The Bamboos Team Up With Dan Sultan
One of Australia’s ever greatest soul / funk acts team up with ARIA Award winner Dan Sultan on a sweeping new version of their 2012 single “I Never”, ahead of the release on August 2nd of ‘By Special Arrangement’, a new album of orchestral reinventions of some of their most beloved songs, alongside two cover versions. Other vocalists featured include Tim Rogers, Washington and long time Boos vocalist Kylie Auldist. They’ll be launching the album with a special concert at the Melbourne Recital Centre on August 15th – ‘The Bamboos Present By Special Arrangement: Symphonic Soul’ - with a ten piece string section and some extra special guests.
As they approach their 20th anniversary, the band’s follow up to their acclaimed 2018 album ‘Night Time People’ had to be a genuine reimagining of their sound, felt band leader / founder / guitarist Lance Ferguson.
“You can’t help looking back,” he said, “But simply putting together some kind of ‘Best Of…” release just didn’t feel right, we owe our fans much more than that and we always want to be pushing things forward.”
The result is ‘By Special Arrangement’, an album that reinvents Bamboos songs within the setting of lush, sweeping strings, woodwind and brass, coaxing both the epic and intimate from classics taken from their eight studio albums. Fittingly, the album’s cover image is shreds of their previous album covers brought together, creating a new object.
“I have wanted to work with Dan Sultan for many years now”, Ferguson says of the guest on the album’s first single. “There is definitely something unique about his artistry and I regard him as one of this country’s finest vocalists. His take on “I Never” is astonishing - there’s an emotional intensity to the performance that totally floored everyone listening in the studio that day.”
The album’s stunning arrangements come from longtime Bamboos trumpeter Ross Irwin, who has arranged for the likes of Paul Kelly, Angus and Julia Stone, Passenger, Vance Joy, Josh Pyke, The Kite String Tangle as well as performances with The Adelaide and Queensland Symphony Orchestras. Irwin’s arrangements simultaneously tap into not just the cinematic but also the grand tradition of legendary soul arrangers such as Isaac Hayes and Charles Stepney, as well as classic widescreen soul albums from the likes of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. The album was recorded by long time Bamboos co-producer / engineer John Castle (Vance Joy, Dean Lewis, Gretta Ray).
