Sonic Playground - orchestral

L.E.J - Hanging Tree

2026-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

L.E.J recorded Hanging Tree as a cover, and their version sits between pop and the orchestral: three voices, a backing choir and a string section in place of a film score. No review describes this recording, so its feelings, haunting and melancholic, are the song’s own, the eerie murder ballad Suzanne Collins wrote for her novel Mockingjay.

Song Summary

The song asks someone to come to a hanging tree at midnight, words Collins wrote and the Lumineers’ Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz set to music for the 2014 film. L.E.J open their first album, En attendant l’album, released on 4 December 2015, with it. The album’s credits list an arrangement by the group, strings and voices arranged by Marie Jeanne Serrero, seven string players and seven backing singers: a small orchestra and a choir around three friends.

Musical Breakdown

No source describes this cover part by part, so this breakdown names what to listen for rather than inventing a structure.

Intro

Listen for who begins: one voice, as in the film, or the three together.

Main Section

Listen for how the harmonies and the seven credited backing singers widen the song, and where the strings take over the role of James Newton Howard’s orchestra.

Outro

Listen for whether the cover ends where it began, quietly, or stays with the full ensemble.

Concepts in Focus

A cover version shows what survives when a song changes hands. Compare it with the James Newton Howard, Jennifer Lawrence – The Hanging Tree it answers and with Blankets – The Hanging Tree, another French cover of the same year.

vocal harmony is how L.E.J began: in October 2013 they won a contest run by the band Tryo by covering one of its songs with vocal harmonies, the first time the three sang together as a group.

The song comes from a soundtrack, and the cover stayed close to its film: L.E.J sang it at the Paris premiere of Mockingjay Part 2 on 9 November 2015, and the video came out three days later.

Artistic Context

Lucie Lebrun, Elisa Paris and Juliette Saumagne were born in 1993 and grew up together in Saint-Denis; the group’s name is their initials. Lucie sings and plays synthesizers and saxophone, Elisa sings and plays drums and percussion, Juliette sings and plays cello and bass. They broke through with Summer 2015, a mashup of summer hits posted on YouTube that August, which reached number one in France.

Impact and Reception

As a single, Hanging Tree peaked at number 99 in France; the album, all covers except their first original song La Dalle, reached number 4 and went multi-platinum. Listen to how three voices carry a song written for a crowd.

The Colorist Orchestra, Emilíana Torrini - Jungle Drum

2026-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

The Colorist Orchestra and Emilíana Torrini play Jungle Drum as indie pop handed to a small orchestra that draws on world music: joyful, playful and, in the strings, euphoric. One reviewer summed up the arrangement as finger-clicking, foot-stomping joy.

Song Summary

Jungle Drum was Torrini’s biggest hit, a 2009 single written with her producer Dan Carey. Here it is rebuilt from the ground up. NPR’s Michelle Mercer heard homemade percussion and a line doubled on piano and bass deepening the groove, with strings accentuating the euphoria, and noted that even when the players break the song down, they never lose its original dancing beat. At 2:46 this version runs about half a minute longer than the original single.

Musical Breakdown

No source walks through this recording part by part, so this follows the elements the reviews name.

The Beat

The beat comes from the ensemble’s percussion, played on traditional and self-designed instruments, and the song’s pulse survives the change.

The Doubled Line

Piano and bass play one line together, and that doubling is what gives the groove its depth.

The Strings and the Breakdown

The strings push the song’s euphoria further, and when the band breaks the song down, the dancing beat stays.

Concepts in Focus

This is an alternate version: the same singer and the same song, a different arrangement. Play it next to the 2009 single and listen for how much of its mood came from production rather than melody.

It is also a live recording. The album captures the collaboration on stage, strings and woodwinds played live.

Its groove shows that a dance beat lives in how parts lock together, not in a drum kit: percussion and a doubled bass line keep the song moving. Compare Wax Tailor – Que Sera - Phonovisions Symphonic Version, another song rebuilt for live players.

Artistic Context

The Colorist is a Belgian ensemble founded in 2013 by the multi-instrumentalists Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans to reinterpret singers’ songs, a method it calls an acoustic live remix or inverse karaoke. Its eight players use percussion, prepared piano, bass, bass clarinet, violin and viola alongside stones, mirrors and glass bowls. Torrini, its dream collaborator, toured with it from 2015; Rough Trade released the live album on 9 December 2016.

Impact and Reception

The original Jungle Drum spent eight weeks at number one in Germany. Blogcritics called this reworking one of the album’s liveliest tracks, and the partnership continued with a studio album, Racing the Storm, in 2023. Start here, then play the original.

Wax Tailor - Que Sera - Phonovisions Symphonic Version

2026-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

Wax Tailor’s Que Sera - Phonovisions Symphonic Version takes a trip-hop track built from old records and gives it to an orchestra. Echoes hears “a film noir quality” in his music, and this version leans into it: downtempo, nostalgic and mysterious, and theatrical in the literal sense, since it was recorded in a theatre.

Song Summary

The original Que Sera was one of Wax Tailor’s first releases, a 2004 single and then the second track of his 2005 debut album, Tales of the Forgotten Melodies, which samples Hitchcock films and recordings by Nina Simone and Doris Day. Echoes calls it “his adaptation of Doris Day’s rendition” of the song from The Man Who Knew Too Much. Ten years later he re-orchestrated it for Phonovisions Symphonic Orchestra, a project of 27 tracks from his four albums, rearranged for 35 musicians and a 17-voice choir.

Musical Breakdown

The sources describe the concerts and the project, not this track section by section, so the parts below stay general.

The Arrangement

MusicBrainz credits Wax Tailor himself as the orchestrator and producer of this version, and he mixed it with Julien Depardieu. The music that was once assembled from records is here written out for players.

The Room

The concerts were filmed over two days at the Théâtre Sébastopol in Lille, with a visual scenography by Pierre Jampy. Echoes found that “the live horns give it a different kind of punch”.

Concepts in Focus

The original Que Sera rests on sampling. Echoes describes Wax Tailor’s sound as “a rollicking smash-up of film dialogue, jazz grooves, John Barry’s suave orchestral aplomb and hip-hop scratching”, and Wikipedia notes his heavy use of samples from old films. Que Sera, Sera, written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, was introduced by Doris Day in Hitchcock’s 1956 film, where she sings it as a signal to her kidnapped son, and it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

This recording is an alternate version: the same piece by the same artist, with a different arrangement and sound. Compare it with the 2005 album track and listen for what belongs to the melody and what belonged to the production.

It is also a live recording, made in front of an audience and released as a double CD with a DVD. Echoes recommended watching the DVD first. Boogie Belgique took a similar path from samples to a live band in Boogie Belgique – Forever and Ever.

Artistic Context

Wax Tailor is Jean-Christophe Le Saoût, born in 1975 in Vernon, Normandy, who founded his label Lab’Oratoire in 1998. Phonovisions Symphonic Orchestra marked ten years of his career and was released on 3 November 2014.

Impact and Reception

John Diliberto of Echoes called the project a major statement from Wax Tailor, and Stereofox wrote that it was really impressed by how the tracks had evolved with the orchestra. Play it after the 2005 original, and hear the records turn into a room full of musicians.