Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra: Also Sprach Zarathustra

About the album “Hooked Up Classics“: Shawn Lee dons his Ping Pong Orchestra hat for an album inspired by the Hooked On Classics series of the early 1980s. This popular series of albums (arranged by Louis Clark of Electric Light Orchestra fame) took well-known classical pieces and gave them a contemporary re-working, mostly adding a disco flavor. Lee throws his new musical twist on the idea, taking 12 favorite classical tracks and squeezing them through the Ping Pong Orchestra machine. While Lee has spent most of the year releasing and working on albums featuring vocal collaborations (the recent “Sing A Song“ and upcoming “World of Funk“), this Ping Pong Orchestra album puts Lee back in library-record mode, creating cinematic instrumental music. “The 1812 Overture“ is re-interpreted with a heavy dub re-rub, while “Swan Lake“ and “Peter and the Wolf“ receive a dose of squelchy moog-like bass-lines, and even “Dance of the Sugar Pl