!

Where can we find out / hear more from you?

The best place to head would be my Bandcamp page, where there's quite a few EP's and mini-albums I've released over the past few years (and a lot of it can be downloaded for free) http://fugitiveorchestra.bandcamp.com/

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