Primeros Pasos

Vintage culture, retro fashion, burlesque stage shows: our age is all about recycling and reclaiming. The London Tango Orchestra, founded in 2009, is a self-styled orquesta típica – a reinvention of the medium-sized orchestras that took tango from Buenos Aires to Paris in the early decades of the century. This ten-track CD of covers provides no information about artists or instruments, but there's no questioning the virtuosic talents of the assembled pianist, strings and bandoneón (squeezebox) players.

Argentinian ex-pat Guillermo Rozenthuler's voice is suitably rich and redolent of dimly lit boítes and brothel waiting rooms; his ‘Milonga Sentimental’ is gay and gambolling. Standards such as ‘Malena’, ‘La Yumba’ and ‘Romance de Barrio’ are given rousing, wholly faithful treatments, while Astor Piazzolla's beautiful suite movement ‘Milonga del Angel’ is, if anything, more astringent and aching than the original – the single violin string becoming a screaming siren call while never bending as much as a quaver. Whether London needs or wants a trad tango outfit is anybody's guess, but this octet has already been busy entertaining the capital's dance set and will doubtless do the same for any nostalgia-addled retromaniacs.