From the album L'Orange "The Ordinary Man" Video Written & Directed by Alexander Thompson Starring Harwood Gordon as The Magician Music Production: L'Orange Vocals: Del The Funky Homosapien About L'Orange "The Ordinary Man" The amalgam of art and magic looms at the spiritual core of L’Orange’s The Ordinary Man­—a record vaguely reminiscent of RJD2’s Deadringer if it actually contained the power to reanimate the dead. It asserts L’Orange in a league with instrumental hip-hop legends like the aforementioned Ohio great, DJ Shadow, Wax Tailor, Blockhead, and the Avalanches. Yet it’s a singularly necromantic work that could only come from the Nashville-by-way-of-North Carolina producer. On his third album, L’Orange builds upon his previous catalogue’s cinematic film noir and cabaret jazz fixations, but adds a thematic focus, whimsy, and feverish urgency. It arrives after a tumultuous two-year saga in which a series of tumors grew in L’Orange’s right ear, which eventually led to almost total deafness on that side. Surgeries left him off-balance and dizzy. A natural fear gripped him, causing self-doubt about whether he’d regain the totality of his gift. But as it does quite often, turmoil spurred the producer to create his most poignant body of work. Released on Mello Music Group, The Ordinary Man chronicles the narrative of a magician who discovered late in life that his peers weren’t actually pulling rabbits from hats. Crestfallen and disillusioned, he digs deeper to push his own show into uncharted territory, demonstrating ostensibly impossible feats for crowds too terrified to ask for the reveal. As the audience gradually realizes that his practice of the dark arts isn’t fraudulent, people from all around the world flock to him. Unfortunately, this loyalty to what he was rather than what he did becomes patronizing and dull—engendering a bitterness and disenchantment that leads him to finally disappear in front of millions of stunned onlookers. Behind the boards, L’Orange shows a master’s precision, playing with pace and tempo, telling a fully- fleshed out narrative with few words. This is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice but far more soulful. If Harry Houdini was a hip-hop head this is what he’d bump. It’s mournful blues with pianos that sparkle like a Tiffany Lamp—smooth as a gypsy stealing a wallet. Tune in for archaic old-time glamour interspersed with insight into the timeless oracular mystery at the center of our existence. You spy bizarre astrological charts and hear acts of levitation. This is the Aleister Crowley material: stuff that defies explanation, what Ripley went looking for. Harry Potter meeting the hellhound on your trail. Nothing ordinary about it. Mixed by Seiji Inouye Mastered by Joe Hutchinson Additional Instrumentation by Paul Defiglia COMPLETE CREDITS: Producers - Aditya Nair & Kelsey Gilchrist Executive Producer - Michael Tolle & Austin Hart Associate Producer - Jess Matney Production Designer - Eliza Roberts Director of Photography - Harper Alexander Editor - Zach Kashkett Costume Designer - Whitney Oppenheimer Character Design, Stop-Motion Animation - Austin Taylor Outer Space & Landscape Compositing - Isaiah King Crystal Ball 2D Animation - Griffin Giersch 2D Animation Clean Up - Catherine Salisbury CG “Magic” Animation - Evan Ausmus Flame Artist - Maury Rosenfeld Colorist - Robert Crosby Conform Artist - Mannix Rickenbacker Rotoscope Artist - Carolyn Woods 1st Assistant Director - Jeff Pennington Hair & Makeup - Rebecca Pederson Assistant Camera - Ona Isart Dolly Grip - Adam Everett Set Construction Foreman - Drew Barnett Miniatures & Storyboards - Eliza Roberts Title Designer - Justine Gordon Sound Designer & Re-Recording Mixer - Milos Zivkovic Assistant Editor - Hunter Lurie Data Wrangler - Tracy Hollins Special Thanks: Sofi Camera Rental On The Mark Media Neptune Post Union Editorial Resolution LA Michael Raimondi Todd Iorio Logan Aries Einar Thornsteinsson Jay Freidkin Noah Haeussner Chase White The Oganesyan Family Debi Berlin Jessica Makinson #LOrange #DelTheFunkyHomosapien #MelloMusicGroup Sounds Beautiful Like The Truth Mello Music Group, 2017

• published: 18 Oct 2017
• views: 87316