So here’s a question for you – what do Soviet avant garde movies have in common with cutting edge UK dance music. Stuck? The answer is “The Man With The Movie Camera” and The Cinematic Orchestra.

J Swinscoe’s TCO have been described as “classy and cerebral, but atmospheric and soulful too” (NME). They are one of the few bands of the last few years to successfully fuse contemporary studio production techniques with fantastic live playing, their take on jazz and film soundtracks fused together with a thoroughly modern sampler-generation attitude. And in their notional leader, J Swinscoe, they have a man who is as concerned with how sound looks, so to speak, as with how it sounds…

In late 1999, Swinscoe was asked by the organisers of the Porto European City of Culture 2000 if the band wanted to score a soundtrack to a silent movie to open the celebrations. It seemed a perfect opportunity to expand the ideas of TCO into the world which had given them their name. But the difference was this was for a one off live performance. The film was Dziga Vertov's ‘Man With A Movie Camera,’ a 1929 early documentary cinema film from the Soviet Union. The performance in a old theatre space in Porto ended with a standing ovation of 3,500 people. Since that evening TCO have performed the score live at film festivals from Turkey to Scotland.

But the work also had a formative influence on the album that was to become ‘Every Day’. Certain tracks that made it on to the album were written specifically for the score, but more than that it made Swinscoe and the band think in terms of combining sounds and textures and unfolding narratives over a period of time using those sounds. In particular, the title 'Every Day' was based on the narrative in the film, which portrays a day in the life of an idealised Soviet society, starting fom people waking up in the morning, moving through various work place ideas, then into leisure time and then back into the cinema...

As many people know, The Cinematic Orchestra have grown and grown in the past 6 years. Selling out the Royal Albert Hall, playing Coachella, releasing their biggest song to date on 2007’s album “Ma Fleur” in “To Build A Home”, and so much more besides. This is the first time in 6 years this DVD. The jewel in the crown to many TCO fans, is available to buy, and coincides with a sold-out performance of it at The Camden Roundhouse on 6th November 2009

“It stands alone, proud and complete.” Independent on Sunday

”It’s an endlessly inventive, intriguing and rather attractive ambient score.” Sunday Telegraph

“You can perform an autopsy on the jazz instruments, DJ Shadow-like grooves and repeating chord sequences, yet come away scratching your head as to how, in such simple combinations, they make such heartfelt music.” Guardian

“It’s a wave of gentle, melancholy magic” Musik

“The genius, a word not to be used lightly, of the Cinematic Orchestra seemingly knows no bounds” DJ

“It would be quite difficult to write anything bad about the Cinematic Orchestra” Sidewalk

“No one can hold a candle to Cinematic Orchestra’s talent for merging the traditional and the cutting edge, the live and the studio. A masterpiece” Breakin Point

“Music that even surpasses their earlier awe-inspiring opus in terms of sheer surround sound splendour” Jockey Slut

“jazz-drenched instrumentals, which sore to the heavens and spinning grooves which scratch right down to the dust” Irish Times