Reviews and Press

MUSIQUE MACHINE REVIEWS YIN YANG A-GO-GO

Musique Machine, a long-running webzine devoted to “extreme, odd and experimental music and art” has written a great review of Yin Yang A-Go-Go. Check out their review here.

JUNE 2016 - WICKED LOCAL

Erik was interviewed in conjunction with the release of his latest album Bespoke - Chamber Music for the Now Generation. Read the article here.

AUGUST 2012 - BROCKTON ENTERPRISE

Erik was featured in an article where he discussed Extreme Spirituals, a Suite he is writing for the Georgia Symphony Orchestra. Read the article here.

DECEMBER 2007 - DAVE LEWIS

While the instrumental make up of rock bands tends to vary, the basic components remain essentially the same — an electric guitar or two, singer, drummer, bass player, and maybe a sax if you’re lucky. Although chamber music is to a large extent defined by it’s established combinations — string quartet, woodwind quintet, violin and piano, and others — the possible varieties within a chamber context are potentially endless. Frankenstein Consort leader Erik Lindgren represents a previously overlooked generation of classical musicians: those who got their start playing in punk and New Wave bands. Surprisingly many of these musicians had some degree of formal music training, and Lindgren is best known through his involvement with the 1980s group Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, a group so “classical” that in 1994 they were named artists in residence at Dartmouth College. Classical A-Go-Go combines Lindgren’s electronic keyboard playing with the Sonare Wind Trio, some additional winds, and a rank of string players, and covers musical territory ranging from Raymond Scott to Edgar Winter’s 1972 heavy rock hit Frankenstein. Classical A-Go-Go is fun, fresh and defenestrates the notion that nothing that “rocks” ever so slightly can ever be “classical.”

—Dave Lewis, classical reviewer for All Music Guide Note: This CD made Dave’s Top Ten Classical List for 2007

APRIL 2007 - GLOBAL RHYTHM ISSUE #165

The amorphous genre marketed as “Classical crossover” has certainly been a tree ripe for the plukcing, offering fruits from hundreds of talented performers and composers. The Frankenstein Consort is a prime example, featuring skillful musicianship and creative compositions and arrangements, many of which were scored by keyboardist Erik Lindgren. Several of its songs could almost be classified (no pun included) as tone poems clocking in around five minutes, and sometimes less than three. “Scenes From A” is a standout, punctuated by drums and Philip Glass-like treatment of an Eastern-sounding mode. “Baroque-A-Go-Go” borrows from elements of its namesake style with clever counterpoint, but also embraces modernity with its orchestration and thumping backbeat. The four songs penned by Raymond Scott are also compelling: check out the sccinct but swinging “Twilight In Turkey.” Great work by all concerned. In the words of Oliver Twist: “Please, Sir, may I have some more?”

—Robert Kaye

JANUARY 2007 - PRIMETIME, PHILADELPHIA

• Charles Ives/Blair String Quartet
• String Quartets
• Naxos

Here are two examples of talented mavericks hedging their bets: Erik Lindgren runs a record label (ARF! ARF!) and has been producer and engineer for many a rock & roll band (including the Brood and my alma mater the Cynics). Charles Ives (1874–1954) widely considered one of the most original American composers, earned his daily bread in the insurance biz. “Classical A-Go-Go” is Lindgren’s “Pet Sounds,” his “Rhapsody In Blue” — scored for a mini-orchestra of strings, keyboards, woodwinds and percussion. CAGG features inspired reimaginings of Raymond Scotrt (whose melodies grace many classic Warner Bros. cartoons), and Erik Satie, along with enthralling originals emerging from common ground shared by minimalism (Glass, Adams), baroque (Bach, Vivaldi), and progressive pop/rock (post 1966 Beatles and Beach Boys, Left Banke, Jethro Tull). If Aaron Copeland or Lenny Bernstein were born in the 1950s, they might've composed stuff not dissimilar to Lindgren's. CAGG is one rollicking, cerebrally stimulating good time (and you gotta hear how his Consort revamps Edgar Winter’s 1972 hit “Frankenstein”)…

DECEMBER 2006 - THE NOISE, BOSTON ISSUE #267

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this one. The closest I usually get to anything even remotely related to classical music is when I move my wife’s violin out of the way to get my Les Paul. But you know what? I really dig it. Maybe it’s because I immediately recognized some of the Raymond Scott pieces from old Looney Tunes cartoons, and anytime you make me think of Daffy Duck, you’re 90 percent of the way toward making me like you. Now there’s no way at all I will pretend to be able to comment intelligently on the technical abilities, or lack thereof, of the players, but I can tell they’re having a blast. And for a genre of music that has a well- deserved reputation for having a major stick up its ass, it’s wonderful to hear a project that was seemingly born out of pure joy. And when you get right down to it, that’s something that more than a few insufferable indie rockers should take to heart as well. Kudos to Erik Lindgren and company on a job well done.

—Kevin Finn