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Background -

Tin Hat Trio is an acoustic chamber music group currently based in San Francisco, California. Their music combines many genres of music, including jazz, southern blues, bluegrass, neoclassical, eastern European folk music, and avant-garde.

Since its formation in 1997, the original Tin Hat Trio has often expanded its trio format by inviting other musicians to join them. All of their CDs feature guests, among them Tom Waits, Mike Patton and Willie Nelson, as well as friends like clarinetist Ben Goldberg and harpist Zeena Parkins. Parkins appears on 2002's The Rodeo Eroded and 2004's Book of Silk and has performed live with the trio as the resident sound effects artist in their live music/silent film projects. Goldberg has been a frequent guest of Tin Hat Trio and contributed to both Memory Is an Elephant and The Rodeo Eroded.

When founding member Rob Burger (the trio's accordionist and pianist) left the trio in late 2004, Mark Orton and Carla Kihlstedt replaced him with both Goldberg and Parkins, presenting a new, though closely related, ensemble—the Tin Hat Quartet—for two short concert tours in the U.S. in January and April 2005. While on tour, they invited another musician to come under their hat, San Francisco's Ara Anderson—known as one of Tom Waits' favorite sidemen in recent years. Like the departed Burger, Anderson plays myriad keyed instruments as well as trumpet and glockenspiel, thus adding new colors and strokes to the already large canvas of Tin Hat's sound.

The free-thinking Bay Area would seem to be an appropriate breeding ground for this iconoclastic trio, which has put together an unclassifiable mixture of acoustic jazz, desentimentalized tango, bluegrass textures, and other idioms along with a crucial overlooked component -- silence. Rob Burger (accordion and field organ), Carla Khilstedt (violin and viola), and Mark Orton (guitars, banjo and mandolin) describe their music as "music for the shotgun wedding of Astor Piazzolla and Django Reinhardt with Charles Ives as the flower girl." -- which puts a reviewer at a sudden loss for words, for that just about nails it. Suffice it is to add that the music here is quiet, unostentatious, and unpredictable, with the elegant surface of classical chamber music and spooky undercurrents that sometimes surface like avenging ghosts. Sometimes they can be atonal and frightening; who knows what demons of the past a title like "UC Irvine/UC Davis" had summoned up. Other pieces develop in a stream of consciousness, changing meters and tempos, petering out before suddenly springing to life in a totally different idiom. While the Tin Hat Trio's compositions aren't that strong yet, to be honest, it's the processes and outbreaks of weirdness that keep you interested. - Richard S. Ginell

Before assembling in San Francisco, the members of Tin Hat Trio wandered through such disparate landscapes as New York's Knitting Factory, Baltimore's Peabody, and Portland's rock scene. So it's no wonder the band's recording debut evokes both movement and place. While the trio stays Stateside, the pastiche reaches around the globe to embrace an array of old-, third-, and new-world folk traditions. Jazz-influenced frameworks tie them together agreeably. "Fire of Ada," which foregrounds Rob Burger's accordion against Mark Orton's syncopated guitar and Carla Kihlstedt's intermittent violin, could be the soundtrack for an indie Mafia flick, by turns weepy and awry. Past the muted meltdown of "Foreign Legion," off-kilter, semi-narrative phrasings emerge under the upbeat "Big Top." The album is imminently frightening all along, and "Orbly Resting" plays to that strength, tip-toeing into the discordant ambush that is "UC Irvine/UC Davis." Pump organ, toy piano, banjo, mandolin, and viola weigh in until the comedic chase scene of "Lambrackroar" lurches in for the finale. No cut-and-paste job, this interplay comes off organically, as pop structures periodically surface with sparkling nuggets of melody. Tin Hat Trio performs melting-pot alchemy to yield postmodern American gold. --- JAZZIZ Magazine

Memory Is an Elephant lilts, skitters, and wails like the soundtrack to a flickering-yellow-subtitled Italian film as it unfolds the tale of a marching chamber orchestra of East European Gypsies improving klezmer-inflected bluegrass at the wake of Astor Piazzolla. Such gloriously peculiar diversity makes Tin Hat Trio's debut of titillating tiptoe tango remarkably suitable for a gallery opening peopled with handsomely dressed avant-garde art scenesters clinking glasses or for accompaniment to a long, lonesome Sunday afternoon drive heading for parts unknown. The classically trained group creates a deftly engaging soundscape of movement, textures, and shading, and its combined bio of connections (including Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Philip Glass, Tom Waits, and Eugene Chadbourne) reads like a who's who of contemporary musical giants. Guitarist and primary songsmith Mark Orton lays down the bones of this intricately composed collection while Karla Kihlstedt's violin and Rob Burger's accordion nestle into gorgeously complex melodic tension countered with the extraordinary daring thrill of aural kite-tricks flying high and wide across the open sky. -- Paige La Grone

This listing is for a rare CD title - a USED / OPENED, in Near Mint minus overall condition CD PRESSED and ISSUED by ANGEL / EMI. A highly collectible title from their CD catalog, featuring the -

Tin Hat Trio

CD Title -

Memory Is An Elephant

Track Listing -

1. Fire Of Ada - 4:13
2. Foreign Legion - 5:28
3. Big Top - 4:30
4. Orbly Resting - 1:23
5. UC Irvine/UC Davis - 4:35
6. Waltz Of The Skyscraper - 5:45
7. The Would-be Czarina - 2:39
8. The Quick Marble Tremble - 5:09
9. Somniloquy - Bass – Trevor Dunn - 2:27
10. Lambrackroar - 5:53
11a. Thinuette - 3:21
11b. Infinito - Vocals [Guest] – Mike Patton

Performers -

• Accordion, Organ [Pump], Piano [Toy] – Rob Burger
• Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar [Dobro] – Mark Orton
• Violin, Viola – Carla Kihlstedt
• Mike Patton – vocals, Italian on "Infinito"
• Trevor Dunn – bass on "Somniloquy"
• Ben Goldberg – clarinets

The CD is from the rare ANGEL // EMI series of CDs.

CD catalog # CDC 7243 5 56786 2 1

CD issued in 1999
CD made in the USA

The CD, JEWEL CASE AND INSERTS are all in Near MINT minus overall condition - the CD may have some very light marks on the reflective surface, but when play tested on our audio system, it performed PERFECTLY.

The CD is an audiophile quality pressing (any collector of fine MFSL, half speeds, direct to discs, Japanese/UK pressings etc., can attest to the difference a quality pressing can make to an audio system).

Do not let this rarity slip by!